Weekly Spending Recap April 11-17, 2011

April 11 (Monday)
No Spend Day

April 12 (Tuesday)
No Sped Day

April 13 (Wednesday)
No Spend Day

April 14 (Thursday)
No Spend Day

April 15 (Friday)
$25.00 bus tickets

April 16 (Saturday)
No Spend Day

April 17 (Sunday)
$39.54 EB Games (friend's gift)

$4.17 Bday card @ Shoppers

$7.55 GO train ticket

~*~*~
I meant to write a post about this on Saturday but forgot and than I guess was lazy... I am not sure what happened. So I called Rogers to talk about my phone bill and how much it would cost me to buy myself out. As it turns out it would cost me $150 with taxes ($20 X # of months left in contract = cost to buy myself out of contract. I also looked at the cost of resigning and getting a new phone which i need if I am going to take advantage of even 1/2 the features that my plan offers. However I will not sign a 3 year contract and really its way to expensive to pay for it all up front. Basically I don't have $500 siting around to do any of the above things because I am not willing to lock myself in for 3 years. So I have decided to hold tight and wait until my contract comes up for renewal so at that point I can save up some money to by the phone that I want out right or at least a second hand phone out right and than just sign up for a 1 year plan.

The good news out of all this is that after talking to her the lady was very accommodating and agreed to nock $15. 50 off the rest of my bills until my contact comes up for renewal.  This will being my bill down from about $95.03 to roughly $78.89. I am so excited about this. The money I save I am going to roll in to my student debt. Every Cent Counts!!

Currently because I haven't written the cheques to my account and the charity I contribute I have a lot of money sitting in my chequing account! This always makes me nervous and I feel like I will spend it and not leave enough for the cheques to clear. So my goal tonight before I go to bed is to write them and post them. Hopefully the money will leave my account before Friday when pay day is or it will completely mess my banking and bills stuff up.

Bi-weekly Pay, Fund Allotment and Playing with Money

It was payday this last Thursday. I didn’t however move money around until yesterday.  As it turns out I was in over draft again by $0.11 and because I always have my Work Bank Account at zero they dipped into over draft again. What this all means is next month I will be paying over draft on overdraft… ARGGGG!!! I fell like such a (fill in blank). It bothers me because I have never had nor neared overdraft. In my mind when the bank balance says zero then that’s it. Money doesn’t grow on trees. Also in those rare occasions where I want on the read with Scotia I never got charged over draft interest. So I now have had to leave $2 in the account so as to stop these charges once and for all.

I made sure that I walked into the bank and withdraw the money that was left in my account AFTER ING had taken the money out. I use to do email money transfers as we are allowed 2 free, on one month billing cycle. I thought I had been ok that I hadn’t gone over the 2 transfers. However it has been indicated to me that I did which is how my account ended up in the negative.  Another reason I was given because I called in twice to find out how the charge happened; was that the ING stuff comes out of my account at 12am the day I picked and my pay comes in at 4ish in the morning. So hopefully by resetting my ING money to come out the day after I get paid this will stop the over draft interest as well.  Than on Fridays I will be whipping my account out at a branch and walking it over to Scotia. The hope is that all this will brake the gross cycle of over draft interest I have been paying. After all I worked hard for those 11 cents!!

My last month’s bill for Rogers was way over budget due to the stuff with Cuba, coming in at $155.83, thus $55.83 over. So I have had to play around with the numbers again. I had $28.00 left over from last pay. This was snowflaked into my bills account to help cover this cost. I had $25 (in cash) left over from the cost of my licence renewal that I was going to put into my car fund. This will go into my visa account and my allotted $25 from this pay for my visa will be rolled into my Rogers bill to cover the excess cost of the cell phone bill. This means that I will have $54.00 extra for this bill.

My Company Stock contribution was dropped .I would like in the future to make the full 10% which is $136.93. However I really can’t at this point, so I have dropped it down to 6% which is $82.16 a pay. My Bank only matches up to 50% of your contribution up to 6% which means that they will match 3% of my 6% contribution. You are allowed to put up to 10% but the Bank only matches up to 6%.

I have also added my Emergency fund to my direct withdrawals with ING. Starting this last pay ING will now take of $50 bi-weekly off my pay, $25 for my retirement fund and $25 for my emergency fund.

Last but not least, I have $7.28 that I am carrying around with me until I can get to a TD bank. This money will be snowflaked into my Line of credit.

Bi-weekly pay and fund allotment:

               Amount (after stock contribution): $1, 011.73

TD Line of Credit: $400

OSAP:  $0

Visa: $25

Retirement fund: $25

Emergency fund: $25

Christmas fund: $40

Storage Unit: $85

Vet bills Fund: $100 (50 for last pay and 50 from this pay)

Cell phone: $100 (50 for last pay and 50 from this pay)

Car Fund: $100.00

Spending money: $75

Bills paid to date for this month:

TD Line of credit: $700

OSAP: $300

Visa Card: $25.00

Cell phone: $155.83

weekly Spending Recap March 7-March 13, 2011

Yesterday was a busy day for me and as you can tell I am still up. I renewed my licence which cost me $75, I had budgeted for $100, so I have 25 left. I was going to snowflake it into my car fund but something has come up. I was at the accountant today and I should be getting back about $1800, hopefully more. Trust me hopefully more. My phone bill came in today, for $189. I argued this charge down because Rogers has messed up I bought a travelling  package that wasn't added on until March 1, long after I got back and as a result I paid premium. My bill is not down to $155 and this is where my extra $25 will now go... sigh.

March 7 (Monday)
$16.16 Whistle Stop restaurant

March 8 (Tuesday)
No Spend day

March 9 (Wednesday)
No Spend Day


March 10 (Thursday)
No Spend Day

March 11 (Friday)
No Spend Day

March 12 (Saturday)
$24.00 bus tickets

March 13 (Sunday)
$3.38 Shoppers Drug Mart

OSAP

You will notice on the right had side I have moved my counter up 3,000 for OSAP pay back. The reason that I did this was that when I got the letter in the mail It gave me an up to date figure of what I still owed. Instead of just added to the counter I ended up putting the new figure in as the original OSAP amount. At first I thought well its no big deal and left it the way it was. But then I thought wait a minute I was diligent enough to make sure I didn't blow my summer OSAP money and send it back to them instead. I think I deserve the satisfaction of knowing its  at least 3,000 less than it originally was.  So there you have it the reason I have moved the counter up 3,000.

I am still not sure about the Rogers bill, any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Ally, Rogers bill, 2011 Goals

Today I called Ally again to make sure that my account has been officially cancelled. As it stands I'm done with them. It has been cancelled for good, good bye!!!!!!

One of my 2011 Goals was to get cut my phone bill in 1/2 preferably by January. Now my monthly bill with taxes in and no long distance charge is $93.85,  that means that my bill has to be dropped to $46.93 a month.  Today I called Rogers and the 'best' package that they could give me was the Student 40+  this is what it includes:

                   ~200 weekday minutes
                   ~100 MB
                   ~My 10  Canada wide
                   TOTAL: $47.94  taxes and fees included

Now this does not include unlimited incoming minutes which is an extra $10.00 a month. If I added this feature my TOTAL would become: $ 59.24 taxes and fees included

However if I did this I would not be under $46.93. The other MAJOR down side is that they want me to resign a 3 year contract. This makes me feel completely uncomfortable. My current contract ends at the latest October 2011 and  I contract free, this is something that I would ideally like. The reality is that I want to be able to look at other options and if I lock myself in for another 3 years as of Jan 2011 I will be stuck until Jan 2014 with Rogers. The other down side is that I want to go away to Japan in a few years for a year or more beings unable to get out of a contract would be very problematic.

If I don't change my plan though I will be pay assuming no long distance charges until October 2011 my overall phone cost will be $938.50 ($93.85 x 10 months).

The other option is to buy myself out of my contract at $20.00 x the number of months left in my contract which would be 10, thus $200. I can't afford to do this until March because I don't have the spare cash. So at that point it would be $160 + (93.85 x 2)=  $347.70.

I just don't know what to pick or what to do. This is why I am posting, I need your help, I need your advice. Any suggestions???? Please....