Extra $$ - Less Debt

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?

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

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

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

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.