Money Talks

February and March will be a good money month for us.

Yesterday was G's pay day, a regular pay day without any big overtime payouts but G also received an expense claim deposited into our account. $2200, helped pay for hotels, meals and incidentals for a few trips G had. We had already paid for all those expenses, so this was just 'extra' money (or really to replace what we had to spend). So once that was deposited I promptly spent on a vacation we booked a few weeks ago. $2700 was sent to pay off G's credit card (the $500 difference is just taken from our regular budget). This completely paid for our trip to Iceland in October! Flights, hotels, and rental car is all booked and paid. So excited!! We have about $1100 in our vacation account right now that I was contemplating transferring out to help pay but with this refund I figured I would just leave the savings account as is. 

I will get my paid tomorrow, so I can transfer $800 to our annual spending account, brining that balance up to $3600. It seems like slow going to bring this balance up - but it's going. The next few windfalls should help, nearly max us out at our $7000 goal.

The first is an unexpected bonus at my work. I'm not exactly sure how much will get deposited after deductions, but according to my best calculations - we should end up with about $1700 next Friday. It'll go straight too our savings since I honestly was not expecting this at all. It was just announced this week and I had to read the email twice to make sure I read it right - lol. I guess we had a pretty good year!

The biggest windfall isn't really a windfall at all: income tax refund. We have all our T4's and other documentation in and I have entered in all our numbers. We should be getting a refund of $3400 between the two of us. I will file as soon as possible so we can get the refund in our hot little hands. If we haven't maxed out our $7000 savings account by the time we get the refund deposited, I will max it out and if there is any left I will start to pay off our remodel loan. 

Some other snowballs include: $40 for dog sitting, $130 for wellness expenses, G has another $200 of expenses that is pending. With all these big amounts and little amounts, hopefully by the time March is done our annual account should be maxed out. Once we hit our 'comfortable' level we will still continue our $200 bi-weekly transfer which will help keep the account replenished when we have to withdrawal for property taxes, car/house insurance, etc. That's the plan, now lets see how it actually all plays out! 

- 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 

Balanced Budget

We are absolutely loving G’s new work schedule - so much more flexibility. This week he didn’t even work in the field - he had courses most of the week and has Friday to tomorrow off. He is using that time starting our main bathroom renovation. It’s not a hardcore reno - just a new tub surround (our old one is cracked), new dry wall, toilet, and vanity/sink combo. We are hoping to save the floor but once G starts pulling out the drywall we will see if there’s any water damage. We priced out new vanities cabinets but found out it was cheaper just for G to build our own - so that’s what he has been working on. I think the actually demo will start during his next round of days off. We have the extra full bath downstairs so there isn’t any rush to get it done, I’d rather have it done correctly. 

I did a detailed budget for next month now that I have an idea what our expenses will be. Even with me not working (I didn’t want to include my income since its not guaranteed) our budget still balances - actually with about $350 to spare. That’s a relief! I was worried without my income and double the mortgage payment some things might need to be cut but thankfully not. I was actually thisclose during one of my ‘overthinking episodes’ to changing my TFSA contribution to $100 bi-weekly instead of the $200 we are doing now. I should have just done the budget properly in the first place instead of stressing, lol. 

I calculated what our retirement savings rate is just for curiosity against G’s base salary (which is what I budget with) and we are at 25%! That doesn’t include G’s pension (which is taken off before taxes and automatically so we never miss it). That also doesn’t include any snowballed money we might toss in there during the year. I feel way better seeing that number and a balanced budget. I have been able to work about one shift a week which helps bring in some 'extra' money. I’m sure in the summer with people going on vacation I can pick up a lot more shifts. I’ve been applying to other jobs in the area but no call backs so far. I’m glad we are in a position where being down one income doesn’t hurt our bottom line.

- M

Help!

Hi everyone! I survived the move and will write a more detailed post in the coming week but I need some advice.

We didn't have 20% down to purchase this house so we had to pay CMHC insurance - this was rolled into our mortgage. Now the Crown pays for CMHC insurance - but it is a taxable benefit. We received a cheque from the lawyers office yesterday for $3250.00 to cover our CMHC fees. This money doesn't have to be used to pay CMHC, it's ours to do whatever we feel right - I've checked and rechecked, the only thing that we were constantly reminded of is it will be taxed at the end of the year. So my question is: do we put it on our mortgage - which we are on track to pay off in 18years and have a 5yr fixed rate of 2.89%? Or should we roll it into my spousal RRSP so G gets the tax benefit this year? Or should we go on a vacation (lol jk).

We are leaning towards the RRSP since it'll have more time to compound and we are comfortable with our mortgage amount.

Any opinions?

- M

Mortgage Chat

We decided with this new mortgage to change things up a bit.

When we first bought our house 3.5 years ago, we went with a 25 year mortgage. It was a manageable payment, that's all we really cared about at the time. I remember the first anniversary of our mortgage we got an information sheet from our bank explaining how much we paid, the interest rate, etc etc. Pretty neat overview of our largest debt - until I got to the principle and interest breakdown from our payments. How depressing to see more money going to interest than principle. But alas, we had much bigger and more expensive fish to fry.

Now we are in a position where the mortgage is our only debt. If we kept things the same and ported our mortgage, we would have been on track to pay it off in 21.5 years (that half is important to me for some reason). But what fun is that? So instead we opted to pay the fee to break our current mortgage and secure a much better interest rate plus change the amortization to 20 years. The biggest difference, however, was when we changed our payment frequencies. Right now we pay monthly, we could have changed this any time but never really thought about it. With the new mortgage we changed our payments to accelerated bi-weekly. Doing that alone shaved off an entire two years of payments! So now we are set to be mortgage free in 18 years - or when I'm 43. How sick is that? And that's not if we pay any extra - which our mortgage allows without any penalties.

I'm really proud since not only did we get rid of 3.5 years off our mortgage by just changing a few things, but we also did this all while doubling the amount of our mortgage. Not that the mortgage amount is something to be proud of but it's a huge motivator to get it paid off even sooner!

We are also taking this opportunity to change our insurances (both auto and house) around a bit, but once I get the final numbers I'll share with you what we saved. :)

10 days until the move!

- M

Budget Update

With the transfer pretty much dominating my life, I haven’t really shared how our budget has been. Even though things have been stressful I’m happy to report that we are kicking ass - and extremely lucky because there have been a few windfalls this month.

This week we will have cleared out our chest freezer and can begin to defrost it. Even though it is staying here with the house (the buyers wanted it and it's at least 20+ years old so we were find letting it go) I want to give it a good clean. I have meals planned that will get us thru next weekend - and a rough idea of meals to get us thru until our move. I’m really happy there has been minimal food waste. I’m happy and our budget is happy. We’ve only spent $91.67 this month for groceries and this includes the shop that will get us thru until next Sunday. I have $300 budgeted this month but I’m striving for $200. April will be a big stock up month/city run but at least I see it coming and can budget for it. 

Our dog Mocha has been doing so well! After such a tough last year and the vet bills to prove it, she is perfectly healthy. No issues at all so far this year other than insulin, needles and special food. Next month we will have to take her to the new vet to get checked and most likely purchase some more insulin but other than that she is really good. I’m a bit nervous with how she will adapt to the new house - since she got to know the layout of this house before she went blind. However the new house has less stairs for her so I won’t be worried about her falling. G and I will be home with her the first few days so we can keep an eye on her (there’s a joke here about her having no eyes but it’s too easy).

"It wasn't me who jumped up on the counter and ate that delicious bread..."

February our moving fund took a bit of a hit when we transferred $4000 out to put down as cash on the new house, but we made up for it this month. First, we got our tax refunds: just a tiny bit over $5000 for both of us, that money was moved right to the savings. Then we got medical reimbursements for some massages and eyeglasses. Those appointments were already paid for by the budget so it was extra money, so $400 got moved over to the savings. Our moving fund is $7500 currently. G just signed paperwork for the milage, meals and incidentals for our house hunting trip so we are expecting another $700 sometime soon - which again is extra since it's all already paid for. This is also a three paycheque month for G. If we stick to our budget we will have $4200 extra we can do whatever we want with. I’m aiming to add $3000 to savings, which would leave us some cushion in the chequing account. If G get’s some overtime on his cheques that’s even better - but I’m only calculating what his regular pay would be. 

So goals this month:

1. Meal plan so all perishable food can be used before the move
2. Grow Moving Fund to at least $11,000
3. Groceries budget $200

- M

Why It’s Important to Have an Emergency Fund

This week I learned why it’s important to have an emergency fund ready and available. G’s paycheque was messed up.

Back in May the payroll systems switched. G said it was a headache at first but once he got used to submitting his claims it was easy. Not only easy but the payout of overtime is down to around 2 months of waiting instead of the minimum of 6 months we were waiting before. Don’t remind me of the 8 months it took to get G’s raise…

Fast forward to Wednesday's paycheque which looked like this:

Notice all those lovely negatives? That new system was being really generous and giving everyone too much money for overtime, on call and shift differential claims. So then this paystub shows up with a wall of scary negatives dating all the way back to June! 

We had no warning that this was going to happen or the amount it would be. Poor G went into the office Wednesday (one of his days off) to compare his accepted claims, with the original paid amount then this new deductions. Oi. He was there for 5 hours. In the end he confirmed that the amount of hours he entered (and were approved) were correct but they had indeed overpaid. But he also found one court date that they originally paid but took back the full amount earned. He sent in a ticket (he even gives tickets to the payroll dept lol) to see about getting it resolved or at least an explanation.

If you add up all those deductions up it comes to $1619.81. If this was a regular paycheque for G we would have only been left about $400. Luckily, he had a payout and it evened this paycheque out for us but I had heard of them leaving people stranded like that. One lady I know was telling me about how when her husband did an isolated posting and their rent from the Crown owned housing they lived in was taken directly off the paycheque. Everything was fine and dandy until a year later when the payroll dept noticed they charged them too little and then took all the money off at once. This was a single income family with two little kids, and they were left with very little for two weeks...

We were lucky enough to have it not really affect the pay it still made me extremely aware how important an Emergency Fund is. G works for the Government of Canada – the Government people! I know I shouldn't bite the hand that feeds us, but seriously? Had this happened to us a few years ago when we had nothing saved, it would have been a disaster.

So thank you Emergency Fund. Although there have been times I pondered if we should do something more with you, I’m glad we resisted. You never know just when you might need that little bit of cushion and piece of mind.

- M

Bad News/Good News

Tuesday I went to my friends’ acreage right after work. Her dog went missing last Tuesday afternoon and on Friday they found his body in a trap about a mile from their property. Friday morning another one of their dogs came limping back to the house, lip completely mangled, blood all over her face, eyes blood shot. My friend took that dog to the vet right away and her husband went into the bush with his gun (thinking it was coyotes). After about 10 minutes walking thru he found the other dogs’ body in a noose like trap. They didn’t know anyone was trapping near-by. The Conservation Officers for the area are involved – as they know who’s traps they were and its not his first time doing it illegally/without care. Her other dog somehow survived the trap that caught her but she is still recovering – what a fighter. So after work on Tuesday I picked up a flower arrangement I ordered into town and went to spend the evening with her. We had dinner, talked about what happened: she’s more at peace now knowing where he is and what happened to him. They buried him near a lilac bush where he would always bed– a very fitting final resting place. I left there after a few hours of visiting, drove back to town and gave Mocha a big hug when I got home.

On Wednesday I got a Christmas card from my grandparents with a $160 cheque. I deposited right away, then G & I agreed to move it over to our vacation account to help fund our trip back home to Ontario next year. Instead of $160 I moved over $200 just to squeeze our budget a bit. The account is sitting at just a little over $800.

Today, the good mail continued but this time it was our Energy bill (surprise, surprise). We are on an equalized payment plan with both our Power and Energy bills. Our Energy bill for the last year was $160/month. But they reassessed for 2016 and our monthly bill is going down to $115/month AND we have enough credit that we won’t have to pay our bill again until April – score! Now, we are used to the $160 in our budget and I don’t intend to start spending it on crap, so what’s the plan? From January until April I’ll snowflake $200 into the moving account (rounding up to once again squeeze the budget and I like round numbers better). That’s $600 extra dollars added to the account in the next three months. Then following months until we move I have a snowflake of $50 to help fund our moving expenses.

- M

PS: Any pet owners reading; hug your animals tight & maybe an extra treat <3

TFSA vs. LOC

I was looking over our accounts tonight, seeing how we were doing so far this month. I clicked on my TFSA, curious what the interest rate is at… 0.60% Hmmm. I knew it was low but not that low. We make more interest on the high interest savings account than my TFSA… I click on our LOC: 6.7%

I wonder over to G, let him know. After about an hour of discussing we have agreed that I am going to withdrawal my entire TFSA, all $8855.79 of it, close out my TFSA (and stop contributions) at our bank and pay off our LOC. That will leave us with $1355.79 that I will open a TFSA investment account with at Tangerine and restart my $200 biweekly contributions (not skipping one if all the paperwork goes smoothly). Our goal for the rest of the year will be to top up out Emergency Fund once again, but instead of the $5000 we had before we want to increase this to $10,000 - we just feel more comfortable with this number given our dogs health & owning a home.

A lot of decisions were made tonight, but I’m honestly feeling really good about this. G even suggested once we get any windfall of money and our emergency fund is starting to fill up we can do a lot more lump sum payments to my TFSA to fill it back up. We definitely aren’t going to inflate our life style since we both agreed we live pretty darn well on our budget right now. I’m really happy with where we are going to be at the end of this month. Pretty much a 6% return just by filling out a few forms!

Bye-bye car loan!!

- M

Using the Emergency Fund

Rereading my last post, I can't help but to laugh: I totally jinxed myself... We had to use our emergency fund, there was no way around it.

Lets catch you up to speed here. G took Mocha for her appointment last week and the results where good and bad. Good: no masses besides the one on her leg. Bad: cancer cells were found in her liver and spleen. They had her in for surgery the next day. She has been recovering well from her surgery even though they had a remove a large amount of skin from her leg. But the fact they were able to do the surgery at all is good news as they told us they may have to remove her entire leg: which is where, given her other conditions, G and I were going to draw the line (that was a really really tough conversation for the both of us to have). We are expecting to know what stage cancer she has sometime this week, to which they will recommend the next steps for her recovery.

We spent a little under $3000 on our dog this month, I had budgeted $500. Yes, this is an extremely bitter pill to swallow but it could have been worse. First thing 'extra' to get cut from the budget was our LOC payment, we moved over the minimum amount due so that was out of the way until next month - it is sitting at $9500 at the moment. Next thing we needed to get taken care of was about $1000 worth of expenses from G's trip up to La Ronge. He was in charge of paying for his hotel, which we were not expecting until he got there. Yes this will be 100% reimbursed but it was still not budgeted for and was sitting on a credit card. We paid this off, being able to cash flow this expense from our account (which was our plan since learning about this curve ball). Last but not least was the vet bills. This is were money was starting to wear real thin in our account and I knew no matter how I looked at it or calculated there was no getting around taking from our emergency fund. So we moved over $2000 from our $5000 EF. That on top of the $500 I already had budgeted and cash flowing the few hundred we had left, we were able to pay off the vet bills in full. Our chequeing account is sitting just a little below $700, so we still have a little bit of a buffer as the month is not over yet.

I will say during this really difficult time, I am so glad we didn't have to worry about money or the cost of getting her healthy. We just sort of rolled with the punches and stayed strong. It wasn't until we had Mocha in the backseat of our car and were on our way home after the surgery that I started bawling. All the emotions I was able to keep in check over the last few days came flooding in all at once. But once I let out all that emotion I could finally listen to G saying how good Mocha is recovering and financial, we got this. The emergency fund served its purpose, and we will begin to rebuild it once again so when the next round of punches comes our way, while its kicking our ass emotional, it won't be hurting us financially.

Mocha and her cone of shame :P 

- M

A Home-Made Weekend

Yesterday, G got all the information about his shifts up north. He will be going to La Ronge and policing the town as there have been quite a few break and enters – people taking advantage of a shitty situation. He needs to bring a weeks supply of water and food, but I’m not going to consider this part of our food budget as it will all get reimbursed. Oh and they warned him about the horse flies, I guess they are pretty bad up there so bug spray is also a must.

We talked things over and any extra money he will be making while helping up there will be going to our vacation fund. He has a minimum of 20 hours of overtime plus full incidentals for 7 days so it’ll be a nice bump for our Vegas trip in October. Work hard now to play hard later, lol. Joking of course, G and I don’t even drink alcohol.

Budget wise this week has been very good. Groceries are at $147 currently but I need to make a quick run to the grocery store tomorrow to stock up for the week. Although now that it’s only going to be me to feed it’ll be cheap. Tonight I'm making Beef Stroganoff for dinner– all ingredients we had in the house except onion soup. G is currently making a rhubarb pie for dessert – rhubarb was picked for free from a friend’s garden and we had the piecrust in the pantry! So it’s been a very inexpensive and ‘home-made’ weekend. J 

- M 

Final Debt Repayment Overview

Just incase you didn't see my last post: G & I finished paying off our line of credit! And as promised I'm going to break down where the last payment came from.

We started June with a balance of $3500, after the interest was posted we owed a total of $3515.09. After one of my pay days we did a payment of $515.09 -- leaving us $3000 left to pay. This seemed impossible to be able to pay and I really had my doubts of even reaching our goal of putting $2000 towards of debt this month (let alone eliminating it complete)! But G's last pay cheque of the month had a huge pay out of overtime he had been owed. I never count this or rely on these payments in our monthly budget as: 1. it's just extra and we shouldn't get used to living on it and 2. it could be months before we actually see a pay out even if he has banked overtime hours. So, once that hit the our bank account we made a payment of $1800. This is were I got real antsy. Seeing the LOC at only $1200 left. I just wanted it gone. G & I discussed and we made a transfer from our emergency fund to our chequing account (so we can track it on our budget) and then made the final payment to our LOC leaving it at $0.00 owing. Damn, that feels good to write even a few days later, haha.

No the decision to drain our emergency fund wasn't easy, but what sealed the deal for us is that we both have our TFSA account which we can withdrawal from anytime. We consider these retirement funds separate from G's pension and my RRSP, but that money is there just incase.

So now our #1 goal is refilling our emergency fund! I'm really hoping to hit our goal of $10,000 by the end of the year and definitely think it's doable considering how much debt we paid off in just 10 months (still pinching myself).

Now I guess this blog can finally be about what I named it Saskatchewan Savings!

- M

Weekend Happenings

I am currently outside on our back deck enjoying some lovely summer weather and the last few days of my vacation.

Yesterday and today were extremely low key days with us not really doing much or going anywhere. But even though we didn't spend anything per se the bill is going to be coming. That's because on Thursday and Friday we had our roof replaced! Yes, remember a few posts back I spoke about having to use our Emergency Fund? Well that would be on a new roof. It was a tough winter here at the Saskatchewan Savings household. We had some extremely bad leaks that we had to deal with. But we did, and kept the damage to a minimum -- the only room in the house to get damaged was luckily (?) the one room in the house that needs to get completely redone! Although it sucks, things could have been a lot worse. Anyways, so once the snow started to melt we called a few contractors in our area to get quotes. We ended up going with a guy that lives right in our town because he gave an honest quote (G went to the hardware store and priced out everything to make sure and actually ended saving us a few hundred dollars by negotiating - that was a very proud wife moment for me) and we basically flat out told him that if he does a crappy job it's his name on the line because in small towns you can't hide behind a company name when everyone knows your family (that sounds a lot more harsh then how we said it lol). Anyways so they worked Thursday & Friday and I am extremely impressed with how professional he is. He has called G up on the roof a few times to show where the trouble spots were and explain the process, etc. It's nice because some companies don't think it's necessary to teach their clients, but G & I are both learning a lot and now know what questions to ask and things to look for if we ever need to purchase a house again. 

Although we still haven't gotten the bill yet we know we are going to have to dip into our emergency fund. Luckily we have enough in there to pay for it in full and still not drain the account. Our plan is once we have our LOC paid off in a month or two we focus on bumping up on EF for a few months until its at our comfort point. This shouldn't be difficult to do given that the LOC payments eat up at least 40% (if not more) of our budget each month. I think to prevent this from happening in the future I am going to open another savings account for anything to do with the home, that way the two accounts have very different purposes and it doesn't get messy/confusing. 

If you are reading this post would you mind telling me in the comments if you have different savings accounts for different reasons or end goals? Is it helpful or more confusing keep track of everything? Thank you in advance if you share!

- M

Vacation Week

G & I are on vacation this week together, we've been able to get a lot done around the yard and house because of this beautiful weather we've lucked out with. Nice to finally have the windows open and get some fresh air.

On Tuesday we traveled to Humboldt, the closest city with an actual grocery store, and I was able to save us a good chunk of change thru coupons and store sales. The shopping trip should have cost us $761.57 but we only paid $517.64; saving us $243.93 or 32%! This is my first real year couponing (and keeping track of my savings), so I know that number isn't as impressive as some people can get, but I'm working on it. I'm still really proud of myself considering $52.51 of that saving total is just coupons alone -- and I didn't include any store points I accumulated (Shoppers had 20x the points). Anyways, it was nice just to get some different shopping in even though it's a 4 hour round trip. Oh the conveniences I gave up to be able to see the Northern Lights right from my bedroom window ;)

The rest of this week is going to be extremely low key. A bit of house work and painting a closet, G has been organizing the garage and I've been working in the garden. I might put up some more clothing items up for sale as all but one of the items I put up last week sold. I made $45.00 plus I received two mail in rebate cheques adding up too a little under $20.00. Still kicking myself I hadn't started selling stuff soon. Oh well

- M

Emergency Fund

When I first started getting serious about paying down our debt a few months ago, I searched for solace in other people on the Internet. I mean, I knew debt was a huge problem in our country (nay: the world) and I needed to know I wasn’t alone in making debt repayment a priority. This is how I found the awesome personal finance community. Real people, making real changes to their life style, and being really *gasps* honest!

Reading about how in debt some of these people really are and how much they have been able to pay down is so inspiration! But I was confused when people started discussing their emergency funds. I mean I knew what an EF was but I was and it’s purpose but I thought that the luxury of having a few thousand dollars just lying around was only something that could happen once you were out of debt. The more and more I read, the more I understood: if I really wanted to be truly debt free I need to stop having to rely on credit in case something happened. How is the debt ever going to go away if any progress you make gets racked up again? We need a safety net. So after discussing a bit with my husband we agreed each paycheque we would set up automatically transfers to a savings account we would open. If we didn’t see the money we wouldn’t be tempted to spend it. Now if you told me last year I would have close to $5000 in savings I would say your insane, and then tell you I need it to pay off my credit cards – which I would then max out again in a few shorts months, never learning any lesson.

I’m hoping by the end of this month we will have met our first goal of having $5000 in our savings account. We are pretty happy with that number and won’t be making extra payments to that account until we get our line of credit completely paid off (by extra payments I mean before if we every got any additional money we would split it 50/50: half going to debt and half going to our savings). We will keep those automatic transfers though as we’ve gotten into the habit of not having that money available to us and I don’t want to get used to it again, lol. And that’s just it, saving isn’t as difficult as I thought it was going to be. Saving is just a habit, and I really am kicking myself for not realizing this earlier, but alas hindsight is 20/20.

-M