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My personal Challenge

1K views 13 replies 7 participants last post by  MommyBliss 
#1 ·
I havn't been around for months, been having a hard go of it trying to get on track financially, I was sick with bronchitis off and on for quite some time, dh quit his job last feb and was out of work for a couple of months etc....needless to say it seemed we would take one step forward and three steps back!

Anyhow, I decided enough is enough, I need to find myself again. With food prices still climbing, bills not going away by themselves and a $0 emergency fund account my family and I are a financial crises just waiting to happen.

Dh's has been complaining about always being broke...every cent we bring in pretty much is either going on bills or just seems to dwindle away for whatever reason. We take full responsiblity for our choices regarding our finances.

I started yesterday with dh's pay by putting $100 in his savings account for gas and spending. It might seem like a lot but to fill up our car yesterday alone cost $50 so he has $50 left for spending. Starting next week I will be putting $25 a week into his account for his spending.For me, I do not need nor want anything at this stage of the game. I take my own tea when I go to work and carry my teabags in a baggie to refill my cup.I eat at home or if I stay at work I always bag my own lunch from home as does dh.

I transfered immediately yesterday when dh's pay went into the bank $150into our ING account which is so named "Emergency Fund". Dh has a pay one week and then my pay comes in the next week so we have money coming in every week. I work part-time, 2 hours and 40 minutes a day through the week and it sure helps.

So until next week we have enough in the bank to cover our mortgage and a few extra groceries, Dh has his spending money and our daughters now have part-time jobs which brings in their spending money not to mention a bit aside for their savings.

I am going to post here each week what I will be putting in our emergency fund and any updates.
 
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#2 ·
Good Luck, times are tough everywhere. Being frugal is certainly an necessity these days. DH used to do all the grocery shopping because he works part time but I have decided to take over here and start stockpiling. We have also started cooking more. Eating out is for special occaisions only. I have also decided to cut back on Christmas this year. I gotta start somewhere!
 
#5 ·
Well I got mixed up and shorted myself with the mortgage by taking that $150 and putting it into our ING account. I havn't done that before so it was quite the shocker. We do not have overdraft protection as we felt that we didn't need it. I called the bank, we have been great clients with them for the past 14 or so years and they will cover it for us until my pay comes in on Thursday which is direct deposit. Now that was embarrassing to say the least.

it is a Frugal Tuesday supper tonight for our family. I have taco meat in the freezer as well as(made a double batch a couple of months ago and froze) tortillas in the freezer along with salsa and sour cream in the fridge. When blocks of cheese were on sale a couple of months ago I froze 4 blocks. I had always frozen shredded cheese and cheese slices but had heard that blocks of cheese will crumble once thawed if frozen, mine doesn't so that is an added bonus not to mention money saver.

Dh has a meeting for work tomorrow morning, he works at the airport in our city as a security guard through the commissionairs(retired military) they were getting paid by the province but tomorrow they will be signing to begin getting paid by the federal gov't. This means a pay raise, we don't know how much of a raise yet but whatever it will be no matter if it is .05 cents is a bonus YAY! Since we are use to living on our income now we will take that extra and put towards debt/savings.

Thanks for the support, it is just what I need :).
 
#6 ·
Well dhs pay raise is $2 more an hour. Great news!

I also found out that my contract at work wasn't finalized until two days ago so I have been getting paid for my after school work 2 weeks behind. I was mixed up on that and hadn't noticed as I also work as a lunch supervisor and my contract was passed for that at the beginning of Sept so I am always paid up to date for that. I hadn't looked at the dates on my pay stub for daycare educator.

My boss told me that my pay on the 27th of November should have 4 weeks of pay on it which will get me caught up to date.I work 1 hour and 20 minutes a day at that paticular position. I will have extra hours above that as well as our school is closed for 3 days next week so I should have an additional 14 hours on top of everything else.

Most of this extra money will be going towards debt with a bit towards the emergency fund. I might be doing this backwards but I can pay off one of our debts with that extra money at the end of this month. As long as we contribute something to the emergency fund we are ahead.
 
#7 ·
Dh just went to the mail to send a postdated cheque to pay off one debt of $1200 due on the 27th. The extra money on my pay and dh's is going towards this and we have the rest which we can play around with from dh's military pension. It is going to be veryyyyyyy tight but we can do it.

I went to our ING account and now have 5 categories there. There isn't much in there but it is a start and is more then what I had a couple of weeks ago.
Emergency fund === $92.88
Clothing and gifts===$10.32
School Fees ======$10.
Medical and Dental =$30.
Auto ============$10.

For supper tonight we are having shrimp and pasta. The shrimp was on sale 2 bags for $7.99( buy one get one free). For a family of 4 I will use half a bag so say $2. with alfredo sauce $1.59 and noodles say $.80. I will have toasted garlic bread with it so say another $1.25 tops. Toatal dinner for a family of 4 = $5.64 or $1.41 for each person. I should have made my own alfredo sauce for less then $1.59, I wasn't thinking at the time I picked it up....I am getting there.
 
#8 ·
Well the $1200 cheque went through this past Monday, that debt started at $1600, took us 4 months to pay off.

Next one is our income tax which we were late doing this past year. I need to see an accountant to go over it as we had gone to H and R block and I think that they may have miscalculated, I am hoping anyhow. I will make an appointment for next pay to see the accountant. So as it stands now we owe $7400 to income tax.....once I get an accurate total we will start paying that down as quickly as possible. I can snowball the money we paid towards our last debt onto this debt and any extra hours etc will also go onto it.

I am taking $200 for Christmas gifts for this year.

Time to get ready for work, will keep updating.
 
#10 ·
Bee, you're doing great. Watch those income tax guys though. We were late a couple years back and I made a huge mistake. By being late for filing you will be paying not only interest on that money, but late fees and those late
fees are a killer. Pay this debt off AS QUICKLY AS POSSIBLE.

I look forward to reading your thread on how you are doing. All the best.
 
#11 ·
Thanks everyone :) .

Well, nothing new had really changed up until yesterday. We had bought an investment property about 1 1/2 years ago for my parents to live in and they paid the mortgage and taxes,they had a rough go of it trying to sell their house etc so there were a few months where we had to cover the mortgage and insurances etc on both of our houses which got us even more behind. My parents finally sold their house a few months back so all is great now. I have mentioned this before but couldn't see it on this post here. Well, my mother wanted to buy it from us and we would almost break even for what we paid etc..... she phoned yesterday and the bank approved her and as of Jan 30 the house will be hers.

So as of Jan 30th we will be DEBT FREEEEEEEE, except for our mortgage here and we will also have our Emergency Fund Fully FUNDED YAYYYYYYY. What a way to start off the New Year :dancing:

Our next goal will be to get our Freedom account funded and making an extra mortgage payment on our house here each month.

I/we need to go slow though so as to form a habit, one new change at a time, wait about 5 to six weeks and then start another change. This is how we did it before and it worked great but then we bought two houses in a 3 month period 25% cash down on one and 20% cash down on the other. It is really kind of embarrassing considering we had worked so hard to get to where we were but the good news is I have no doubt that we can get there again and Lesson learned!

I'll keep updating :) .
 
#12 ·
The house is sold but we didn't get as much as we thought by the time we paid for all of the lawyers fee's, property transfer fee's etc. We paid off our debts, got caught up on other bills and we were able to put $2500 into the emergency fund.

Still left to do though : Make an appointment with accountant to have back and present income tax completed. I don't even know what to say about that, I mentioned it before and we didn't get that done yet, we will have that completed within a week. I think that it will pretty much balance out with write offs crossing out the owing etc.....I am hoping.

After income tax is completed and we know where we stand will be calling our mortgage company and having mortgage paid by-weekly opposed to monthly.

That is all I can think of for now especially until I know about the taxes. Everything seems so messed up with the taxes and we were doing so well not so long ago with finances,frugal living etc. I wonder how we could let ourselves get to this stage when we were doing so well before. All I can do is shake my head, stop beating myself up about everything, pull up my sleeves and go full steam ahead with a mission in mind.
 
#13 ·
glad to see you back,,,,sounds like you have done well so far, good luck with the tax situation.....
 
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