Its been over a year since I posted on this blog and some things have changed ... I'm married! We had a great day and an awesome honeymoon. We paid for (mostly) everything up front so the wedding cash we got was (mostly) ours to spend on the honeymoon. Right now I'm sitting on about $560 on my MasterCard from the honeymoon, which isn't too bad. You don't think you've spent too much until it gets converted from Euros/Pounds into Canadian Dollars! Ouch!
Right now I'm sitting at about $6,500 in debt (all credit card) but I do have $800 in an emergency fund and over $10K in my RSP which means I'm now in POSITIVE net worth! :) That seems like a huge accomplishment to me, I know I still have a LONG way to go to be where I want to be, but just knowing that I own more than I owe makes me feel good.
But ... not so good that its taken my focus away from paying off the debt! I definitely want to be debt free before the end of next year. My preference is to have it paid off ASAP but right now with looking at my current budget, it seems that I'm still looking to at least 8 more months of debt repayments (that's if I leave my credit cards alone for the next 8 months as well!) However, I will be putting any extra money onto my credit cards if I have anything left over (this is NOT including regular payments). So, if I could have it all paid off in 6 months that would be awesome, but I do have other goals and objectives so I can't throw everything I have at debt or it would be counter-productive at this point.
Now that the wedding/honeymoon are done (and mostly) paid for, its time for our next big goal ... buying a house! This is why I can't throw everything I have to debt repayment, I also have to help save for this house. We are planning on using the 1st time homebuyers plan (i.e. take the money out of our RSPs) to pay for our downpayment. T already has his $25K and is working on a "closing costs" account (taxes, lawyers fees, etc). Since I only have $10K in mine, I still have a ways to go. Our goal is to have 20% down on whatever we are to purchase (screw CMHC!!!) and we are looking to spend anywhere between $300-375,000 on a house so our downpayment would have to be anywhere from $60-75,000 plus those closing costs. Ideally we want to start looking at houses around this time next year because we do want to start a family soon thereafter, but we can't stretch ourselves too thin either. I'm planning (starting in November - still paying off wedding/honeymoon related costs and I didn't get paid for my 2 weeks off either!) to put $550 per pay cheque into my RSP, yes, this is $1,100 per month. Its really aggressive but its the only way to have enough in a year from now.
This should still leave me with the $350(+) per pay for discretionary spending after also taking into consideration my other bills and savings (emergency and Christmas fund - probably will be converted into a gift/travel fund after Christmas). If I was able to do it (most of the time) before the wedding, I should still be able to pull this off now.
I'm hoping to get back on track with budgeting and tracking my spending again as well as updating this blog again. Wish me luck!
It is good to hear from you! Congratulations! How exciting! Lots of luck going your way!
ReplyDeleteThanks Jennifer, its great to be back!
ReplyDeleteI feel like I was a bit in a holding period while we were saving for the wedding. While I was happy to have been able to pay for (most) of the wedding in cash, I feel like the money could have gone to other goals. Its primarily why I hadn't posted in a year, I just felt the progress was going too slowly and I wasn't tracking as well as I could have been.
Anyways, thanks for dropping by again :)