Debt Free Kid

I felt so alone when I began our debt free journey at the end of 2008. I was exhausted from going to work every day and the evenings felt excruciatingly long while I was at home on my own with my two year old. Up until that point I had my old friend Ebay to keep me company, but when the VISA bill came in with a balance over $20 000 and the minimum payment was $250 (which I could pay, but then not pay the hydro bill), I broke down and admitted to myself that everything had to change. A few months later we were settled into our apartment and I started dating a man I met at work. As I got to know him I became extremely self conscious about my financial situation. He came from an upper middle class family, and his parents paid for his post-secondary school tuition, up to his Master's degree. When he received scholarships for his PhD, they gave him the rest of the saved education funds to buy a house. By the time I was getting to know him, his house was sold at a profit and he was liv...

Near the end of 2008 I finally figured out that my spending was out of control. I was 34 years old and I was going to end up bankrupt. My lifestyle was inflated compared to my earnings, and all I wanted was what everyone else wants: a home, a car, some stuff. My car at the time was an old beater on its last wheels, but my home was a rental house that I couldn't afford. I had a huge student debt at the time which began in 1996 and looked like it was going nowhere. My credit card debt was almost as huge, and I still couldn't stop shopping. I gave notice on the house and moved myself and then 2.5 year old son into a one-bedroom apartment. I went car-free periodically whenever the beaters left us stranded. I stopped buying daily coffee and meals out. I stopped pick-me-up treatments for my hair and toenails. I still made stupid spending mistakes, but I managed to pay off the credit card debt in 2.5 years in 2011. At the end of 2014 I cashed in my small retirement savings account...

I just updated the side bars and I noticed - unless I made an error previously - that my student loan balance is going UP instead of DOWN. I have read about this happening to other people, but because I have diligently applied and been accepted for the Repayment Assistance program every six months, I thought my balance was actually going down. This puts the pressure on me to shift my fast-track payment from the car loan to the student loans. This is starting to feel right, because the student loans are old, so old, from 1996 - 2005 and I don't want to deal with them anymore. I am making an extra $20 a month car payment and now I am going to increase the student loan payments. I haven't increased the mortgage payment yet. The big news is that I started a full-time job in August, and I saw my first, full, real paycheque on Oct. 28. I saw an increase of $588 in my take-home pay, which is nothing to sneeze at, but our expenses for before and after-school care will increase dr...

It took me half a year to figure out that I might run out of money before year-end. According to my spreadsheet, overspending and indulging has left me with only $1300 to cover groceries, gas, and spending money for the next five months (Aug - Dec). It shocked me to see this, since I don't feel like I live an extravagant lifestyle at all. I haven't bought any new clothes or shoes for myself in 2016, and I last had a cheap haircut in August 2015. I still haven't called the plumber in to fix the leak in the bathtub / kitchen sink either. I did move $1000 from a savings account onto the car loan back in April. And I plan to do so again in August. I really want to get rid of the car loan. Some expenses have gone up, such as house and car insurance, property taxes, and hydro but heating gas has gone down by half to make up for it. I have my 2017 spreadsheet all set up and if I stick with it properly, everything will be covered, including savings goals AND I will st...

In three years I will be 44. Bean will be 13. In three years our car will be paid off. As soon as Bean's legs are long enough, I will teach him to drive it, and we will share it until it no longer runs. I don't plan to buy another car. In three years I will owe less than $10 000 on my student loans. In three years I will owe just over $110 000 on the mortgage. In three years I will either be working full-time, or I will take the leap and reduce my work hours and practice living minimally and mindfully. In three years we will be thinking about which high school Bean will attend. Will he go into the international baccalaureate program at our local school, or will he commute to the other end of town to continue French Immersion? We will have another year to decide. In three years I will have hopefully reached my savings goal. In three years I will have struck another couple of items off my bucket list in the sidebar.

So far not off to a great start. I misread a letter from the student loan company and was $4 short for one of my payments. I started off the new year with a $45 NSF fee in my "no-fee" account. It was a really stupid mistake, since the line of credit they granted me is sitting there unused, and I could have transferred an extra amount from there just in case ... could have, should have. The mistake will eventually be forgotten, but not my grudge against that bank. I have already pulled almost all of my money from it to use another no-fee bank that is serving me much better. It felt great to end 2015 with all my bills paid, thanks to the "Xmas Saving" account I set up, where I deposit a small amount each month to cover December (extra) spending. However, I forgot to leave a little bit in there to visit a friend before New Year's, and ended up having a larger than expected credit card bill to pay in January. So I'm playing a bit of catch-up this month and not...

How did I pay off $20 000 in 2.5 years? - Started tracking my spending (I use Excel). - Took advantage of balance transfers to lower-interest cards and line of credit. - Moved into a small apartment, shared a bedroom with my son (the first year). - Stopped buying coffee and a muffin each morning, and a cola each afternoon. - Stopped shopping online and in stores for clothes and other distractions. - Used a subsidized food box program once a month. - Kept my appointments with social services for a child care subsidy. Also kept to their guidelines to keep the subsidy. - Bought used car. Tried to keep up with repairs, but when it became too costly, parked it and took the bus. - Let my sweetheart at the time pay for my outings (as a feminist, this was really hard for me, but it was the only way I could do anything that cost anything). Why didn't I start riding a bike to work? - I don't know how to ride a bike. - But if I did know how, I would have to put my son in one ...

I've only partially completed updating my progress bars on the left, but I'm ecstatic to point out that my mortgage is already under $150 000!!! Woooooot!!!11!! And my car loan is under $17 000!!!

I get paid on the 28th of each month, and sometimes, like this past January, it feels like weeks between payday and the beginning of the next month. I have about three months worth of pay saved up so I'm never quite short on funds, but I do try to make each current pay last till the end of the month (the 30th or 31st, rather than the 28th), Since February has only 28 days (normally) it is a nice feeling to head right into March with a full paycheque. This month, to make it even sweeter, I have declared it "no spend month." This means that all non-essential spending (groceries and gas excluded of course) is to be delayed for four short weeks. And I am not allowing myself to cheat by using a credit card and paying it off next month. Half of my January pay went towards a hefty credit card bill from December spending, even though I had a christmas savings account set up. Still, it is nice to check my credit card statements and see that zero balance. Since I am single agai...

I'm supposed to be on my way to the big city right now with Bean to meet up with my mom's family for xmas dinner, but I got a call today saying that my Gramma is sick, and we are postponing to maybe next weekend. She is the reason why we get together so we meet at a restaurant near her condo. Since everyone has to drive in, and one of my cousins is also sick, and another cousin spent christmas with her baby son at Sick Kids Hospital, we will wait to get together. I spent the morning organizing all my photo files from 2014, which I will transfer over to two separate external hard drives. I also cleaned up my desktop on my laptop. I'm trying to catch up on Feedly, but am almost three weeks behind again on blogs. Maybe I need to go through and delete a bunch, but I don't really want to. I get a lot of ideas reading other people's blogs, but I rarely come here to flesh them out. I have been meaning to write about my solo home-buying adventure for weeks, but I'm ...

Thanks to this post on The Simple Dollar , I learned about a site called unbury.me , which gave me something to think about regarding my debt repayments. I plugged in my minimum amounts: 1) Mortgage - $862/month at 2.94% (paid bi-weekly, but there was no place to show the two months of the year where I pay $1291 - I guess I could have used $933 as the average); 2) Car - $250/month at 1.9%; 3) Student Loans - $144/month at 4% (I guessed, since there are actually four loans with different percentages - the most common one is Prime + 1.5%). The result told me that I should continue making these minimum payments until March 2021, when the car will be paid off, and that $250 can then go onto my student loan payment. In October 2024 the student loans will be gone, and the combined $250 + $144 goes onto the mortgage, paying it off by October 2030. This is pretty cool because I have decided I want the mortgage paid off in 15 years so that I can think about early retirement. October ...

Happy Thursday! The plumbers returned last week to check the leak on the brand-new hot-water tank, and said it was perfectly fine. They think the leak is coming from the bathtub upstairs. So I didn't need to have the old tank replaced, and I didn't need to sign the five-year contract for the new one. Too late. The bathtub does not leak when we take daily showers; it only happens when we take baths. I thought maybe we were filling it up too high and the overflow drain had a leak. We had a jacuzzi tub in the last rental house and were spoiled with a big bath. On the weekend I took a bath and was careful not to fill it up too high. When I checked the basement afterwards it was like a downpour, running across the floor to the drain. Worse than I had seen it before, but before I had not checked immediately after the bath and it may have dried up some. Still, I felt it was lucky that I had spent a few hours in the basement earlier organizing, and nothing got wet. A family mem...

OK, it's Tuesday, so I'm only a day late for Money Monday. I'm trying me best here eh? :D Better than 2012, when I didn't post at all!!! During the offer and counter-offer part of the house sale, I made sure that the car port and shed behind the house would be included, and they were. After a couple of weeks of waiting, waiting (it felt like months), I received a call from my agent saying there was a problem. He received a call from the sellers' agent saying that a complaint had been filed to the city back in 2005 about the car port. Apparently it was too close to the property line. It was implied that it was to be dealt with before the sale was finalized. I was disappointed that, if the sellers had to take it down, I would have another winter of scraping snow and ice off my car, which had not yet lived a winter in my care. In the end,  the car port stayed up, and I had to sign a letter with my lawyer saying I was aware of the complaint. Since there was no wor...

We have been in the house less than three weeks and we are ecstatic. Bean's new favourite word is "Newhouse." On the weekend I noticed the tray under the hot water tank is full of water, and slowly starting to leak onto the concrete basement floor. I put newspapers around it, and they dried, and Baxter (the kitten) decided to take them skating around. The basement seems to be his domain, because his litter box is down there. I called the utilities company, and they are sending a plumber this afternoon to replace the tank. Before the old one is removed, I will have to sign a five-year contract for the new tank. I balked at the commitment. The rental is $12.35 (10.93 + HST) per month on my hydro bill. In five years the cost of the rental will be over $3200, if the price does not increase. I could probably have three tanks purchased and installed for that price, but then I would be on the hook for all the repairs. I spoke to the plumber, and he assured me that rentin...

This week I turn 40 years old. Last week I became a house owner. I am sore, grumpy, and slightly overwhelmed, but I am also proud and ecstatic. I had two goals to reach by my 40th birthday: 1) to get married; 2) to buy a house. I reached goal # 2 with a week to spare. I have modified goal # 1 to read: 1) to find a suitable life partner in my 40s; 2) or not. So, Partner (ex) informed me that he found another place to live about a week into September. I realized quickly that I had three choices: 1) Keep our rental house and sublet one of the bedrooms (Rent = $1250 + $320 utilities + $57 internet); 2) Move into another rental, hopefully in the same neighbourhood; 3) Cash in $8500 RRSP account and buy a house of our own. First I went to Kijiji and searched the "room wanted" ads. There were a few single women who had teaching contracts who were looking for a room. I thought this would be ideal; but since Partner (ex) dropped the bomb a week into September, thes...

All the Personal Finance blogs tell us not to buy a new car. I never planned to myself, but when I could not find what I wanted used, I took the plunge and made the splurge. I bought a 2014 Hyundai Accent in April 2014. Not only do I feel safe and secure in my new car, after years of driving hazardous beaters, but I am also in the best financial shape I have ever been, ever. Before I bought the car I scrutinized my budget spreadsheet for weeks. If you know how often I do this (at least once a day), you would know that this is a big deal, since I had the spreadsheet open for hours each day, moving numbers around. The only way I could afford the payment was to be radical with each category, to make room for the new purchase. Once I became comfortable with the changes, I bought the car. Since my intention was to pay it off in 3.5 years instead of 7, I stopped spending everywhere else. I still put money in the grocery account, and the gift account (for christmas and birthdays), but I...

Recently my sweetheart and I had a conversation about lotteries. I told him that all I wanted was one million dollars. It's a ton of money for my purposes but really on the grand scheme of things it's not much. Think about it, all you have to spend is one cent and you're no longer a millionaire. Anyways, if I won a million dollars - which I wouldn't, because I don't buy tickets - I would spend it like this: $400 000 - one good piece of property to live and retire in. It doesn't even have to cost that much, but I would like to put aside a cushion for utilities and maintenance. $40 000 - pay off every last cent of my credit card debt and student loans $60 000 - take a trip around the world with my son and my sweetheart That's only half. The other half I would put into trust funds for charitable donations, maybe a bursary at my university, and of course savings for my future and Bean's too. It's really not that much but it's a fortune to me,...

I opened my first savings account when I was six years old. My mom was a bank teller and she set my sister and I both up with Calculator accounts at the Royal Bank. I loved playing with my passbook, pretending to push the little buttons on the cover. I loved rolling up pennies and giving them to my mom to deposit, watching the typed numbers increase in the passbook. I always had a little bit of cash, even as a little girl. I got an allowance of $2 a week and I liked to spend it on books (usually Judy Blume). I remember coming up with extra chores lists, and would charge my parents 25 cents for anything above and beyond my usual chores. My sister always spent her money right away and would come to me to "borrow" my money because she knew I always had some. I had an ATM card when I was twelve, and used it wisely. I knew how to write a cheque. I took a business class in high school, with a component in personal finance and did very well. I took business math and marketing an...

The idea of home ownership is never far from my mind, especially because being a reader of finance material exposes me to all the benefits and pitfalls of having a mortgage. And of course there's all the news about the bursting of the housing bubble in the U.S. and all. We didn't have the same crisis in Canada but I hear that prices are falling and this makes me a little antsy to get out of debt and into the property market. This feeling of antsy hit me a couple of years ago, before I rented my house . I have near-perfect credit and always pay my rent on time, which is always around $900. I was starting to fall for the idea that I could roll that kind of money into a mortgage payment. I actually became obsessed with the idea of owning my own home (which helps me dramatically now, because I never let a payment slip on my debts) and I would drive around different neighbourhoods every weekend picking out houses I thought I could afford. One weekend I found a house in my neighbour...

It's been almost two months since our move from the two-bedroom house to the one-bedroom apartment. Now that we're here, I can't believe I stuck it out for so long - eighteen months! - in that money-pit. To be nice, it was a lovely house, and I really liked it, but I can't say it was the most enjoyable experience living there. It was 100 times better than the apartment we rented previously. I can't even go into how horrible that was. The house was clean, self-contained, and the rent was quite cheap ($900 a month). We moved in there in September 2007 and the landlord installed a brand-new high-efficiency furnace in October. Still, the heating costs were high, and I can't even imagine how much previous tenants were paying with the old heating system. As well, there was a monthly hydro bill, which was never under $100, even in the summer. I think it was high because I was using the dryer all year round, having never bothered to install a clothing line across the ...