Happy Valentine’s Day!

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

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

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?

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

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

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

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.