When you are trying to jump back into getting on track with finances

 A lot of us seem to fall off track when it comes to our finances and the way we handle money. I want to scream.... I have not had a plan in a very long time and it is time to put on my big girl panties, roll up my sleeves, and tackle this mess I have gotten myself in. The saying goes "if you fail to plan, you plan to fail." 

 I have been checking out different types of budgets online..there are so many of them! I have been reading about paying yourself first, 50/30/20% rule, Dave Ramsey baby steps, etc...it can be overwhelming. 

 The first thing in which I am going to do is get current with my debts/bills. I am not going to post how I am going to do a whole lot of other goals as I am going to focus on one goal at a time. Starting today I will be posting once a week on what I have paid down as I go. I need to get current with my hydro,phone, internet, and debt. If anyone else is going through the same with trying to get current with their finances, trying to budget, or looking for ways to save money,etc...please join me on this journey. 

The TFSA account with Ing direct for Canadians

I was visiting over at Saving for later's blog and she had mentioned about the TFSA (Tax Free Savings Account) with Ing. It has a 3% interest rate on the money you put into your tfsa account. I looked into it and put 1/2 of our emergency fund in there which would be $500. I just couldn't seem to put the whole $1000 which we have saved thus far into it. I am off from work for the summer so maybe that is why.

I am also not sure how much we can contribute into our savings as we do have debt to pay down/off. At the end of this month I will be contributing to our Freedom account for our irregular expenses which by the way will be ongoing each and every month while still paying down debt.

I am still proud of dh and I though, even when we fall down with life's happenings we just brush ourselves off and continue on with our goal for financial freedom :).

Mini Goals For July 2009

I am late posting my mini goals for this month. Here they are:

(1) Keep expenses to a minimum and not use the credit card as I will be going down east for two weeks to spend time with my friend who is terminally ill.

(2) Learn to paint a picture with acrylic paints.I picked up the basics to do this or at least try. I wanted to do this as paintings are expensive and I figure I might stand a chance so why not try lol.

(3) organize our family room.

If anyone would like to join me with doing monthly mini goals that would be great, I would sure love having the company :)

My Best Friend.

My best Friend has been terminally ill for some months now. The dr. told her last week that the cancer has spread to her liver and lungs and that she will not live to see her birthday in Sept. We all knew that this would happen eventually but we thought that she would still have more time, even she thought at least another year.

I was going to go and spend the summer down home between her place and my mothers in Nova Scotia but have decided that I will go down the middle of this month and stay a couple of weeks, come home, and then go back down for a week in August.

Carmen is a Beautiful person and I have learned so much from her. She has three girls ages 24,19,and 12.

Please say a prayer for my friend,her family, and for me too. We are headed for a lot of heartache even though we all know that we will meet one day again and that God will take great care of her.

Thank you to all,

Heather

We started our Freedom Account YAY!!!

Ok so, we have our goal of $1000 in our emergency fund, now it is time for us to start our Freedom Account for all of those irregular expenses as well as start paying down/off our debt. I am putting in $180 (Canadian dollars) a month divided up into categories so that we hopefully do not have to touch the emergency fund. These are for expenses that we know will eventually come our way whether it be once,twice,three times, etc a year. We had a few extra $ to put in there so it is a bit over what we have allotted.

Because We are starting this late in the year we will probably not have enough once the actual expense comes up but the good news is that we won't have to come up with the whole lump sum at one time because we will have a portion of the $ in that category which is with our Ing account.

Here are our categories and the amount of $ going in each month

1) Home and Auto: $55
(2) Medical and dental: $35
(3) Gifts and Vacation: $55
(4) Kids: $35

Here is what we have in there right now as of today and a break down for what each category will be used for :


(1) House and Auto ( this covers repairs, wood, snowplow as we live on a snowbelt and can't keep up with shoveling durring the winter months, liscense and Registration fees). : $91.68

(2) Medical and Dental (covers eye glasses, unexpected medication, dental visits, etc..) : $65.36

(3) Kids Account (covers school registration, book fee's, sports or leisure).
: $45.11

(4) Gifts and Vacation : $65.43 (for all gifts throughout the year whether it be for Holidays or Birthdays etc...wanted to add that I don't think that we will be going on a vacation anytime soon, it just felt good to type Vacation in there lol )

We reached the $1000 baby emergency fund Mark!

Yay! it took a couple of months but we did it, doing a happy dance! I had three mini goals lined up for June which were (1) get the emergency fund to the $1000 mark, (2) make a summer wreath for our front door (3) learn to crochet a dishcloths and I have accomplished all three goals YAY!

I have to think on what mini goals I would like to do for the month of July. One goal in which I have in mind is to paint a picture. I guess it will be one of my goals because I picked up some paint,brushes and a board to paint on. I hope that I havn't bitten off more then I can chew but after teaching myself how to sew from watching video's online and reading articles on the internet I think that I can do this one lol.

Anyhow, I am thrilled with my success so far with my mini goals to date.

Emergency Fund Madness!!

I reviewed the four posts here regarding our Emergency Fund and I am just stunned that over the past 1 1/2 to 2 years how we are still yet again at the stage of getting that baby emergency funded.

Over this time period we have been murphy'd left,right,and center. Between dh being without work for 2 to 3 months last year, money owe'd to dh from his previous employer which never did get to dh, losing money on the investment property we had bought and have since sold.

Everytime I think that everything is just grand something happens. We need to have that emergency fund in case the car breaks down, a tire blows,or if we need an emergency dental visit etc. We need to get this done so that I can move on to getting the Freedom Account started (I will post about that once we have our baby emergency fund completed) I already have the categories and how much $ will go into each one once this first step is done. All the extra $ after this will be going on to snowball our debts which of course is another entry to post.

Seriously though, enough is enough and I/we am/are finally going to break this vicious cycle. I'm tired and I want financial freedom and I want it within a reasonable time frame. I don't mean like tomorrow I want the financial freedom fairy to appear, although that would be something, but I want to at least set the plan in motion and keep the wheels rolling until I can finally say we did it!

So, right now our baby emergency fund is at $567.01/$1000. We are over the half way mark. I will not be able to add to this until next week. I thought maybe this week but no, there is no wiggle room what-so-ever in this pay which I have just discovered after talking to dh.

I have to remind myself that we started funding this yet again on April 24th/09 with only $66.89 in our emergency fund. We made a decission that we would take $100 out of each pay (works out to weekly as dh gets paid one week and I the next)I don't know how that amount came to be the amount but we Knew that if it was too hard that we could scale back.

It takes dh and I about 3 to 6 weeks to form a habit, it is just to hang on to that habit lol. With determination and keeping this our goal I have no doubt that we can have our baby emergency fund completed within 3 to 4 more weeks.