Brian's Money

CAA Resolution

brian@briansmoney.com — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 03:37:00 +0000

After weeks of chasing around with J.A. Towing, I finally got back in touch with CAA. In speaking to the rep I learned that the tow truck driver had quit one week after damaging my van. Huhhh...

So all the time J.A. Towing was telling me that they had to speak to the driver, they already knew that the driver had quit. Colour me less than impressed.

The CAA rep asked what I was looking for. I wasn't interested in repairing the body damage, Wayne, my mechanic, has said that the van won't last out the year, and I see no reason to repair the body work if the van will be junked within the year.

I asked for tangible proof that CAA accepted responsibility for the damage that their agent had caused. When pressed for a hard figure I asked for my mimbership account to be credited for $250. I probably could of fought for more, but I didn't think it would be worth my time and effort. As it is, the credit pays for my and my wifes membership for the next two years at a time when I was very displeased with the company and thinking of dropping my membership.

The cost to CAA is minimal. The rep admitted that $250 was the amount she was allowed for an out of hand settlement and giving that as a credit means it would cost the company even less.

However, it was worth it to me for the peace of mind and being able to move forward and lead this incident behind me.

Does anyone have any recommendations about Mazda 6 station wagons? I'm shopping for a new car...

Where have I been?

brian@briansmoney.com — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 03:07:00 +0000

At my father's Father's Day party on Sunday, my brother-in-law asked if I was still keeping this blog going and I said yes. The lack of posts where due to a strange combination of frustration over the CAA thing and not feeling that I was making as real progress as some of the other PF bloggers.

I'm going to talk about the CAA resolution in another post, but I wanted to talk a bit about my feeling that my progress wasn't as "good" as other peoples. I know that we are progressing, I can see in on my No Credit Needed Network badge. Currently, we have paid off 18.89 % of our debt. We are closing in on having paid off a quarter of our debt. We have over $8,000.00 in cash. $5,000 in Emergancy and Operational Savings Funds and $3000 in our growing Car Purchase Fund.

I think that the problem is that once I got the biweekly budget figured out, everything is so automatic that it almost doesn't feel real. Other blogger post on how they keep pushing themselves to save more and snowball more, but I don't really want to keep pushing and cutting the budget tighter and tighter. Oh, I work all the extra OT I can at work to make my snowballs as big as I can get them, but I haven't gotten going on any other income streams. I still haven't put my first item up on Ebay.

Part of it, I think, is that I don't want to push my wife too far. Part of it is that I'm mostly a lazy, procrastinating bastard, and I'm pretty comfortable how things are going. This all leads to me feeling like I'm not as "serious" or "dedicated" as others, and that leads me to not posting.

Now I know that our path to getting out of debt is not like anyone else's and I need to stop comparing our progress to anyone else.

So, that's my whine. It's done and over. Next post.

CAA and J.A. Towing Continue to Fail

brian@briansmoney.com — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 00:08:00 +0000

Well, CAA is ducking responsibility for the damage that their agents J.A. Towing have done to my van. They are saying that J.A. Towing will be the ones to deal with me. CAA passed along my complaints to their agents, J.A. Towing and told me that J.A. Towing would be contacting me soon.

Yesterday, (the damage was done on April 13), J.A. Towing contacted me. Jorge arranged to come out tonight at 7 to look at the damage to the car.

By 8, I had heard nothing. I called J.A. Towing. Jorge was not available, but they would pass on a message. At 8:15, Mindy from the office called. Jorge is on a tow out of town and would call me when he got back into town.

It's now after 10:00 and I've turned my phone off and will be going off to bed soon.

CAA seems to keep failing to meet their responsibilities. I emailed them a short while ago and told them that I can't keep waiting to get the wiring that was damaged fixed. I will call my mechanic tomorrow and arrange a time for them to fix the wiring next week. I expect CAA to pay for the repair and the rental car while the van is in the shop.

I would like compensation for cleaning the car of the grease prints the tow truck driver left all over the quarter panel, for the damage to the rocker panel and for the frustration and aggravation that this whole experience has caused.

Unless, a resolution that meets my requirements is met, I will be filing a complaint with the BBB and I also will not be renewing my membership of 12 years with the CAA.

I'm Not Too Happy With CAA

brian@briansmoney.com — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 02:55:00 +0000

Back two Sundays ago when the van broke down while I was shopping, I called CAA to have it towed up to my mechanic. For you folks not in Canada, CAA is the Canadian Automotive Association. It's the Canadian affiliate of AAA. CAA actually operates some tow trucks of their own, but most of the time the truck that shows up is a CAA affiliate. An independent contractor who is able to brand his truck with the CAA logo and is paid by CAA for the towing that he does for them.

This time the truck was operated by J.A. Towing. The driver seemed to know what he was doing and quickly had me hooked up and off to the other end of town to my mechanics' shop.

Once we got to the shop, the mechanic (who was working on a Sunday!) told the tow truck driver where to drop my van. I started talking to Micheal about what had happened and after 5 minutes or so, he asked "What is he doing?"

Looking out into the parking lot, we could see that the driver had set the van down in the middle of the parking lot and was attempting to hook up to it again. Micheal pointed out that the driver had crushed the rocker panel under the passenger side door of the van. !!! Not sure how the hell he did that! A modern tow truck uses a wheel lift system. A hydraulic t-lift extends from the back of the tow truck. Locking bars are clamped to the front wheels and the vehicle to be towed is lifted up into towing position.

Somehow the driver had gotten the t-lift behind the front wheels of the van and had tried lifting the van with the t-lift under the floorboards of the van!

After a lot of futzing around the tow truck driver got the t-lift out and in front of the tires again, locked on to the wheels and got the van parked where the mechanic had originally asked. He said to call CAA and report the damage and they would take care of everything. He also diminished the severity of the damage done by commenting on the rusted condition of the van.

While there was certainly under body rust, the rocker panels on the passenger side were still intact, even if there was rust underneath. (Our old parking spot in the parking garage always seemed to have a puddle of water under the driver's side of the van and the driver side rocker panels are in worse shape).

He also covered most of the front quarter panel with heavy greasy hand prints. Unlike, every other CAA tow I've gotten, he did not required me to show my CAA card or sign any paperwork, just jumped in the truck and took off. Another CAA tow truck driver at the mechanics (who drove for a different company) confirmed that CAA would take care of the damage. He did recommend that I contact CAA as soon as I got home.

I took his advice and call CAA within an hour of getting home and reported what had happened. The operator told me that a supervisor would contact me within 48 hours with the results of their investigation.

It's not 8 days later. I've called a number of times and have not heard anything from J.K., supervisor assigned to my case. Each time I speak to an operator, I'm told that this should of been resolved withing th 48 hours. It might be a good thing that it wasn't resolved right away because I've had a couple of problems surface.

I've discovered that the automatic lock for the back door of the van no longer works. As well, the door ajar light is on constantly now. It would certainly seem that the tow truck driver did more damage than was originally obvious. It seems that he severed wiring that runs along the body of the passenger side of the van to the rear.

I've been a happy member of CAA since 1996. Twelve years. I have never had this kind of poor service with a tow or with the management. I keep looking at the membership renewal in front of me and wondering if I am going to renew for another year.

Good News About the Van and Some Bad News

brian@briansmoney.com — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 04:58:00 +0000

I got the call shortly before the end of the work day. Wayne, my mechanic called to say that the van had been fixed. It turns out that it was the front axle. I park in an underground parking garage and apparently this is quite bad for cars due to the dampness accelerating rusting. Advice for people parking in underground garages from my mechanic. Oil coat the underside of the car and wash weekly during the winter. The dampness, salt and above freezing temperatures means that the salt is actively rusting the car when it is parked. Someone who parks outside or in an unheated garage won't have the same problem because it does not get warm enough for the salt to actively rust the car. At least that is my understanding.

What happened is that the axle had rusted so badly that it broke under the stress. Fortunately, the repair came to just under $300. Micheal, the mechanic who worked on the car say that the underside of the van is badly rusted and I might only get a year out of the body of the van.

This is good, because we can make a plan to be in a good position in a year to replace the van. Most of the tax returns are going into the savings account under the car replacement heading. The $257 extra in our biweekly pays that was going towards extra debt payments will also be going in to the car replacement fund. This should mean that we will have $7,000 to $9,000 saved up in a year to replace the van. Even if it does die earlier we will have a very good down payment if necessary.

We will take a little longer to get out of debt, but we'll be able to afford to replace the car!

I hate to think what would of happened six months ago!

Taxes and Cars

brian@briansmoney.com — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 04:12:00 +0000

Well we filed our taxes about two weeks ago. I had been planning to use Studio Tax, a free tax program to do our taxes, but a friend offered to do them and efile them for us. We took him up on his generous offer and today we got our cheques in the mail. Two nice fat, refund cheques.

Good thing too. Yesterday, Sunday while out grocery shopping, something in the drive train of the Chevy Venture failed. Big time. In the grocery parking lot, it failed with a horrible snap and grinding noise. While in gear the van would no longer move and while in park it would still move.

CAA towed it up to my mechanic who was open and working on a Sunday. Actually, it's a father and son operation and the father is in Florida. Since there's only one guy in the shop, of course it has got completely crazy busy. He hasn't had a chance to look at it but did say that if it was the transmission, a used replacement would be $2,200 to $2,800. I'm not willing to put that kind of money into a 1997 vehicle. If the repairs are going to be $1,000, we'll get it fixed, otherwise we will have to find a new vehicle. Well, a used vehicle. Maybe an older, used vehicle.

This would of been easier in a year or two, but we're in a way better spot than we would of been six months ago.

A number of friends of ours have Ford Focus Wagons and they all seem pretty happy with them. My quick check online tonight seems to indicate that 3 -4 year old models run $10,000 to $14,000. More than we can afford right now. We still have $23,000 in debt and I don't want to put that up more.

Up here in Canada, car prices seem higher than in the states for cars. The $3,000 - $4,000 that we can put towards the car will not buy too much. I'll be putting feelers out to all the people I know to see if anyone has a decent cheap car for sale.

Ah well. Time to sleep on this. Good night.

Exercising Willpower Strengthens It

brian@briansmoney.com — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 03:49:00 +0000

Wow. Apparently you can exercise your willpower, just like a muscle, and strengthen it over time. The New York Times has an article on willpower that says two interesting things.

The article is called Tighten Your Belt, Strengthen Your Wallet. The authors are Sandra Aamodt, the editor in chief of Nature Neuroscience, and Sam Wang, an associate professor of molecular biology and neuroscience at Princeton. Together they have also written a book called “Welcome to Your Brain: Why You Lose Your Car Keys but Never Forget How to Drive and Other Puzzles of Everyday Life.”

The first point they make is that apparently you use up blood sugar when you use willpower. By choosing not to eat that donut, you actually use up some of your blood sugar. Their experiment showed that exerting willpower repeatedly became harder over a short period of time. Your body begins to deplete the available blood sugar and it becomes harder to maintain your willpower.

The second point is that your brain appears to become more efficient at using blood sugar while exercising willpower. While in the short term, willpower gets harder, over extended periods of time using willpower you are more able to continue exerting willpower. Practicing exerting willpower makes it easier to exert willpower. Just like exercising a muscle.

The article suggests that this is why it is initially hard to diet and save money at the same time. Experiments indicate that refreshing the bodies blood sugar between bouts of exerting willpower makes it more likely that you will be successful with the subsequent tests of your willpower. After your diet salad for lunch if you drink some lemonade, you will be less likely to overspend when clothes shopping.

Also, continuing your frugal spending habits will make it easier to push away from the dinner table without having that second helping because you will have trained your willpower.

Interesting article, check it out.

I wonder how much of a bonus on my willpower check I get for eating a Snickers bar?

News From Work

brian@briansmoney.com — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 03:46:00 +0000

A couple of months ago, the company I work for was looking for internal applicants to be trained as computer modelers. I applied, but someone else was chosen. About a week ago I was told that they were filling two positions and I was going to be the second one.

It should be an interesting challenge. My current position has it's perks but it has not been intellectually stimulating. This new position will demand a lot of learning and attention. It should also mean a little more money. About 7% if I am correct. The position also offers me a lot more opportunity. My current department does not have much in the way of advancement opportunities. Looking down the road, the new position will be much better for me.

Today, I had my first training session in the new department. I'll be over there for two hours each day for this week. That time will go up each week until I'm in the new job full time.

March Networth

brian@briansmoney.com — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 03:01:00 +0000

Well, we are making progress. Fortunately, we don't really have much in investments so the market crunch isn't hurting too much. My Rogers stocks are down about a hundred bucks this month over last month, but I did get the quarterly dividend cheque. My RRSP holdings are up but only because of my contributions and my works matching. Even there, the actual increase is about half of the amount deducted off of my paycheque this month.

On the good side, we kicked it good on the debt reduction side this month. We paid off about $1,500 of debt this month.

At this rate we will have a positive net worth within a year!

TD Infinity Account

brian@briansmoney.com — Sun, 09 Mar 2008 00:35:00 +0000

It's gone. Dead. Killed off. I drove a stake through it's heart.

Both of the automatic withdrawals for our life insurance policies have been switched over to the President's Choice account. So it was time to go in and close the TD Infinity account. I learned this month that the Over Draft Protection fee had become a regular charge. When we set up the account, I remember the fee was only charged if you used the ODP plus the interest charge. In the last month the account was always positive and we were still charged the $2 OD fee. That means the monthly account fee was in reality $14.95 a month. Way too much, especially because we have free accounts with free cheques at President's Choice.

So on Friday when I stopped by to make a payment on the Line of Credit, I closed the account. The teller asked why and made a feeble attempt to save my business by offering me a minimal account for $3.95 month. She did not seem surprised or upset at me canceling the account. How often do they see people canceling accounts?

Is President's Choice more limited than a real bank account? Certainly. Do they offer fewer services? Definitely! Am I willing to pay $14.95 a month for that service? No! I've got a better use for that $179.40 each year.

Do you?

Where is the Money Coming From?

brian@briansmoney.com — Sat, 08 Mar 2008 21:28:00 +0000

Over the last two pay periods, we have been able to make two big payments towards our Line of Credit totaling $1,345.30 out of a net income of $4081.11. That's 33 % of our income for the last two pays. Part of the reason we've been able to do this is because we are controlling our spending. The other part (I think) is the way I have our budgeting spreadsheet set up. I enter the net value of each of our paycheques and the spreadsheet automatically determines what is left after our regular expense deductions (including our minimum debt payments). It then populates a line marked Snowball with the amount of income over any budgeted amounts. All that extra money now has a name and is committed to a purpose.

I then deposit that money to the Line of Credit as some as possible after getting paid. That way it's gone and can't be used for anything else.

If I'm able to keep up the OT at work, we should have the Line of Credit paid off by Canada Day! So that is my Number 1 goal now. Pay off the Line of Credit by Canada Day!

February Update

brian@briansmoney.com — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 01:25:00 +0000

So how did my debt reduction go in February?

There was nothing dramatic. It was the continuation of the small steps we take with every paycheque.

I ended up with $52 less this month in cash and savings accounts, but my Rogers stocks ended up being worth $52 more.

My RRSP contributions and company match added $283 to my totals this month.

We paid down $1,082 of our debt this month, most of it on our Line of Credit, with just the minimum on the consolidation loan. If we can keep that rate up on paying off the Line of Credit we should have it paid off by the end of the summer. Anyhow, this month we reduced our debt by 4.14%.

This all brings our networth to ($13,732). It's been great seeing our chart slowly climbing up towards 0. We will see our networth in the positive numbers.

Here's my NewworthIQ badge.

Making the Most of My Raise

brian@briansmoney.com — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 04:23:00 +0000

This last pay period both Mrs. B. and I got raises from our employers and I want to make the most of the extra money it brings us. Mrs. B. got a 6.4% raise and mine was 3.5%. In the past, before we started budgeting raises just disappeared into our spending. The paycheque after a raise it would be as if there had never been a raise.

My understanding is that 3% is a fairly average annual raise in North America, so my 3.5% is a little better. Mrs. B. is a unionized Regional employee and does better than me. My problem was how to make sure that this new income was used and not wasted. Well, the big help here is our budget. Now that we are on a budget each biweekly pay it is impossible for that money to disappear without being accounted for. First we have to give the new money a purpose. Since our expenses are already being met, we are assigning the new money to the Debt Snowball.

Now with the addition of the money from our raises, our Debt Snowball will pack more punch and we will see the day we get out of debt much sooner.

Not Much Happening; Or Is It?

brian@briansmoney.com — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 06:01:00 +0000

I've been thinking for the last couple of days about a topic to post on. Life has been busy, (isn't it always?), but there hadn't been anything that seemed really solid to post about. My wife's movie project moved ahead this weekend with active filming on Saturday and Sunday. Saturday only got cold really when we hit the 4 hour mark. Temperatures were much colder today, but there were only two of us actors to freeze today.

So it seemed that nothing really had happened with Brian's Money to tell everyone about. The transition to the biweekly budgeting had gone forward smoothly. I didn't have any debt repayment to record or update at No Credit Needed Network. I'll be depositing the cheque with the line of credit payment to the TD account tomorrow (well, later today), and the first Consolidation Loan payment doesn't come out until the 16th. So what was I going to talk about?

Then I started to think of some of the "minor" expenses that had shown up in the last few days. Last week, the sticker on the car window indicated that it was time to get an oil change done again. Mrs. B works in the same plaza as a Canadian Tire, so she took the car in to get the oil change done. It came to $42 and she debited it from the new President's Choice Financial chequing account. That night, I transfered the money from the Operational Savings account to cover the expenditure.

The Operational Savings account is my version of Mary Hunt's Freedom Account. If you are not familiar with the concept, there is a description here, at It's Your Money. I couldn't find a description at Mrs. Hunt's website, apparently you have to subscribe for most content there.

Basically, if you plan on spending a $1,000 on your vacation you put $1,000 divided by 12 months = $83.33 in your savings account each month. It is a way to save for large or unexpected expenses.

On Friday, Mrs. B. needed to get a second battery for her video camera. We were going to be filming outdoors in the winter and the cold reportedly wipes out batteries. She needed one to keep in a warm pocket, ready to swap out for a cold battery. We stopped by the Sony Store and picked one up. It was $90. Once we got home, I transferred the money from the Operation Savings, where we have been budgeting for the Movie Project, and replaced the money we had debited out of the chequing account.

On Sunday on the way out of town for the location shoot up at the Elora Gorge, we heard a scraping noise under the car. I pulled over at a near by gas station and got out to check under the car. The sheet metal around the muffler has come loose and is unwinding off of the muffler. The guy at Canadian Tire doing the oil change had recommended getting the muffler checked, but he hadn't said that it was that bad! Well we'll take it in on Monday and get the muffler fixed. The money to cover the expense is in the Operations Savings, or at least to cover the majority of the cost. Anything over what is in the Operations Savings for car repairs can be covered by the $1,000 cushion in the chequing account. If things go horribly wrong there is $1,026 in the Emergency Fund. If it is truly disastrous, there is another $596 in the Operational Savings account.

It really hit me. Things are different now. In the past, a series of small, unexpected or unplanned expenses would have put us into the position of being forced to scramble to come up with money. Turn to the credit card or the line of credit. Postpone the repair until the next paycheque and put the rent off until the paycheque after that. Go hat in hand and ask my dad for a loan. These expenses aren't major, it's not like I have to fix a hole in my roof, but in the past they would of eaten into the current paycheque and would of seriously cramped any regular spending for the pay period. This week, these three expenses won't even touch our paycheques.

We are no longer living paycheque to paycheque and it feels really good! Our Operation Savings has enabled us to plan for unplanned expenses. The cushion in the chequing account and the Emergency Fund build in resilience to Murphy, which gives an amazing piece of mind. I really recommend that people set up their Emergency Fund and a Freedom Account, it will make a world of difference to your mental health!

State of the Resolutions: 2008

brian@briansmoney.com — Sat, 02 Feb 2008 05:13:00 +0000

Over at the MoneyBlogNetwork, they are doing a group writing project called How Are Those 2008 Goals Coming? Since I set some goals for 2008, I thought that it was a really good idea and decided to steal it. So without further ado, ;

THE STATE OF THE RESOLUTIONS: February 2008

Step 1: Stopping buying things, I want as opposed to things I need.

YES! This has been successful so far. I have pretty much cut most of my impulse buying. Mrs. B is working on her movie project so she's got expenses for that, but they are within the budget allowances.

Step 2: Analyze my income versus my expenses. Create a budget. After minimum payments on credit debt and living expenses I have $270 to use to pay down debt.

YES! I set up the budget and we have been good about sticking to it. The new biweekly budget will result in an extra $946 being paid towards debt before any addition income or snowflaking.

Step 3: Pay off the Wells Fargo debt. This will take two payments and will be retired by the end of January.

Yes! The last of the Wells Fargo debt was retired in December with my Christmas bonus money.

Step 4: Apply that $270 to my over draft until I have built up the chequing account to a positive balance of $1000.00 to act as my emergency fund. That should be in August of 2008.

KIND OF: With the refinancing of the consolidation loan, I put $1,000 into the savings account and $1,000 as a cushion in the chequing account. I didn't save up the money for them, but they are fully funded.

Step 5: Sell the shares I bought as part of an employee purchase plan and put the money towards our emergency fund. This should put $800 -$900 towards the emergency fund.

NO. I got the share certificates back and the shares are worth more than I thought. $1,637. I find that emotionally I don't want to sell them.

Step 6: Work all the overtime I can get at work and put everything over the regular pay towards the emergency fund. Due to OT availability this might be $100 - $300 dollars extra a month. Assume $150. Steps 5 and 6 should mean that the emergency fund will be fully funded by the end of March.

KIND OF: After Christmas, work hasn't been as busy. Things will be busier towards April though.

Step 7: Get down to ebaying that stuff sitting in the closet.

NO. In fact this has been a big fail. Just have not got moving with this.

Step 8: When the emergency fund is fully funded, close the chequing account and move the money to the no fee President’s Choice bank account that I have set up.

MOSTLY: We are using the PCF accounts as our main accounts now. I closed out the TD savings account and will close the chequing account as soon as the Line of Credit is paid off. (I guess I really should sell the Rogers stocks).

Step 9: Apply the $270 plus all OT moneys towards the credit card debt. Hopefully the cc’s will be paid off by September or October.

YES! Refinancing allowed us to pay off both high interest credit cards. I canceled the Amex, but we are going to keep the Visa.

Step 10: Start applying the $270 plus the OT $ plus the $110 minimum cc payments towards the Line of Credit. This should put me close to having the Line of Credit half paid off at the end of 2008.

ONGOING: The Line of Credit is the current snowball target. It might be a stretch, but I think we can pay it all off by the end of the year.

_____________________________

Overall, it looks really good. I have 4 strong positives, 4 in progress and only 2 fails at the end of January. I'm very pleased with our progress, but I really do need to sell the Rogers shares and start ebaying!

Hey! I won a book!

brian@briansmoney.com — Sat, 02 Feb 2008 04:30:00 +0000

So Tim, over at Canadian Dream: Free At 45 was reviewing the book RRSP's written by Preet Banerjee, who also blogs at wheredoesallmymoneygo.com. Preet is an investment professional, who has written a book on RRSP's because he was unable to find anything written recently (the last two years) on the effect of changes on RRSP's.

Tim's review is quite favourable and as a perk of reviewing the book Tim was able to give the book away as a prize to a lucky commenter.

As the title might of given away, I was the lucky commenter. I've emailed my contact info off to Tim and will be eagerly waiting to get the book in the mail so I can read it.

January's Money Update

brian@briansmoney.com — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 05:08:00 +0000

Let's look at a couple of snap shots of how my money is doing here at the end of January. If you look down on the left hand side, you will see the badges for the No Credit Needed Network and for Networth IQ.

These are both interesting this month. My debt pay down chart is showing that I have gone backwards! My last chart on Jan. 1, 2008 showed that I had paid off 11.29 % of $26,915. Today it shows that I have paid off 2.86 % of that $26,915! What happened?

If you've been reading along, you know that I was able to get a new consolidation loan at 4% less than I was paying. Using this money I paid off our Visa card and our Costco American Express card.

We aren't big Costco shoppers (we find that we spend too much when we shop there and other stores are much more convenient to us), so we decided to cancel our membership. Both my wife and I agreed that the folks at Costco where very good. We spoke to 3 people about our desire to cancel our membership, each one made a soft retention bid. As soon as we made it clear we were firm in our desire, they were very pleasant and agreeable to cancelling our membership. The only reason we talked to 3 people was because we had to go to a cashier to cash our rebate cheque and when we got back to membership services we ended up speaking to a different person. They even rebated our membership fee that was charged in October. If things change we will be quite happy to go back to Costco and would recommend them.

Canceling the Costco membership automatically canceled the Costco Amex card, but that was a plus because that means we can't run up any debt on it now. We are hanging onto the Visa for travel, travel emergencies and online purchases, and it had the lower credit limit.

Of course we also paid off the old TD Consolidation Loan.

Now for the funny stuff. I think that this might be somewhat heretical to the personal finance community, but I used some of the loan money to set up my $1,000 mini emergency fund and set up a cushion on the chequing account. I just feel more comfortable with the EF set up and ready to go. From here we will just apply ourselves to the debt repayment without the worry about something happening before we got the EF set up.

This of course means that we ended up back tracking on a lot of the last three and a half months of debt payment. We are NOT further in debt than we started though. We owed $26,915 when we started tracking this and we owe $26,144 now.

On the other hand, our networth is looking really good. We ended November 2008 at $19,187. December ended at $18,018. January number is $15,057! That means that we improved our net worth by $ 1,169 in December, and the kicked the crap out of that by improving our net worth by $ 2961 in January!!!

I'm not completely sure how this happened. My RRSP mutual fund lost some but my regular contributions and match from work actually put me up by approximately $150. My Rogers stocks ended up being worth $600 more than I though. Oh, and I found $100 American left over from last summers vacation. This still means we saved $ 2100 in January...well, after the rent cheque today that will be $1,300, but I am very happy with the situation.

I had been thinking about getting a part time job to speed up paying things off, but that is going to be put off for 6 -7 months. My wife is making an amateur movie and it seems that I'm moving from behind the camera gofer to actor, so I won't be able to commit the time to an extra job. Instead I will be trying to make extra money with overtime at work and Ebaying. I really have to get moving on selling stuff on ebay.

Thanks to everyone for following along with my money story. If you like what you read, please list me in you blogroll. Thanks to JW who listed me on his blogroll at NeedToBeDebtFree!

I've been busy tweaking the budget.

brian@briansmoney.com — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 05:01:00 +0000

It's been a few (6) days since I last posted. Thats been a combination of being busy, but mostly it has been a lack of focus. Instead of focusing on this blog, I have been concentrating on redoing my budget spreadsheet for a biweekly schedule instead of a monthly schedule. I ended up going back and transferring all of the 2008 transactions into the new, biweekly form and that entailed lots of fiddly squinting and typing.

It also meant a bit of staring at the old spreadsheet and trying to figure out how I wanted things to work. On the old spreadsheet that I found at FinanceandFat, it had a column for your planned budget, 5 weekly columns for actual expenditures over the month, a total expenditure column and a final column to show the difference between the planned and the actual. It's a very nice monthly budget spreadsheet and I recommend it to those of you using a monthly sheet.

The problem was I just hated the fiddly part weeks. Two weeks a month I was sticking extra days into the week which usually meant going over that weeks budgeted amount for things like food and gas. With a biweekly budget I would be spreading those two extra monthly pay cheques over the whole year effectively. I think that will let me put some of that money biweekly towards operational savings and debt repayment. Instead of two lump payments, I will be having interest work for me more effectively by paying biweekly.

For the biweekly budget, I wasn't really sure how to set it up. I didn't want to just have 26 columns for the 26 pay periods in the year. With a biweekly budget, I would be saving smaller sums to build up to the monthly bills, so I would have to show savings amounts as well as payment out. I didn't want to be moving money in and out of the savings account all the time either. Currently, I'm trying a spreadsheet that has a planned, credit, debit and balance column for each pay period. It means that it's quite wide, but because I can fit three pay periods on the screen at a time, I don't actually have to scroll left and right during a session of date entry.

So I be evaluating my design for the next while and probably tweaking it some more. I'm always interested in better ways of doing things though, so if anyone has a recommendation for handling a biweekly budget, please let me know!

And really, my Christmas excess, soon now!

We Paid Off the TD Loan

brian@briansmoney.com — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 23:49:00 +0000

This morning before going to work I checked the bank accounts and the cheque from the PCF loan, that I've talked about before, had finally cleared in the TD chequing account. So after work we dropped dropped by the TD Bank and paid the remaining balance of the consolidation loan off. I'm not getting too wildly excited about this because we've just exchanged a debt at one bank with a debt at another. However, the new loan is at 7.5%, 3.5% less than the old loan. This means that every payment will be paying off more principle. And that's a good thing. Hmm...well it's actually worth about $1.72 per day difference in the interest on $20,000.00.

I been working out the details on changing from monthly budgeting to biweekly budgeting. For us it's just going to make everything easier. The budget will be the same for each two week period. To me the fiddly part weeks in a month alway seemed to make budgeting more difficult, did you budget extra for them or did you just try to stretch last weeks money to cover an extra four days?

Tomorrow my pay should be direct deposited into the PCF chequing account. Mrs. B's was deposited today. We both are paid biweekly, her on Thursdays and I on Fridays. So the first biweekly budget period will start tomorrow. The biggest single item is rent at 21.5%. The biggest aggregate is debt repayment with 3 items at 13.2%, 11.8% and 6.5% totaling 31.6%.

The biweekly budget lets me slip in a little extra because the two extra monthly pays are divvied up amongst biweekly items. This means that two biweekly periods are about 8% less that a monthly period. This works as long as there is enough float in the account so you don't go into the hole. I'm keeping a $1,000 cushion in the chequing account so I think that I'll be ok. This 8% is allowing me to budget for a couple of things like replacement glasses and vacation. My current glasses (invisible bifocals) were $500 and my employer only has $200 coverage for optical. Maybe if I don't need to replace them I'll be able to save up for laser eye surgery.

The other day, over at Loonies and Sense, the author posted about chequing account cushions as well.

Tune in tomorrow for my story about my Christmas excesses!

New Rogers Share Certificates Arrive

brian@briansmoney.com — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 06:23:00 +0000

Yep, they finally showed up. I had sent the share certificate for my 12 shares of Rogers Wireless Communication; Class B shares in a while back to get them exchanged for the RCI:b shares that they were swapped for.

When I opened up the envelope, I beheld two share certificates for 21 shares each. That means that the 2006 stock split doubled my holdings. Along with the certificates, the envelope also included a $23.32 cheque for past dividends and interest. Now if I can just figure out if Computershare will let me do a DRIP. At the quarterly dividends of $10.50 I'll get a whole new share each year. OOOoooohhhhhh. What the hell. It's going to be a couple of years before we get all the unsecured debt paid off and save for the downpayment.

I certainly like what I read in Derek Fosters book "The Lazy Investor". I'm thinking that while we are paying off the debt I can pick up individual shares in the companies I want to hold long term, set up the dividend reinvestment and stock purchase plans. Then in a few years I can begin to sock money into the skeleton I've prepared.

Well, lots more to learn! Good night.

My Very Best Saving Tip

brian@briansmoney.com — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 04:21:00 +0000

NCN who posts at No Credit Needed is rerunning a page where he is asking personal finance bloggers to share their very best money saving tip. Click here to read what people have contributed.

My very best money saving tip is "Start Now". Stop planning to sell some stuff on Ebay soon. Spend half and hour and put your first item up today. Don't have a budget? Pull out your bank statements and start seeing how you spent your money in the last 4 months.

This is my biggest challenge. Action. For years, money and retirement where something that I would worry about later. Years passed and I am just now starting to clear away debt so I can save for the future. My wife and I have been married for 13 years and one of the most important things that she wants is her own home. We are no closer now than we were when we got married. Sure, I have all kinds of excuses, but when it comes down to it, only actions count.

Waiting for a solution to appear magically, is living in a fairy tale.

It won't happen.

Taking your first step to take responsibility and take action to solve your problems is the solution. Then take another step, and then another. They don't necessarily get easier, but the first one is the hardest. If you fall down, you get up and take that step again. Wash, rinse, repeat.

Good luck!

Personal Finance and Emotions

brian@briansmoney.com — Sat, 19 Jan 2008 08:11:00 +0000

I just read an interesting post by Tim over at Canadian Dream. It rang very true to me, because I had recently posted about the disconnect between what I felt and what I thought I should be feeling. He makes the point that we make financial decisions based on emotion and justify them to ourselves afterwards. I recommend reading the post. When you're making money decisions, it's important to understand what is influencing those decisions. It's not an incredibly deep thought, but I thought that I would share it.

Dow Jones Has Lost 9.2% Since Jan. 1

brian@briansmoney.com — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 23:01:00 +0000

I read this article from the New York Times today that stated that the Dow Jones had lost 9.2% of it's value since the first of January. That's quite a hit and I'm sure that a lot of investors are screaming. On the other hand I'm just wishing that my debts were paid off so I could be buying stocks at these prices. I've just started learning about the market, but this seems to really be the time to scoop up some bargains.

So are any of you taking advantage of this down turn? If not, can you tell me why?

Visitors!

brian@briansmoney.com — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 04:42:00 +0000

I'd like to thank everyone who is coming over to the site from NCN's www.ncnnetwork.com site. I'm glad to see you folks being interested in my efforts to pay off my debts. Any comments or suggestions are appreciated, and good luck in your own efforts to get out of debt!

Personal Thoughts

brian@briansmoney.com — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 04:07:00 +0000

Today was a weird day. Yesterday was a major step in our goals of getting out of debt, but today I just wasn't feeling as up as I thought I would be. Maybe it was work, or maybe I've got a bug.

Huh.

Regardless. Debt repayment will continue. Next Friday is payday and we will pay off a little more of our debt. Only two outstanding debts now, the remainder of the TD line of credit and the PCF loan. We will be doing the minimum on the PCF loan until we hammer the TD LOC out of existence

We can do this!.