What's in the Cards?

If I could sell $hit to pigs, I'd be a millionaire! 

Everyone, I must admit, I am really not bringing my ‘A’ game these days - in both my debt repayment and my blogging skills (and the $hitty readership on my blog is indicative of this). Things keep popping up that I am not prepared for which are preventing me from putting more money into my debt repayment than I would have wanted this month and since I am in intensive French training it’s quickly killing my ambition to write anything these days, well that and that fact that I don’t have much good news to share in the debt repayment situation. Ok, that’s not the only reason that I am effing this up, it’s because I am spending like pig at a $hit sale. Just like the last time that I had a month with 3 paychecks, I used the third check to have fun and pi$$ my money away on crap. I think a big part of me wants to spend because I really need to do take breaks from my debt repayment plan, but I do acknowledge that this way of thinking is completely counterproductive to how I will get ahead and pay off the big bills.

Drunk Penguin!

This week I didn’t stick to the plan at all! I took a day off to go to a water park which involved renting a car, paying for gas, park admission, and food, so the total came to about $100 for one *SUPER AWESOME FUN* day (kind of killed my budget there). The second big purchase I made were some repairs on my bike. The old beast was in desperate need of repairs. The back tire was so bent out of shape and my gears and chain were shot, causing my bike to wobble like an alcoholic penguin and my chain to slip like a cow wearing roller skates on ice every time that I pedaled – it was frustrating and hazardous, but kind of cute and hilarious (just picture that drunken penguin)! The bike problems had been going on for weeks so I decided it was about time to get it tuned up, which is usually $35 but it turns out that my chain, gears, and tire had to be replaced so I ended up with $95 worth of repair work to be done. I understand that this is all a part of bicycle ownership, and I should be happy that this isn’t car repairs, because that would cost me a lot more money! Heck, you can barely buy gas for a few weeks with $95! So just like that, almost $200 was gone. And while I’m on the subject of spending, I want to say that I behaved in bringing a lunch to work, but I really didn’t. I did manage for one day though, so I guess that’s kind of an improvement, right?

This month has really not been terrible for killing off the debt though to be honest, and I think that overall I have put more money toward debt this month than I have ever before. I am proud of that accomplishment and everyone I talk to is incredibly impressed with my conviction to get this paid down so quickly, but I am really starting to miss spending money on myself. The trip to the water park reminded me of all the fun things that I used to do with my money. It’s really hard to keep this up sometimes, but I know that I can keep this up if I buckle down and focus.

For example, recently I was walking through the mall and saw all the awesome sales on, I wanted so bad to buy myself some new clothes, but I was able to use some restraint and avoided the situation by telling myself I had not 1, but 2 wardrobes FULL of clothes at home. So instead of going out and buying more clothes, I went back home and tossed all of the clothes that I never wear into a gigantic pile on my floor to give away to charity, and it felt really good! There in front of me was a stack of coats, shirts, pants, and all sorts of stuff that I never wore and I had to really say to myself, how badly do I really need to go out shopping? Why did I have this desire to live with so much excess? For those of you who are struggling with a need to spend, try doing this exercise and make a pile of all the things that you don’t use to motivate you to stop adding to the pile of excess. Once you realize how much you have that goes unused, you have an easier time deciding to buy things that are truly going to beneficial in you life which wont just be added to the pile!

Crazy lady.

Now on a side note/tangent, I was at the local Pride festival today and they had free tarot card readings at one of these booths so I thought, what the heck, this could be worth a laugh, and it was in some ways as the cracked-out gypsy-looking lady started both me and my friend’s reading with some sort of line about our mothers, which must have been her “thing”, especially when she thought that my mother was dead! Some fortune… Anyway, she said that I seemed to have a good life going for me, but I was going to go through a fundamental change, that either I was going to change careers completely, or move away from here. The ‘reading’ was super vague and it could apply to any of us really, but her little BS story did get me thinking that I really feel like I am already going through that fundamental change in my life with this process. Never in my life have I felt that I am getting so ahead and goal oriented, it really feels pretty incredible!

I have a milestone birthday coming up this week and I will turn the coveted age of 29, so it really has me looking back at the past 28 years and thinking about what I’ve accomplished and where I am going to go next. Overall, I have to say that my 20s are going amazingly and I know that I will finish off this debt repayment very soon and be proud to one day soon say, I, John, have NO Debt! Thanks for reading all you diehard fans! I promise to get this blog and my spending back on track and continue to blow your minds! 

p.s. RIP Jack, you inspired me more than you know. 

Overboard

Man Overboard!! 

Where do I begin? Lately I feel like I’m springing off of a diving board and while I’m midair realizing that my head is going right into the shallow end, and the pool isn’t filled with water, but rather a huge pile of $hit. On the other hand, I feel like I am the first one sprinting out of the heat and right on track to having the new record for getting all of my debt paid off on time. Part of me keeps hoping that Gail is going to pop up and surprise me to either tell me that I am doing really well and give me a cheque for $5,000 or that she is going to tell me to get my $hit together and stop spending like an idiot. I think it’s going to be the latter in this case. Either way, I would get to meet Gail Vaz-Oxlade!

Now Gail would be on my case because starting out the week, I took out my $140 that I was going to use for spending money on life (food mainly), and I ended up spending $110 in a matter of 2 days! This is why carrying cash is so important, because you see right away that you’ve spent all the money you have and get a harsh wake-up call that you don’t have as much control of your cash as you think you do. The mistakes I made were beyond obvious to me, but yet I still went out and effed it all up! The first thing I did when I got my cheque was go out to a goodbye lunch for a colleague who I worked with for maybe 3 weeks. I’d see her around the office, but I didn’t really know her and quite frankly I don’t think she would have given 2 $hits if I were there or not, but yet I still went – and ORGANIZED the freaking lunch. It kind of goes with the territory for my new job, but still, it seems so pointless to spend money on a lunch out with someone who I don’t really know. That lunch cost me $29; that doesn’t seem like much at all doesn’t it? But look at my budget after one lunch, now I only have $101 to get me through the week for food and any other random expense that comes up.

We all make mstakes

My new job is going well, but it’s making me recognize challenges that I forgot that I faced in a busy office environment – spending! When you have little time for yourself to take breaks, you go for what is convenient; whether it’s the $1.40 that I spend on a coffee every afternoon or the $8.00 I spend on lunch pretty much every day or even the $5.00 I spend on breakfast every morning, it all adds up! If I were able to stick to my guns and only spend money like that at lunch time, then I would still be on budget, but when I get home, I order a pizza, or something like that instead of just going to the grocery store and making myself something to eat from scratch I end up going overboard. I increased my spending limit for the week and yet every week for the past month, I have been going well over the limit for spending. It’s not just the weekly stuff that I am spending too much on either, my phone bill has been over $100 for the last couple months and as much as I love my iPhone, I really feel like Rogers has me bent over the counter each and every month with this extravagant expense.

The key for me and anyone else on a budget is that when you overboard, you need to identify why you are making the mistakes that you are making and figure out you’re going to get back on the boat and sailing toward your goal again. When I am off track, I can’t help but notice where I am making mistakes in my life. The number one thing that has got me concerned lately is my health. When I am stressed out, I eat garbage foods that don’t benefit me in the least and my waistline reflects that. I don’t know about you, but I can’t afford to go out and buy new clothes with my budget, and there’s nothing more stupid to me than having to buy new clothes because you’ve been eating nothing but unhealthy foods. For me, my expanding waistline is a sign that something is not going well right now. Some of you are thinking, “Oh shut up John, you’re the last person who should be thinking about your weight” but it’s not about my weight, it’s about the fact that I am not doing enough lately to manage my stress and take care of my health.

Stress also influences my spending – if I want something to make me feel better, I go for something that makes me feel better about myself, but it’s always only temporary. Take yesterday for example, I was dropped off at a bus station next to a mall for me to get home after a day with friends, but I ended up going to buy a pot at Winners, and then walking out with the pot and two yoga towels instead of just getting on the bus and going home. I don’t need any of this stuff, but it’s been on the “want” list for a while. I felt good about the purchases because they were really cheap (the pot was only $7 and the towels were $20 each and they normally cost $40-50) but then later I felt like a$$ because that’s $50 toward my debt that I could have paid off.

Danielle For the Win!!

A key problem to my financial failure in the past couple weeks has been my demanding schedule. I’m putting in 12 hours of French classes every week on top of a 40 hour work week and then add in my 4 hour yoga volunteering and my time is stretched pretty thin. It’s not necessarily that I am finding this to be impossible to do, but I have found that I have not been in the mood to come home and cook something when I put in 11 hour days. I would rather just sit back and turn my brain off while watching Big Brother – seriously, I am in love with that show, it’s a guilty pleasure for sure – go Dani! My schedule has gotten to the point where it is taking away time from doing yoga. I used to do yoga 4 times a week and now I am lucky if I can get in more than 2 times. Yoga has been instrumental in helping me stay focused on my goals because it gives me the time where I can take a pause from my busy day, relax, and reflect on all the good work that I have been doing for the past 10½ months. I really am not taking advantage of the free yoga deal I have and I really think that that has been a major influence in why I am losing my focus.

August has added further complications to my spending because I am receiving three paychecks. Yes, it is wonderful that I have all this income coming in, but it has enabled me to keep in the back of my mind that little voice telling me “don’t worry John, you have 1.5 times more money than usual, so go ahead and indulge in some extra spending this month.” That attitude does not get my debt paid off any faster. It’s funny that when you have more, you want to spend more! It’s no wonder that you hear about all these lottery winners who end up broke after a year. That would be the ultimate fail for me. If I won the lottery I would like to think that I wouldn’t be broke for the rest of my life!

Alright now, I am being pretty harsh on myself though considering the excellent progress I have made on my debt repayment. I have now hit the 30% mark ($11,390.56 – OMG) and my goal of paying off 33% in 12 months is definitely going to happen if I can keep this pace up – and that is so exciting! Now I am going to buckle down and focus, focus, focus. This can continue to be possible as long as I remember that I am the one who got me into this mess, and no one else. Thanks for still following my blog, even if it has been pretty lackluster lately. I’m getting so close to getting my MasterCard paid off and when I do, there will be quite the party!!  

A Challenge within a Challenge

When I left off in my last blog, I mentioned that I was going to do a little challenge for myself, not to spend any money for a week. Well I'm very proud to say that I almost did it. Yes ladies and gentlemen, I effed it up. There was nothing I wanted more than to write you another success story about how I had achieved greatness and like every god awful family movie, have yet another happy ending to share with you. But life isn't some sappy movie where everything just goes smoothly. If you want a movie to be great, you need some failure, some passion, and for fox snakes, some drama! So here I am again, sitting in the airport waiting for my flight which is now 2 hours and 45 minutes delayed (3 hours is their golden number for free $hit) writing you my blog entry on what worked in my anti-spending spree and what completely effed me over. 

The week started off just like any other. I woke up on Monday morning, bright and early and hit the snooze button on my iPhone 2 times (seriously, even my alarm clock has been rendered obsolete thanks to iPhone). I got myself all showered up and ready to start my week, but I did two fundamentally different things on this particular morning. The first thing was to pack a big tupperware full of carrots and celery sticks. It took me all of 5 minutes to peel and cut up all those yummy veggies and I was out the door. But wait, what about the second ever-so-important thing did you do John? I think it's the smartest thing I did all week; I left my wallet at home! I'm talking debit, credit, and even ID. You would be surprised how easy it is to still get money without your debit and credit cards. As long you have ID, that money is still readily accessible which is why I couldn't risk it. I saw someone pull this trick on Gail's show and letmetellya, Gail was NOT impressed. 

Out in the real world, it was a lot easier to avoid spending when I literally had nothing to spend. Of course I would have been able to simply go home and grab my wallet at anytime, but I didn't because I'm pretty bad-a$$. I showed more restraint than a comedian at a Star Wars convention. My Monday seemed to be rather effortless. I went home for lunch and ate some leftovers, certainly a success and since I had brought snacks and coffee is free at my office, I was able to keep myself happy and not hungry. 

Tuesday was a whole mess of the same old crap, with the exception that I wasn't able to go home for lunch. Leftovers can look good and smell good, but many times they end up tasting like some half too hot, half too cold pile of horse feces. This was the case for my first attempt in a long time to bring a lunch to work. I did the reheated pasta thing which can work pretty well but today, not so much. You know when the pasta gets all rubbery and dried out? Yeah. Anyway, I still ate that garbage and went to my lunchtime class de français. Il c'était bien. 

Then there was Wednesday. Again, I brought a lunch and met up with my friend Derek for a little gossip/bit€h session. Again with the pasta, but this time I jazzed it up with some zucchini which adds some moisture and made it not taste like a$$. I left the wallet at home again and had some more veggies to snack on, but when I hit hour 11 of my work/after work French class day, I knew that the following couple of days were going to suck the big one. I was freaking tired and hungry. Normally I would have left at the break to grab a coffee and a chocolate pecan square (it's like flavors are having sex in my mouth), but since I didn't have any money, I was rendered powerless. This just goes to show that I know myself too well and that I did the right thing by leaving the money at home. 

Wednesday, oh Wednesday. This day, I kind of effed up, but I'll let you be the judge. So far the people I talked to about this day have all agreed that I didn't screw up, but boy let me tell you, I was positive this would have been my downfall. After my 11 hour day, I got home and made 3 dishes, my supper, my lunch for the next day, and my snacks (leftovers, pasta, and hard boiled eggs respectively). I was feeling good about myself and how well I had done with the challenge thus far, but then I remembered that I still needed to pick up my book club book for my flight home. I had gotten $50 worth of gift cards for Chapters (the Wal-Mart of book stores) so I figured it's not spending money since I'm using a gift to pay for it. Now, you know you're doing good at avoiding spending when you walk into a store and it's completely different from the last time you've been in it. That was a moment where I just got a stupid grin on my face because I really did feel good about not going shopping for so long. But at the same time, I had lots of money in gift cards with me (you should note I also had another $25 I found that I had kept for years with me as well) so I was really tempted to buy much more than what I came into the store to buy. I picked up all sorts of things and managed to say no to them all, including a brand new Settlers of Catan game and even another book by Gail!! I don't know what Gail would say about that one... At the end of the ordeal with the store, I managed to get the book I came in for, A Tale of Two Cities AND I got it for only $5.50! Stupid Oprah's book club version was $25!! It's the same freaking book! Even though I did spend $5.50 I still feel like I did a tremendous job by not buying. 

When I got to Thursday, I was a total spoiled brat. My partner cheated for me (not on me) by making me a meal fit for a king. There was shrimp curry and red AND white wine, and chocolate for dessert. That was such an awesome treat and I certainly felt good to be spoiled. I guess it goes to show that good things will come to you when you do good things for yourself. I really am a lucky duck. 

Which now takes me to today/Friday. The day where I spent. There is only one way to explain why I effed up today - poor planning. Truth be told, I knew this was coming on Monday when I was thinking about my flight. I forgot to factor in that I needed to get to the airport! The one expense that I never budget for decided to show up and $hit on my parade (it's the saying you love, but made new for 2011). That's right ladies and gentlemen, I spent $5.20 on bus tickets and I have lost my challenge. The funny part, I probably could have just got a ride to the airport because my flight is so delayed and wouldn't have spent a thing. 

Now I face my extra challenge for the week, sitting in an airport for 4 hours without anything to eat but a roll of Mentos (I suck on them on the plane to release the pressure on my ears). I am so hungry and ready to hit up the Tim Horton's (I know, I'm THAT hungry) and getting an ice Capp and some kind of sandwich. I guess technically I would have been on the flight anyway with food in my belly, and I do have a couple of plums to eat, but I don't think it's wise to go another 6 hours without food. So, it looks like I'm going to go all out and get me a beer, start my book, eat some rapingly high priced airport food, and let my challenge have its way with me. 

This challenge had certainly been worth every moment though. I needed to remind myself that I am capable of living on less and I lived for 5 days on spending $40 total, and that's pretty spectacular. I learned that you can always rely on loved ones to encourage and support you. Wish me luck in Saskatoon. I spend like a mofo when I'm on vacay so I hope come back with more wonderful budgeting tales of yore to share. 

Love always, 

John

P.S. I also bought two 5-cent candies when I got my bus tickets. I'm such a liar!! 

P.P.S. they just announced yet another delay so I got a meal voucher worth $10! Things are looking up! 

Excessive vs. Restrained

The classic "Moon Landing" on Modern Family

Without question, yoga has become a staple in my life. I have now been practicing yoga for two years and the results have been wonderful – just check out my butt next time I pass you on the street! It’s a great way for me to just relax, let go of my day and all my stressors and focus on me me ME. Anyone who has really been bitten by the yoga bug knows that classes are ended in a pose called shavasana (which translates to corpse pose). The pose is seemingly easy, all you do is lie on your back as if you were dead, but it’s actually the most mentally challenging of all the poses. You need to clear your mind and focus on all the work that your body does for you and experience a moment of calm, not only for your body, but for your mind. Now, when I first started yoga, I never liked to stay after class and lie around, mainly because the place that I practiced yoga had the tiniest freaking change room ever, and you were very likely to experience a “moon landing” with one of the fellow yogis.

Shavasana is so easy, even cats can do it!

Lately, I discovered the immense benefits of staying in class at the end and really experiencing shavasana. I will stay there for at least 5 minutes and really focus on eliminating the things in my mind that stress me out. This has been instrumental in keeping me focused on my goal of eliminating my debt. Now, working at a yoga studio, I know that to properly clean a yoga mat, you only need about 3 sprays of mat cleaner to properly clean your mat. As I’m lying there in shavasana, trying to relax and clear my mind, I hear the yogini next to me spraying her mat down (which is really poor etiquette btw – take it outside). You think she’s done, but oh no, she just keeps going and going and shpfft shpfft shpfft, the sprays keep going and going, I mean really, how badly do you stink that you need to spray your mat this much? After spray number 10, I started to count how many sprays she used on her mat; the grand total: NINETY FIVE! Needless to say, I was not impressed and it got me thinking about my next topic for my blog: Excessiveness.

This is a subject that I have touched on before, but I feel like sometimes we need to be reminded of how much money we can save by making conscious decisions to use less in our lives. I was watching an episode of “Til Debt Do Us Part” starring my idol, Gail Vaz-Oxlade, and in this particular episode there was a newly immigrated husband who was completely caught up in this idea that he needed to have everything and that the more stuff he had the better his life would be – to the tune of $68,000 worth of debt. It was depressing to see someone move here and get so caught up in the idea that we all need to have a giant house or expensive car, marble everywhere and hardwood everything to show that we are doing well. Why does all this $hit matter? I pay $550 to live in a palace of an apartment and I feel like a spoiled bit¢h! So I’ve taken a look at what I have been doing to live within my needs and I want to pass some pearls of wisdom on you all.

The first thing I was able to cut out of my life was transportation costs. Not many people know that I used to own a pretty sexy k-car. It was so great for getting around and I got totally caught up in driving around and listening to music. I wanted any excuse I could think of to go out and drive so that I could blast my tunes on my awful Wal-Mart speakers and get out and about. When I moved away from home, I got rid of the car and was able to use my Uncle’s equally $hitty car. The gas bill was a ridonkulous! I was spending $10 everyday on gas, and that’s before it went over $1.00 per litre. This left me flabbergasted. How was I supposed to get ahead when I was wasting all this money on driving? It was clear to me that I would need to move somewhere closer to where I worked so that I could save on fuel costs. I wasn’t even spending money on insurance and car maintenance and I could see what a pain in the a$$ it was to have to rely on a car. Now, I might spend $10 a month on getting around – really, how amazing is that? Not only has this had an immense effect on my pocketbook, it’s had an incredible impact on my health. So my message to you is simple, look for a way to cut back on your transportation costs.

I realize that I am in an unusual situation to live so close to everything I need, but the point is that you can make a conscious decision to cut back on getting around. In the summer, try taking a bike or walking to work; if you’re trying to lose weight or get in better shape, I assure you that this will give you results – again, I’m talking sexy butt. If you can take public transit, do it. Challenge yourself to go one month to use you car as little as possible and watch how much money you will save.

It's funny because it's true.

Now speaking of challenges, I was reading a blog by one of my commenters (Lifeisfullofsunnydays) and they were doing an exercise where they tried to see if they can go a whole week without spending any money, so I am going to do just that. I just got back from the grocery store where I spent $35 dollars on groceries so I’ll see how far I make it. I have to pay rent this week, so that’s not going to count, but I think that this will be an awesome challenge to prepare me for my trip to Saskatchewan which is happening this upcoming weekend! I am so excited to be on vacation and I am really stoked to be still receiving a paycheck while doing it! So, here’s how this no spending thing is going to go down, I am not going to buy anything until the weekend. No cup of coffee, no snacks, not even more groceries. I really think that I can do this, but I really hope that people will understand when I join them for coffee and don’t buy anything. This week will be the opposite of excessive which is what exactly – restrained, frugal? So if you see me out and about feel free to buy me a coffee, or dinner, or even better, a beer. 

$10,000 Paid off in Less than 10 Months!!

$10,000 used to be a big deal!

Can you believe it?! It’s not even been 10 months and I already have paid off more than $10,000 of my debt! What a great feeling to know that I am doing this process right. I just imagine all the wonderful things that I could do with $10,000 and I want to kick myself for not doing something about all my debt sooner! $10,000 would put me so much closer to having a nice down payment on a condo, I would have a new computer, and I could take a trip to just about anywhere in the world for $10,000. Imagine how I’ll be feeling when I have $37,810.51 (I have this number memorized) paid off! Just imagine what I could do with that kind of money. That dream is closer and closer to coming true and does it ever keep me inspired to push on with this process, only $27,694.78 to go!

I’m also happy to report that I have been staying on track with my New Year’s resolution to write a blog entry each week and the response has been overwhelming! I now have over 5000 hits on my little blog and from what I’ve heard this is a pretty big deal for someone who doesn’t advertise anywhere. Soon enough Gail will admit that she’s an avid reader and we will finally get a chance to meet and she’ll bring me along on all 3 of her shows as her sassy sidekick! Oh I can dream…

Now, sometimes I get some stupid and some smart comments, on my blog and I never realize it until many weeks later. The latter is the case of a comment from my friend Andy who is currently travelling the world like a madman and still having time to write about it! He writes: “Hey John! I love that you're only spending 1% of your income on transportation. If only we could convince the rest of the world! I'm confused about your new spending breakdown and how it affects your every day spending. You say you went from 19% to 21.5% for 'life', but from 20% to 18% for rent. This tells me that you already factored in the raise. Can you put the breakdown in dollars again? If only just the every day stuff? Like, what is the breakdown for food and clothes and entertainment. That was my biggest interest before (mostly because I thought it wasn't sustainable, and when you did it, I was inspired!) How much are you cheating by adding money to 'life'? :P xoxo Andy”

Now let’s keep in mind that Andy is travelling the world and has been able to budget to spend $1 a day to stay in a beach resort so we’re kind of in different budgeting situations, so the fact that he still reads my blog at all is a feat in itself, but nevertheless, what a marvelous comment Mr. Andy. His comment gave me an idea about what to write this blog post on, and believe me, some days I am stretching for ideas as I am sure you can tell from some of my past more questionable entries.  

First of all, I haven’t readjusted my budget to reflect my future income, I’ve simply reworked it because I noticed that my average income has become stable now that I am a permanent employee and I’m not doing contract work anymore. For instance, before I was averaging about $150 less per check than I am currently bringing in. Yes that’s right, I’m bringing home more bacon, or tofu bacon for you veggies out there. In a week from now, I’ll be bringing home even more moolah! Talk about sweet! The only downside is that I’ll need to rework the budget again. So there’s that Andy, it’s not a projected budget, it’s just a reworking of what I am currently bringing in and spending.

Gail would be putting on the celebratory tiara!

Now the second thing that’s changed is how much my rent is. There was a month when I started doing my new budget that I was paying an inflated rent of $825 instead of my usual $556 which skewed the average amount I was paying for rent rather considerably. I was short a roommate that month so instead of splitting the money 3 ways, I was splitting it 2 ways. Therefore my percentage of my income going to rent was much higher and I was uncertain how much my rent would work out to be so I kept it budgeted rather high. But now, in comparison with the money I am bringing in, I found that my rent only works out to 18.5% of my budget since these days I bring in about $3,000 a month ($4,500 on the triple check months like the one coming up in August – whoo!). This figure is well below Gail’s recommended spending on housing so I’m pretty happy about that!

Now to be fair, I should be factoring my hydro bill into my rent, but I don’t. Hydro is really cheap here since we’re all pretty good about not leaving lights on or running a lot of electricity on the non-peak time so each of us only pays about $10 per month each for hydro. I could also add in another $21.75 a month for my internet bill (yes that’s for each of us, we use a lot of internet) and then there’s my phone bill from Rogers who likes to bend me over and have it’s way with me for $90 each month – really Rogers, how do you sleep at night? Anyway, enough talking about all the figures, why don’t I just break it down for you here:

Income: $3,000

Breakdown:

Savings: 15% = $450

Debt: 45% = $1,350

Transportation: 1% = $30

Life: 20.5% = $615

Housing: 18.5% = $555

I always squish my Transportation and Life costs together because it just makes more sense to me. So my life expenses now become $645 or about $21 per day for life. Now, that doesn’t mean that I am out spending that money on eating out at restaurants or betting on the strippers, but I could if I wanted to budget for it. Now taking that $645 that I have each month to live on, I take out my regular expenses ($21.75 for internet, $90 for phone, $10 for hydro) and I am left with $523.25. Now, I take that and divide it by the weeks in the month and I am left with about $130 for the rest of my life. That’s broken down like this:

Life: $130.00

Life Weekly Breakdown:

Groceries and Personal Care: $70

Clothing and Gifts: $10 (almost never use this)

Transportation: $10 (almost never use this)

Entertainment: $40

Want to save money on transpo?
Get a bike like Jake here, AND stay in shape!

Now, I bring in a little more than $3,000 per month and so everything just seems to balance out. I found that because I was working out more that I needed to eat more food since I was burning off so much energy, so it only made sense to me that I spend more money there. If I end up with leftover money, I spend it on the things I want to spend it on or simply just move the money to my debt or to my savings account. It always seems to work out just fine every month and it’s clearly better than the clusterfudge that my spending was when I started this process. Keep in mind that I was spending about $100 a week before on life so having $130 is making a world of difference. Nowadays I really want to just get this debt destroyed so that I can start spending my money on the things I want again. I can’t wait for that day! Good luck to you all on the debt destruction journeys you are all on! Imagine, if you only have $10,000 of debt, you could get rid of it all in less than a year! How cool is that?!?

Hold on to Your Butts…

Going off the rails!

There’s a storm a-brewing and it’s headed right for me. Many debt distractions are making their way to throw me off the rails of this crazy train. Although I am doing incredibly well with my debt repayment I am going to be encountering some may-jah changes to my regular schedule. The key over the next few weeks will be to focus, focus, and focus. What in the world is all this excitement John? What, oh what, could be your kryptonite? How is it possible that the latest and greatest debt detonator could ever face such perils that he will be taken so far off course from his debt repayments? Now that you’re on the edge of your seats with excitement, I encourage you to sit back, relax, and read along as to what variables are going to attack my spending. Oh boy, it looks like I may need to redo my budget again.

Do you remember a little while ago, back in March when I told y’all that I got a permanent job? The great news about all this is that I have benefits coming my way starting at the end of June. I’m talking about the whole shebang; dental, optical, rectal, you name it, I got it. Where the challenge begins is that now I have to pay things like death insurance, medical insurance, union dues, pension, and all that wonderful stuff that I’ll probably be stuck with paying until I’m 65. Yes, you heard it here first kids, I don’t think my generation is going to get that “freedom 55” ticket that our parents are getting. With added (but wonderfully exciting) expenses such as these, my gross pay is going down. Only by about $100 mind you, and since I got a raise anyway, the effects of this should all be minor.

If it’s so minor John, why even mention it? I’m getting to that part you guys, geez Louise! Because I worked for 7 years through various contracts with my current employer, I am now able to purchase back all that time that I put in. In other words, I can buy back all that pensionable time in order for me to get out of the workforce sooner, much much sooner. I have calculated how much time I can purchase and it works out to be about 723 working days or the equivalent of 3 years! These years come with a price tag of about $4,000-5,000 (or so I estimate) in order for me to purchase them back. Now I’m no fool, I am all over buying this time back, and it’s cheaper to do so now rather than when you’re making more money in the future. The added bonus is that I can retire 3 years earlier when I’m approaching retirement. Now with buybacks, you can opt to have this amount slowly paid for through deductions from your paychecks, and that’s what I’m going to do. The pickle that I’m in is that my gross pay is going to go down while I’m doing this, and those of you who have been reading along in the blog know that I am not one to run away from paying off debt anymore. I think the best approach will be to find out what the interest rate is on this repayment and then squeeze it in accordingly to my debt repayment process.

My kick-a$$ new helmet!!

There’s so much more to this storm of spending other than this new buyback option. Like a fool, I assumed that I was getting about $600 back in income tax from the Government. However, like Mom always said, when you assume, you make and A$$ out of U and ME (get it? – yes I know it’s a lame joke). Anyway, with this assumption in mind, I’ve been a little more liberal in my spending – not crazy, but a little bit of my alter ego, Spendy Spenderson came out. The things I did buy were justifiable though. Finally, after years of bike riding, I caved and bought myself a helmet (on sale!). My luck has certainly been pushed on this, so I think it was a smart move. My helmet is pretty freaking bad-a$$ too, if you saw it you’d agree. It has little skulls on it which totally means that I am hardcore. While getting my helmet though, I decided to get some new handlebar tape, and that set me back another 25 bones. Add to that my 3-year anniversary with my partner and the $120 meal I bought for us which I thought my refund would cover as well. Needless to say, my Government windfall never came through. In fact I owe them $79.40. All the more reason I should be putting my money into a tax-free savings account. So that little curve ball is nothing to sneeze at, but either way, it did throw off my game a little bit, however I think my “crazy” purchases were totally worth it.

Big change is coming its way for my schedule. I’m not going to lie, having a boring and routine schedule has really made it easy for me to stay on track with my spending. Every day I get to come home and prepare myself a fresh home cooked meal. I recommend this to everyone – not just for your budget, but for your health. Did you know that I can almost see my abs through my former beer belly? Talk about exciting; now I’ll even have a washboard to do my laundry for cheap! The curveball is that I’m going back to school. Yes, I’m going back to school yet again. It’s not university or college though, it’s French language training. Every Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, I’ll be spending 3 hours after work learning how to parler en Français. This is an incredible gift from my employer to spruce up my language competency; however it does throw off my schedule. After work, I usually enjoy an hour and a half of hot yoga and then I come home for dinner around 7:30. Now, I’m going to be doing French until 7:00, yoga until 9:00 and dinner around 9:30. I don’t think this is really sustainable, so I’m going to see if I can bring dinner to my French classes. I really hate making lunches in advance. I find that nothing ever tastes the same when it’s been sitting in a bag for 24 hours until the next time you eat it. I gets all soggy and tastes like plastic wrap, and then there’s that mess of lugging along those dirty containers – ew. I guess this will challenge me to go the distance on how I spend my food budget and we’ll see if I can resist the temptation to buy takeout.

Worst Place to go when you're in debt!!

Alright, now here comes the doozie - Vegas. Yes, in a mere 3 weeks I will be living it large and in charge in Las Vegas. I think that at this point, if I were on one of Gail Vaz-Oxlade’s shows she would slap me across the back of my head.  Why the H-E-double hockey sticks are I going to Vegas when I’m trying to pay down $38,000 worth of debt? Well, it’s for my brother’s stag party and I am in his wedding party, so I do feel obligated to go and I do have a bit of a game plan. Have you been watching my savings account climb ever higher? Have you also noticed that I have now paid of $5,000 on my credit card?! I’m so excited about that I could pee myself. I have made an executive decision to reward myself by taking $1,000 from my savings for spending to Vegas to cover me for the 3 days that I’m there. I don’t think it’s completely unreasonable for me to live on $1,000 for 3 days in Vegas. The real question is how much of the rest of my savings I can hold onto to pay for my trip to his Wedding in August!

So as you can clearly see, there is a storm a-brewing which will push my limits to crazy new levels. Will I survive the storm? Will I burn out from French and cave in to take out? Can any man only live on $1,000 for 3 days in Vegas? Stay tuned until next time kids on the next episode of John’s Fight for Financial Freedom!

To Halifax, With Love

John and Kate minus all the effing children!

I’m not gonna lie to you, like a drunk sorority girl at a fraternity party, I was out of control (with my spending this week). On Wednesday, I headed east to the Halifax (aka Hali, or HFX) for a business trip, followed by a weekend of local beer and seafood – and it was freaking delicious.  Hate to say it, but I strayed far from the budget in a few ways so I think it would be best to go over the reasons for my financial fudge-up in order for you to learn from my mistakes.

 

The beginning of my financial demise is that I had been depriving myself of shopping and spending on me for far too long, which leads me to my first point – everyone breaks at one point or another. Like a fat kid deprived of candy for a few hours, as soon as I saw that sweet temptation, I filled my hands with the sweet sweet satisfaction of shopping. Can you believe that it has been since the end of October since I bought myself ANY clothing? Now, those of you who know me, know that I am the kind of guy who has a lot of clothes; perhaps too many. I’ve taken the time to count up some of the numbers just so you can understand how unnecessary it is for me to go shopping. I have:

20 Dress shirts

18 pairs of pants

20 pairs of shorts (including gym shorts)

9 scarves

15 jackets

14 non dressy button-up shirts

5 sport jackets

6 hoodies (or bunnyhugs for all you Saskatchewanians)

80 shirts (sweaters and cardigans included)

Oodles of underpants

Stacks of socks

Piles of Pajamas

Bundles of belts

Too many ties

And the list goes on

So as you can see, I really don’t need to buy anything else for myself as far as clothing is concerned, but I have been depriving myself of the rush of how good it feels to put on and buy a new piece of clothing. This is where I have run into a problem. For 6 months, I have been away from shopping malls and clothing stores for month because I know that if I remove the temptation, I won’t be tempted, however by not ever treating myself, when the temptation is there, I am shopping as if everything is 90% off!

The second factor in my overspending evaluation was being on travel status with work. Admittedly, I am new to this whole travelling with an expense account process and since I was allowed almost $90 per day (whoo!) to spend on meals and incidentals compared to my usual $120 for an entire week of living, so I quickly got used to spending like one of those insane couponers on TLC. I was right back into eating out, drinking too much, and buying any odd thing that I “needed” because I knew it was covered (very much like those crazy couponing ba$tards). This spendy spenderson mentality seemed to stay with me after I was off my work travel status and into my personal weekend of fun! I kept spending as if it was all covered by some magic money wand that would automagically fill my wallet with cash. The problem was that every morning when I opened my wallet, that $100, $200, or even $300 that I had in it, disappeared. Had my money turned into food, and my wallet Rita MacNeil’s mouth?

Donairs in Halifax are EPIC!

Alcohol is my worst friend when it comes to making logical spending decisions and believe you-me I drank a lot more of it than I usually do while I was in Halifax! With every great meal, you need to have a great glass of wine (I tell myself that it brings out the flavour). See Alcohol is happy to point out that the server is hot and they deserve a 20% tip for being hot, or that cab driver let you bring a leaking donair into the back of his cab, so he deserves a $10 bill for a $5 cab fare, or sure I can spend more money on booze, that’s why I took it out of my bank account, right? Oh Al, you get me every time!

So what does that translate into dollar amounts John? Well, let’s see, without factoring in my meals and incidentals:

Wednesday:

$50 for swim trunks from American Apparel

Fancy new clothes from H&M ($36 for the shirt and cardi)

Did you know that employees at the Halifax American Apparel are actually helpful and not pretentious d-bags? I didn’t know that was possible. Usually you get eye rolls for asking for something on the top shelf. And why swim trunks you ask, well I wanted to go swimming in my hotel, and of course when I did, I lost a contact lens and there were annoying children in the pool who never actually swam, but preferred to throw a ball around my head while I was trying to relax in the hot tub.

$20 for a case of beer (to share with my friend, and an attempt at trying to get people to want to hang out with me in my hotel room (I ended up drinking 4 on my own – sad face).

Friday (gotta get down on Friday since everyone is looking forward to the weekend):

$244 at H&M. Now to my credit I made out very well; with this money I bought 1 pair of pants, 3 pairs of shorts, 1 cardigan, 4 t-shirts, and 15 pairs of socks.

$50 on supper – but it was the best duck confit and pizza I can remember having in the past forever.

My awesome owl art print!!! 

$30 to see Hey Rosetta!

I was so drunk I didn’t realize that they were on stage and then ended up meeting the bass player at another bar afterward – so ridiculous.

$75 on beers throughout the night

$5 for the best donair I ever ate

$10 for a drunk taxi ride home

Saturday:

$40 for yummy in my tummy food at the Market.

$15 for an art print of a kicka$$ owl!

$15 for more beers to go with my amazing supper made by the loveliest hostess ever - Kate.

For a grand total of: $554 on a really fun trip. Obviously I need to learn to get a little better with my money when I’m travelling or only take out a limited amount of cash when I’m hammered, but honestly, I feel like I needed to reward myself for all the hard work I have been doing. It doesn’t look like I am going to be getting wooden Catan soon, but I have learned a valuable lesson for when I travel – make a plan and stick to it! If you’re ever planning on going to Halifax, I highly recommend going – the people, scenery, and food are all marvelous!