2018 Goals

Goals for 2018 (Financial and Personal)

1. Save $7000 towards annual expenses and replace as it gets used
• Start of Year Balance: $2000
2. Pay off remodel loan 
• Start of Year Balance: $13,480
3. Track and budget each month 
4. $280k Networth
• Last year we increased our Networth by $50,768, this is a lofty goal but with a combination of our contribution, payments, employers contributions and a ton of other factors it could happen, right? I guess we will see, lol
• Start of Year Balance: $218,924
5. Plant a proper vegetable garden
• I planted a garden in 2016 and it was awesome! 2017 I planted a small patio garden since I was overwhelmed with my new position at work and didn't have the time to dedicate outside. At the tail end of 2017 I've gotten into my work routine and have a lot more free time, I'm hoping to allocate some of this time to working my garden in the summer.
6. Max out Wellness benefit at work 
• As stated above, I've gotten more comfortable and confident at work and that has helped my energy levels when I get home and on weekends. In December, I started to take a yoga class Thursday evenings. This is completely paid for by my work thru a Wellness benefit. I plan to max this out this benefit in 2018, and even once I've maxed it out continue with my yoga classes as it's been a positive addition to my week. 
7. Complete one camping trips 
• This will be our first time backcountry camping. We have been purchasing equipment throughout 2017 and have the majority of our stuff. We have a trail and campsites picked out but need to nail down our vacation days at work before we book.
8. Read 20 books 

- M

Thank You

Hey everyone, sorry to have left the last post just hanging there but thank you to everyone who left their support. <3

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The weekend after Mocha passed, G and I planned an extremely spontaneous trip to Banff to get out of the house. It was the long weekend for Remembrance Day so we left Friday right after we were done work and came back Monday evening. We had an incredibly relaxing few days hiking around Lake Louise, and hot tubbing at our resort in the evening. We had the money to cover the trip in our Vacation savings account, so it didn't derail much. It really felt that we were spiralling, which I alluded to in my last post, but when I did our end of month balancing and Networth I was surprised to see a jump. 

We won't make our saving goal of $7000 by the end of the year but we have $2000 currently, which is still a nice cushion going into the New Year. I'l do a full Networth breakdown at the end of this month to wrap up 2017 but we surpassed $200,000 in October and in November our retirement account hit just above $140,000. These are huge milestones for us at 27 and 28 and really keep us motivated.

G has been killing the overtime game recently. He is currently in Toronto for a work assignment (coming home tonight). These were his days off so all the hours he's putting in are paid at double time, plus incidentals and meals. This in addition to a lot of other hours, will not get paid out until next year but will help to max out his CPP and EI deductions. The sooner those are done the better!

He has Christmas and Boxing Day off with me though and we are doing what we've done every year for the last three years: go see Star Wars! We rented a hotel in the city so we don't have to worry about driving back and forth. I love Christmas and have enjoyed making our own 'just-us' traditions - which makes being away from home (somewhat) easier. We will FaceTime with my family in the morning and open presents together, then leave in the afternoon. Speaking of presents, we came in under budget this year and I had everything organized/in the mail at the beginning of this week! Feels good once everything is sent off and literally out of our hands.

Tomorrow we have our last Christmas party (we had four this year!) to go too. It's a potluck meal, and we are going to bring broccoli salad. I picked up all the ingredients and will prepare it tonight. We are also doing a small swap/steal gift exchange, $20 values - should be fun!

- M 

Expense Refund

G got his expense refund deposited into our chequing account today. Quite a bit more than we were expecting at $2104.96.

$1000.00 was transfered to our line of credit, which paid this debt off completely (yay!). Then I transferred $1000 to our annual expense fund.

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Goals: 

1. Get back to budgeting  (Done!)
2. Pay off the Line of Credit (Done!)
3. Save up $7000 for annual expenses (property taxes, insurances, etc.) and replace as it gets used
• $1000.00/7000 saved 
4. Pay off remodel loan

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I really believe we can fully fund our annual expenses by the end of the year. It's going to be tight without any overtime payouts but I'm hoping that combined with budgeting and no unexpected expenses we can do it (that's a lot of hoping). We would be $500 shy of reaching it otherwise. I like a challenge though.

This is actually perfect timing for us to reach this step because I just got an email from Tangerine letting me know we qualified for a special interest rate on our savings account @ 2.75%. Every little bit helps!

- M 

2016 Goals

1. 100k Networth - I will talk about this in greater detail but I have been tracking on Networth for a while and would really love to hit this goal by the end of 2016
2. $10,000 TFSA Balance - This is the same goal as last year which I didn’t hit because we withdrew that money to payoff our car loan. I will need to snowball about $1500 outside of my regular contributions to make this goal happen
3. $5000 Extra on Mortgage - Time to start bring down our only debt left
4. Donate to Charity - We need to really improve on giving back, I want this to be more of a focus for us going forward
5. $400/month Average for Groceries - I say average because some months will be up (when we go to the city) but most months will be down {fingers crossed}

I’m going to keep things simple this year. 5 financial goals to really focus our attention on. I’ve spoken about this before but G and I do better when we have a clear goal in front of us. When we were paying off the debt we were so focused once it was paid off we experienced a weird floating feeling. "Now what?" Nothing was holding us back. It’s a good feeling but strange to get used too at the same time.

I have other things I would like to say we accomplished this year. Such as staying consumer debt free, continuing contributions to retirement, tracking our money & budgeting. However, I look at them more as expectations rather than goals.

I’m really looking forward to 2016, I hope it’s good to us : ) 

-M 

2015 Goals Overview

Original post here

1  Fully fund our Emergency Fund (Pass) – Completed even though we had to tap into it in July. We have $5000 in our Emergency Fund, I often wonder if we should bump this up but I’m comfortable with that amount at the moment.

2  Pay off Line of Credit (Pass) – Yes! This ties into Goal #4

3  Stay out of debt! (Pass) – Yes! Like I said a few post ago this was the first Christmas in a while that we haven’t had any debt afterwards. Everything was cash flowed.

4  $5000 left on the car loan – (Pass) What a cute goal that we totally blew out of the water. This baby was gone in August and we don’t miss it at all.

5  Plan and pay for Yukon vacation - (Pass) Yukon has been put on the back burner for now but we were able to go to on a really nice vacation to Vegas in October which was paid for in cash!

6  TFSA balance $10,000 - (Fail) No ; ( Balance at the moment is $3372. We withdrew the money I had in my TFSA to pay off the car. 

7  Sell $500 worth of items (Fail?) – I stopped keeping track… I know I am around $400ish for 2015 but to be honest I donated so much I had intended to sell just because I wanted it out of my house. Still made a good amount selling items though. I was able to donate in total about 30 boxes/bags of items in addition to throwing out countless bags of garbage that was just cluttering up our household. 

8  Try 40 new recipes (Pass) – I have blown this out of the water. Although I haven’t been keeping track, I know I have tried way more than 40 recipes. A lot of this is due to me meal planning and organizing our recipe book. I’m way more comfortable in the kitchen and don’t get discouraged when recipes don’t work out.  

9  Stick to $500/month budget for food (Pass) - Our average was $470 each month. I know I can do better though as it’s been in these last few months that I’ve really excelled at getting our budget way down. This goal will continue into next year.

10  Fully maximize work benefits (Fail) – I only went for two massages this year even though I’m fully covered. Boo-urns!

7/10 Passed. I've pretty much covered a 2015 wrap up in my last post so I won't say too much in regards to that. I just wanted to share my successes and failures for 2015 :) 

- M

Focus

Okay so like said in my last post, we have a lot going on in our lives right now.  I’m trying my best to simplify things as much as possible and that includes our finances. One thing I’ve learned this year is G and I work better when we have one big goal to focus on at a time. We completely kicked our car loans ass this year, then went on a nice vacation (completely paid for) and then topped up our Emergency Fund again after having to use it in order to get our dog cancer free. Oh and did a mention we cash flowed a little under $10,000 in vet bills/pet care? (Don't barf people, we love this dog and would do anything to give her a good life after all the shit owners she's had).

Look at that smile! :P 

So what’s our focus going to be now? Retirement did cross my mind but then I had a reality check: G and I aren’t trying to achieve early retirement. A lot of blogs I read are people who have that as a goal and I used find it so frustrating because I think we weren’t saving nearly enough. I need to stop comparing myself to these people. Although it's an amazing goal to have: it's not our goal. It's personal finance after all - I need to remember that, lol.

“All wealth is accumulated with the first dollar saved”

We've started, that's what counts. I’m happy with what we are saving for our long term, $17,336 each year (yeah that's right, I did the math) comes out automatically without us even thinking about it. That is extremely substantial for our age and doesn’t include any growth and snowballs we or our employer's may add to it.

What we are actually saving for is boring, and not the greatest content to blog about but hey this is real life! With this upcoming move a lot of things are uncertain – and we would like to protect ourselves from any uncertainty by having a nice big cushion of money incase things don’t work out with my job, need to do any repairs on a new house, need to purchase any appliances or anything else that may pop up. I’d rather be safe than sorry and if we don’t need the money then we can decide which account to put it towards – but if we do, it’s there.

Right now the account sits at $5100. $5000 is our EF so really our Move account is only $100. I have $65 worth of cash to deposit from sales I made this weekend plus mileage I will get paid out for a meeting I have at work (I will find out how much that will be tomorrow). G’s paystub uploads tonight so I will be able to see if there is any OT. If there is, I can snowball that into the Moving Fund. I would love to have $1000 in the account by the end of the year. I'm pretty sure I can manage it even though it's the holiday season.

- M 

2015 Goals

1.  Fully fund our Emergency Fund - We are on track to complete this by April 1^st
2. Pay off Line of Credit - See goal 3
3. Stay out of debt! - I’m sad I even have to put it here but if this is checked off by the end of the year I know for sure we will have formed good habits. I’m actually really nervous about this one
4. Have $5000 left on the car loan - I know I originally said it would be great to have this loan paid off by the end of 2015 but I’m going to give ourselves a little wiggle room so we aren’t stretching ourselves too thin.
5. Plan and pay for Yukon vacation - This vacation wouldn’t be until 2016 but we are still currently saving for it and will need to start putting down deposits and such
6. TFSA balance $10,000 - TFSA balance is currently $3617.11, I have bi-weekly payments of $200 going into it automatically: so that would leave me at around $8,800. I must snowflake $1200ish to achieve this goal
7.  Sell $500 worth of items - To help fund one of my other goals 
8. Try 40 new recipes - I'm a horrible chef. Cooking is not something that comes naturally to me but I really want to get better/more confident. This goal is to really make me step out of my comfort zone and try new things
9. Stick to $500/month budget for food - Plan, plan, plan. I can do this! 
10.      Fully maximize work benefits - Go for massages, get new glasses, etc: I'm covered 100% since I am under G's plan and my own at work so I want to use all that I have use for.