Debt Free or Bust

Where are my RRSP receipts?

noreply@blogger.com (Debt Free or Bust) — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 17:58:00 +0000

I’m still waiting for my 2008, 60-day RRSP receipts from my investment co. The last day to contribute was Februrary 29th so I should have them by now. I called the company on Thursday and spoke to someone who said they were produced on March 4th. Shouldn’t they be here by now? My husband and I want to get our taxes done ASAP. I’ll be getting a very large return due to my severance payout. It’s driving me crazy that I can’t get that $$ in my grubby little hands. I’ll be using it to buy a few furniture items and then saving the rest for next year. But still, I want that money – now! Come on Canada Post… speed up your mail.

Phil Town

noreply@blogger.com (Debt Free or Bust) — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 19:29:00 +0000

Last week I went to an Anthony Robbins seminar (my company paid for the ticket). It was a one day seminar featuring Anthony but it featured other speakers as well. One of these speakers was Phil Town. I had never heard of him before. He’s basic story is that he served in Vietnam for 2 years, came back to the US, struggled, turned in to a long-haired, leather wearing, biker (his own words) and became a river guide on Grand Canyon’s Colorado River. On one of his tours, he took a group of Outward Bound trustees and ran into some trouble. He got them out of trouble fine and so one of the trustees offered to teach Phil everything he knew about investing. Phil is now a multi-millionaire.

During the session, Phil showed a way to invest and gain 25+% returns versus 8-10% you typically get on standard investments. He made it all seem very easy. He had everyone riled up about this knowledge. Then he hits us with what seemed like an infomercial. He told everyone that in order to be able to do what he does using the tools he showed in his presentation; you need to take a two day course (being offered in the upcoming weekend and the following week). The course, normally priced at around $6,400 was available to us, today, for one low price of only $995. And you had to sign up in the next 15 minutes. You should have seen the people run up the stairs to sign up. I even considered it myself – if I didn’t have a toddler – hmmmmm.

Anyway, the colleagues I was with all looked at each other and asked “Are you going to do it? Are you?”. None of us did but one guy said he’d look to see if there was another product that would provide us with the same tools but for free (or very cheap). I’ve yet to receive any info from him although I’ve looked around a bit myself. I’ll continue to research and post what info I can. I did a search on Phil to see if there were any negative postings, etc. there on him that would lead me to believe he’s not being straight but I haven’t found anything yet of note.

In the meantime, I’m keen to see if there’s any way for me to move to the next step of investing and/or increase income. Please provide me with any suggestions or ideas you have about any of this.

So much financial stuff to do

noreply@blogger.com (Debt Free or Bust) — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 15:55:00 +0000

I feel like paying off our cc is just a small piece of our financial puzzle. There are so many other things to consider…

Should we focus on paying off the student loans or put money towards some short-term savings for emergencies, paying off next year’s taxes and/or going on maternity leave?
Should we take advantage of a large tax return to not only purchase some furniture items but to do things such as have the yard fenced? Or should we put some money away for the reasons outlined in the first item?
How much should I be putting away in to RRSPs before and after my company matching kicks in?
When should we start my daughter’s RESP? How much should we contribute per month and/or year?

Do you watch every penny you spend?

noreply@blogger.com (Debt Free or Bust) — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 13:25:00 +0000

I don’t. Except for the 3 or 4 months last summer that we tracked every penny that we spent, we are pretty easy going with our spending. I know that we waste a lot of money - especially when it comes to eating out. We both buy our lunches multiple times a week and we get take out or go out for dinner at least once a week. This isn’t cheap. And we basically buy what we want for groceries each week. I do keep an eye out for items on sale and use coupons when I can. But we buy expensive meats and treats and don’t bat an eye.

At the same time, I find that I can be cheap about things. I hate to pay full price for anything. I love a great deal. And I certainly don’t shop at expensive clothing or shoe stores unless I have to. But chasing sales can cause overspending too. If I see things on sale I think I should buy them. And then you end up spending more than you would have if the item(s) had not been on sale.

It’s all a constant struggle between trying to stay within a budget or at least spend less than you make and not living on bread and water. And when there are sales, do you buy for the future or wait until a particular event is approaching before you buy something?

How quickly can you spend money?

noreply@blogger.com (Debt Free or Bust) — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 13:45:00 +0000

I just posted that we paid off our cc (with a small balance left on one card - $370 – that I’ll be paying off tonight) and then we ran out on Saturday and bought a new computer! Not even 24 hours of having a $0 balance before we charged something new on the card.

Our computer was really old and probably would have died pretty soon. This was one item on our list of need to buy items with the tax refund I am anticipating. We probably should have waited until we had the refund in our grubby little hands but we were both impatient (wonder how we got in this mess? :) ) and saw a pretty good deal. My husband is a techy guy in his job and I’m at an ok level compared to most users so we didn’t want a basic level computer. We have a lot of pics, videos, etc. that will take up a fair amount of hard drive space and we wanted a good processor and significant memory to run our applications, etc. So, with the CPU, a 22 inch monitor, 2 year warranty plan, some video software I wanted to get and taxes, the total came to over $2,000. Yeah, I know, not cheap. But hopefully this will last us a little while and provide us with the speed/space we need. I have cash to put towards it until I submit my taxes (still waiting on the necessary receipts, forms, etc.) that will bring the balance owing down by the time I get my refund. I'm hoping we'll only owe around $1,000 by that time.

It's paid off!!!

noreply@blogger.com (Debt Free or Bust) — Sat, 16 Feb 2008 01:03:00 +0000

Last night the final payment was made on our 0% interest cc with a balance of $9381 (I paid $1000 on it earlier this week). We now have less than $400 to pay on our Visa that we charged the down payment on our new car that we are leasing. I know, it's probably not the smartest financial move to lease a car but it makes sense for us at the moment.

Now that we are so close to being cc free, we need to stay that way. We'll still use our ccs to pay for items but then pay them off that month. That way we'll get the rewards. I guess we should think about closing some of the cc's though. Here are our current cc's with their credit limits:

Visa - $13,000

MC 1 - $22,000

MC 2 - $22,000

MC 3 - $11,700

Amex - $11,700

Store 1 - $2,500

Store 2 - $700

Total - $83,600

I’m addicted to my finances

noreply@blogger.com (Debt Free or Bust) — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 12:56:00 +0000

Since we decided to focus on our finance issues last spring I’ve been pretty diligent in keeping track of our finances. I started this blog, visit others blogs and financial forums regularly, created a budget, tracked our expenditures, moved cc debt around to low interest (or no interest) ccs, and paid as much spare cash as we could on our cc debt. I had a period of time in the fall where I wasn’t as diligent as I had been in tracking everything or writing in my blog but I was still monitoring the situation. But now I have a renewed interest in our finances - to a point of being a bit obsessive about it. I am excited that we now have the cash to pay off our cc debt, focus on student loan debt and make some furniture/home improvement purchases. I find myself thinking about it constantly and going in and playing with the spreadsheet every chance I get.

Once we pay off those ccs over the next week, then I’ll be focusing on the other things… including filing my taxes that will net me a large return (I expect). And although my co. isn’t going to match my RRSP contributions until I’ve been here for 6 months, I’m going to contribute on my own in anticipation of A. needing the contributions to offset what I’ll owe in taxes next year and B. saving for my retirement. We also have to open an RESP for my daughter, save some of the tax refund for taxes next year, have some short term savings available for emergencies, etc.

There are still lots to do and think about so I’m a bit addicted to it. But it’s all good addiction, right?!?

Happy Valentine’s Day!

noreply@blogger.com (Debt Free or Bust) — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 18:41:00 +0000

I just wanted to say Happy Valentine’s Day to all. My husband and I decided that we wouldn’t buy each other anything (other than a card) for this Valentine’s Day. I did buy my daughter a few little toys and we are getting take-out for dinner. But otherwise, it will be a cheap holiday for us. I’ll have other holidays and special events to spend money on in the near future, I guarantee it. :)

Credit Card Debt Free

noreply@blogger.com (Debt Free or Bust) — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 18:39:00 +0000

Within the next couple of weeks we will be cc debt free. We currently owe over $10k in cc debt but with my layoff severance being paid out this Friday and through emptying our savings account and a few other cash items, we’ll pay off the cc debt. It’s an exciting prospect – I haven’t been cc debt free in many years. In fact, I can’t even remember when I didn’t have a balance on my cc. I’m sure I did at one point in my 20+ years since I’ve owned credit cards.

You would think that I would be beside myself with joy but I’m having very mixed feelings. Don’t get me wrong… when I purely think about not having a balance on any of my many credit cards, it’s a feeling of true elation and joy. But where my feelings are not so positive is when I think about what else I could be doing with the money – spend, spend, spend AND when I think that although it is an honest way to pay off the cc balance, it came about without the sweat and tears I expected. And I almost feel like I’m cheating. We have been pretty diligent the past 6 months or so working on our finances. We moved all cc balances to a 0% interest credit card (moving to 19.99% next month), started tracking our expenses, made a budget and paid as much as possible on those cards. And we made some headway. But it would have taken us a lot longer (I had calculated about another 22 months) if we stayed on our same course.

But then I get excited again when I think that we can focus on paying off my husband’s student loans much more quickly than we thought. AND I am taking some of my tax refund, etc. to make purchases of a few key furniture type items that we need. So, overall, it’s been a blessing to receive this severance payout and to be paying off over $10,000 in debt. WOW!!!

Back Again

noreply@blogger.com (Debt Free or Bust) — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 00:14:00 +0000

I know I've been gone awhile. A lot has happened since my last update. I was laid off on December 11th and found a new job starting on January 11th. My new job has the exact same salary as my last job with good benefits and due to the law here to be given 60 days notice after layoff I just received my final pay from my old company on Friday. So I had a week or 2 where I was double paid. And on this Friday, I will be paid out my severance. And then on Feb. 22nd, I'll be paid a bonus for my service last year. We've decided to deplete most of our savings, use some of my severance and pay off all cc debt - approx. 13k. We should have used our savings to reduce our cc debt before but we were saving it in case I went on mat leave again. We've now seen the light.

Here is my plan:

CC Debt $13,000

Cash -$1,500
Savings -$5,300
Severance -$7,200

Remaining -$1,000

So, we'll have an extra $1,000 to spare towards some purchases we want to make. And with the remaining amount of my severance that I rolled in to RRSPs, the bonus that I rolled in to RRSPs, my regular RRSPs contributions for 2007 and child care expenses that I can claim, I'm expecting quite a large tax refund. We need to purchase some furniture items that we will use the tax refund on. But we'll need to put some $$ away towards the tax amount I'll be owing in 2009.

It's so much to think about. Now I have to update my charts. I always have problems updating them and making them appear on my site.

How much do you spend on Christmas?

noreply@blogger.com (Debt Free or Bust) — Sun, 25 Nov 2007 23:50:00 +0000

I always seem to spend more than I should at Christmas. Every year I vow to reduce the amount I spend on Christmas presents but it just doesn't seem to happen. I have a number of gifts to buy for friends that I can't seem to stop doing. It's a hard thing to tell people that you'd like to stop exchanging gifts. And then when your friends have children, you end up buying gifts for the children too. So, the list gets longer and longer. Counting the number of friends and their children I come up with 11. At around $30 per friend and $20 per child, that's almost $300! And then there's family. My husband and I have agreed not to spend a lot on each other this year. But we have our 20 month old daughter. And then there is parents, siblings, nieces/nephews and in-laws. It's just too much $$ that gets spent for one day. At least I've committed to only spending cash, that we won't end up owing any debt as a result of this Christmas. That's a good step. Now if I could only figure out a way to reduce the number of gifts to give next year.

Groceries are expensive

noreply@blogger.com (Debt Free or Bust) — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 12:48:00 +0000

I've dealt with this issue before and have been trying to reduce our grocery bills as everyone whose commented has stated that our grocery costs are very high. But they are just plain expensive. I agree that we don't shop around for the best prices but with a toddler and both working full-time, we really don't have the time. So, we bought groceries on Saturday and even though we didn't but much meat, the order came to a whopping $199.95 (for 1 week). Here are some of the highlights:

+ Diapers - $38.99
+ Wipes - $8.99
+ Toilet paper - $7.39
+ Toilet cleaner - $4.99
+ Dryer sheets - $7.99
+ Coffee - $8.99
+ Steaks - $16.33
+ Ground beef - $11.57

It's just crazy to have to spend this sort of money on these things.

Stressful times

noreply@blogger.com (Debt Free or Bust) — Sat, 27 Oct 2007 00:30:00 +0000

I know it's been a long time since I last posted. Things are pretty crazy right now. My company has been in the midst of restructuring and performing layoffs. I thought I was going to be laid off this week but there is now a bit of a stay. I was already in the mindspace that I was leaving and have been job hunting. I was preparing to get a severance package and thinking of all of the things I could do with that if I got a job pretty quickly. But now everything is up in the air and I don't know whether I'm coming or going.

We're still trying to chip away at our debt but I have to say that we haven't been as disciplined about that or tracking our expenses. We'll have to start again in November. I'm hoping to have our cc debt below $10K by Christmas but that could be a bit ambitious. Especially with Christmas coming up.

August's Expenses

noreply@blogger.com (Debt Free or Bust) — Mon, 24 Sep 2007 11:37:00 +0000

Sorry for the delay in my posts. But I now have completed expenses for August. Looking at the past three months of expenses, it is showing our total expenses going down... that's good. But I can't figure out why that would be. We aren't adding any $$ into our savings. We have been paying on bills but that is included in our expenses. So, it should all balance out. I need to think about this.

Coupons Websites

noreply@blogger.com (Debt Free or Bust) — Sun, 09 Sep 2007 22:31:00 +0000

I went searching for Canadian coupon websites. In particular, coupons sites for products such as food, cleaning goods, and baby products. I've found a few that seem to have coupons that are usable in the real world with real products. Here are my selections:

Frugalshopper.ca

I ordered coupons from the next site and they came very quickly, no strings attached.

Save.ca

Redflagdeals.com

I've not used the following website for coupons as you have to create an account and I read comments from some users and it appears that some never received what they requested - but that seems to be users from other countries.

Mysavings.com

Allgoodcoupons.ca

We blew the budget

noreply@blogger.com (Debt Free or Bust) — Tue, 04 Sep 2007 12:53:00 +0000

It's our anniversary today - 3 years. We went out to dinner last night and we had whatever we wanted. All total, it came to almost $190 for two of us. (Tom Selleck was dining there as well). Then we headed to the casino where I lost my $20 in about 20 minutes; my husband broke even. We agreed we weren't buying any gifts for each other but the price of the dinner more than makes up for our non-gift spending. We rarely get out to dinner together so it's a rare treat but obviously affects the amount we can pay on our cc debt.

Extra $$ - Less Debt

noreply@blogger.com (Debt Free or Bust) — Thu, 30 Aug 2007 15:25:00 +0000

So, starting this Friday, my pay will be approximately $200 more per 2 weeks. In Canada you pay the Federal Government towards Employment Insurance and a pension plan. It's deducted automatically from your paycheque. It's a % of your salary up to a maximum amount, per year. I've reached those maximums for both items. So, now I'll have this extra $$ per month until January. Of course, my intention is to put most of it towards our cc debt. Of course, with Christmas presents to be bought, etc. I know that some of it will go there.

It's always such a great feeling to get more money for not doing any more :) But then when January comes around and you see your bi-weekly paycheque go down again, it's a bit defeating. Until the next time it increases :)

Are you stuck in a job you don't like?

noreply@blogger.com (Debt Free or Bust) — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 14:33:00 +0000

I have a good job... good money, good benefits, good people to work with (except my boss) and generally an interesting job. But I really don't want to be doing it. I'm sick of doing what I do. I see myself doing so many other things. Other things that would mean a cut in income. And at this point, I need my income. It's very frustrating that I have to keep working in a job that I don't want to do. If I had extra $$ I could think of many things I'd like to do - real estate investmenting, organizing people's homes, and staging for sale. But you need money to be able to make a big career move like that and we just don't have it. Are you in this situation? What are you going to do about it?

Minimal Spending Weekend

noreply@blogger.com (Debt Free or Bust) — Mon, 27 Aug 2007 13:06:00 +0000

I hardly spent any money over the weekend. But my husband paid for the groceries and our dinner when we got take out on Saturday night. It all comes out of the overall bucket though. One victory was when I went with a girlfriend shopping on Saturday and I didn't buy anything... not one cent... nada. That's good for me. I am in a golf tournament today for work so I'll be spending a bit on lunch, etc. but overall everything is paid for by my employer so it won't be a big hit to the pocket book. All good.

Now I need to review how much extra money I have to put towards the credit card debt. I want to have the Visa completely paid off again before the end of the month - it includes the lawn care costs and shoes that we bought. And anything left over will go towards our MBNA 0% interest cc.

Grocery Expense

noreply@blogger.com (Debt Free or Bust) — Fri, 24 Aug 2007 12:45:00 +0000

So, I took our most recent grocery bill and broke it into categories. There were a few non-typical expenses last week but there always seems to be a few of those each week. Please review and let me know where our spending seems too high. Thanks.

Updated Spreadsheet

noreply@blogger.com (Debt Free or Bust) — Thu, 23 Aug 2007 13:30:00 +0000

Here is our expenses spreadsheet for July. Some expenses such as dining and gas are higher because we were on vacation the last week or so. I have taken many of your comments about our high grocery expenses to heart. I even posted a question about what others spend on groceries on a finance forum I frequent. I don't know how some people are able to spend so little on groceries. I do admit that we spend a fair amount on meat/poultry/fish as we typically have something like that every night. But otherwise, I don't think that we are overly extravagant on our groceries. On my post tomorrow I'm going to break down our grocery bill and see where our money is going. I'm hoping you can all chime in and tell me how that compares to your grocery bill.

Expense Spreadsheet

noreply@blogger.com (Debt Free or Bust) — Fri, 20 Jul 2007 19:44:00 +0000

Here are our expenses for May and June. I'll be maintaining three months of expenses so we can compare them and make sure that we're keeping everything in check.

Last day before vacation!

noreply@blogger.com (Debt Free or Bust) — Fri, 20 Jul 2007 11:48:00 +0000

Last work day before vacation. I'm really looking forward to having 2+ weeks off to relax. I need it. It's been an exhausting 6 months since I've been back to work. For the first week we are going to my sister's cottage and then popping over to another province for 2 nights, staying in a hotel. The remainder of the vacation will be spent hanging around the house going on day trips here and there. Overall, it shouldn't be a really expensive vacation. But we will certainly be eating out more than normal. But we'll try to keep it under control. I don't want to charge anything that we can't pay off right away.

I've been working on an expense spreadsheet that I'm hoping I can post here soon. I just have a few last things to update and then it should be ready to go. I'm hoping it will be a good tool to use on an ongoing basis to keep us on track.

May Expenses

noreply@blogger.com (Debt Free or Bust) — Mon, 18 Jun 2007 11:26:00 +0000

I know that it's been a little while since my last post. But I do have some updates. We tracked our expenses during the month of May and I loaded them into Excel and subtotals various categories. Ugh - a whack of expenses on stuff that is unnecessary. But here they are:

House (includes mortgage, property taxes, insurance, oil, and furnace lease) - $2,669
Lawn/Garden (includes soil, sods, and equipment to lay sod in back yard AND lawn maintenance) - $858
Bills (payments on credit cards) - $1009
Lunch/Dinner (lunches, dinners, and coffees) - $365
Groceries (food and toilettries bought at grocery store) - $1,076
Transportation (car payment, gas, and bus) - $815
Loans (student loans) - $430
Utilities (water, electricity, cable, internet, phone, and cell phone, etc.) - $386
Daycare - $600
Gifts - $140
Miscellaneous (includes clothing, lotto tickets, service charges, membership dues, alcohol, donations, toys, and "treats") - $671

This doesn't include $2,100 I paid for my recent work trip expenses.

It's hard to believe that we can be spending this much. There is certainly room for improvement. At least we now know where our money is going.

We've finished the sodding - Yahoo!!!

noreply@blogger.com (Debt Free or Bust) — Sun, 03 Jun 2007 23:51:00 +0000

So, after 1+ weeks of hard work, working around a 1 year's old and full-time jobs' schedules, we have finished sodding our back yard. By doing it ourselves, it cost us around $675. That includes the sod, soil, a garden cart, shovel, rake, and tarps. Compared to $2000 that landscapers were quoting, we did pretty well in our spending. And it looks pretty good if I do say so myself. We still need to work on the garden areas but the sodding has been completed. Whew! And we are still going to buy a shed and some gravel to sit it on. That will be much more costly - probably around $1,200. But I'm selling some stock options to cover all costs so that it doesn't impact our existing debt. If that darn stock price would just go up again. :)