Competing Priorities

Now that my RSP is $25K and that goal is complete, I'm going to shift my focus. The problem is to where? My personality type is one that would prefer to focus on one thing and get it done, as it gets done faster and gives me more motivation (which is why I picked the snowball method of paying off debt). But, I may not be able to do that all the time, and I'll admit that I find it frustrating.

Here are my competing priorities (in no particular order):

• Pay my Aunt back the $4K I borrowed for my RSP
• Pay off remaining credit card debt ($3900)
• Save for house down payment outside of RSP (approx $5K)
• Re-establish Emergency Fund (at least $1K)
• Save for trip to Alberta in summer ($200, flight paid for w/Airmiles) - July
• Save for gifts/Christmas/misc (at least $500)
• Buy a bike ($150-250)

Ok, lets add that up (using highest totals and ignoring interest, just for example purposes) = $15,150. I will at the very least pay $400 to my Aunt and probably $400 to the credit card to bring it to $3500. The rest is going to depend on how much my next paycheque is. But let's say I pay off and save a total of $1000 in March, that leaves me with $14,150

After March we have 9 more months in the year (yes, already!) 14,150/9=1572.22 per month that I would need to pay/save (not including interest) each month for the rest of the year. That's pretty much a whole paycheque! Also, since some of those goals need to be completed before the end of the year, that number isn't completely correct, its more for example purposes.

I will have to give my budget a look over to determine how much I will be able to give to each of these goals and how to make the best use of my money.

I will post my budget at the end of the month once I have an average of money spent for the last 3 months. I also get my OT "bonus" at the end of the month so I will have a better idea of the total I have left to repay/save. I will then try to determine how to best fit these payments into my budget going forward. I will post that to this blog.

How about you? How do you deal with competing priorities?

Morgaine