Monthly Debt Elimination Progress Report

Since my last post I decided that I needed to track how close I am to meeting my debt elimination goals. I made another spread sheet that shows me what my debt balance should be on the first of a given month and where I actually am. Below is a screen capture of my first report. This first progress report is for January 1st, February 1st and March 1st.




I am a little bit disappointed to end up almost $730.00 behind my debt elimination goal. The main reason for this is that I had an expensive month in February. There are a few expenses that are worrying me, the main one, is the gas expense for my car $225.00/month should have been close to what I would expect. Possible explanations for the discrepancy maybe some kind of mechanical problem (I hope not because I already had an $800.00 problem in February that thanks to Visa is only being paid in the month of March along with car rental) or I am underestimating my commute, I will be investigating this closer because $400+/month is too much! I also had high entertainment and miscellaneous expenses, my wife and I will need to take a closer look at why we spent so much.

I'm afraid that March will not be a better month with my car troubles of February. For a better view of what has happened on the budget see our envelope budget below.


There is some positive news, my wife and I should get a tax return of approximately $4700 between both level of governments. The main reason is because of a substantial investment loss in some rental units that my family and I bought. Obviously applying this to my debt repayment will help but the advantage will be consumed unless I can lower our expenses.

Tax Free Savings Account for Canadians

For those of you that are Canadian you know that yesterday the government of Canada introduced a Tax Free Savings Account!

Basically all Canadians over the age of 18 will be able to put aside up to $5000 in an account, the interest earned will be tax free, even when withdrawn. Whatever money is withdrawn creates contribution space for future savings. The contribution amount will also be indexed to inflation in $500. increments.

This is great news in light of the kind of analysis related to ROI, I was doing in my post Debt vs Savings.

The details can be found at the following link.

Lost opportunity

This past weekend I learned the most costly part of not being financially independent. I learned that the cost is lost opportunity. When I woke up for the third time this Saturday (Brandon, my son hasn't full caught on to the idea of sleeping when it is dark out:) ) I had no idea the lesson I was going to learn.

It started like all other Saturdays, getting the house in order while Anita, my wife, got Brandon ready to go grocery shopping with her. Anita and I were making sure to get an early start because we were hosting for one of my co-workers and his wife and wanted to make sure that our house was presentable for our guests.

When our guests got to our home we made small talk, I showed my guests the renovations that I had done and have had done. Later during a supper of chicken fajitas my friend's wife tells us about a new fancy tea store that they saw in the US and that she thought it would be a great business opportunity. I have to say that I was intrigued by this business opportunity, but I knew that there would be no way for me to invest in something like this with the debt that I am carrying.

I know that some will say if you really want you will find a way. I agree but at what risk? I have to protect my house from risk because it is also my home. I hope in five to ten years to be in a position to answer the door when opportunity knocks.

If you remember in the past I talked about the definition of financial independence being the ability to live on the passive (non-employment) income you generate. For now I am mainly in the debt elimination phase which will be followed by an investment and/or savings plan to generate passive income. That being said I am pursuing other passive income streams; notice the Google Ad Sense on this blog. When I have more time I will explore affiliate programs where links from my blog that result in sales will pay commissions.

As always I welcome any comments to this post.

Monday Debt Elimination Meter 3

This week I will be reporting the state of my debts, you may have noticed that I didn't post any info last Monday, the reason is that I think that it is more useful to describe the state of my debts on the Monday following Anita's (my wife) and my payday which is on the same week every two weeks. Below is the state of my debts to date:

As you can see I have almost eliminated my second line of credit since September 2007 and have started picking away at the third one :).

I think that I am pretty much on track but I am a bit worried about my expenses I will be posting at the end of every month how my budgeting is going.

I'm going to try posting more but I find my off line life is taking a lot of my time.

As always if you have any comments feel free to do so.

What is a dollar worth?

I have been trying to figure out what is a realistic budget for my house holds expenses. I first started by looking at the past year's expense tracking then I made some modifications based on the new present day realities. Below is my first real budget attempt:

Monthly expenses
Bank Fee 12.95
Car Repairs 100.00
Gas 225.00
Car Regist.(AB) 21.42
Driver Lic.(AB) 3.58
Driver Lic.(AL) 3.58
MelocheMonnex 99.92
School Tax 29.16
Property Taxes 145.65
Grocery 600.86
Hydro 146.38
Fireplace 42.50
Videotron 96.61
Primus 13.91
Entertainment 101.64
Gifts 194.29
London Life (AB) 45.83
London Life (AL) 31.31
Primerica (Life Ins) 103.81
RESP 245.09
Safety Box 3.31
Misc 133.20

2400.00

I have already had an 800$ car repair meaning I can not have anything happen until august of this year!

Last summer I wasn't careful with my electricity usage and I used more than what Hydro Quebec expected (I have a pond that had a pump using 0.5kWhr 24hrs a day) so they increased my monthly rate and I opted to pay the amount I owed over the next 6 months (about $35/month). I have been making sure to not waste electricity over this winder and as of January there is nobody home during the day so my thermostats are set low. This should translate into a lower hydro bill.

During my search to find ways of lowering my expenses I stumbled on a philosophy of voluntary simplicity. The idea in a nutshell is to look at everything we buy as costing a portion of our life. When looked from that perspective there maybe a lot of things that are just not worth that price. This is a way to asses on a personal level what a dollar spent is worth to us. I am hoping that this can help me stick to my budget.

I am probably going to start a spread sheet that will help me stay on budget and allow you to see what difficulties, if any, arise from trying to stick to a budget. I think that I will also start exploring different passive income streams that can help me an my journey to financial independence.

Monday Debt Elimination Meter 2

This weeks meter is late by a day but there isn't much to report other than the fact that I have lost some ground as can be seen below. Since last week I actually added $60.46 to my debt. Part of the reason for this is that now Anita's and my pay checks are on the same week every two weeks and when we get paid we put as much money towards our debts as possible and then slowly take from our line of credits to pay our expenses.
I'm going to suppose that the longer I track this the less fluctuations I should see in the Debt payment per month field. Last Monday I had $1923.95 and this week I have $1828.27. I have also updated the interest of my debts to reflect the new lower interest on my debts; they have all decreased by 0.5% since September 2007 except for the fixed portion of my line of credit.

I don't think that I can do much more than I am currently in my debt elimination phase. I think, that in future articles, I will be focusing more an the kinds of cuts to my expenditures I can make to increase my debt accelerator.

As always feel free to comment on what I'm doing and what you would do or have done differently on your journey to financial independence and wealth.

Hybrid Debt Elimination System

Looking carefully at the last post you will notice that something isn't quite as you'd expect. What are the clues that this isn't actually a Cascading or Snowball debt elimination system? Well for one thing it almost looks like I am not making minimum payments since some of the debt doesn't seem to be shrinking. Of course I am making my minimum payments,always make at least your minimum payments, otherwise you will damage your credit!

What I am actually doing is that periodically, usually once a month, I take the available credit at a lower interest to pay the higher interest debt. I haven't done the math yet to see if this makes a significant difference but I find it intuitive to pay off the higher interest debt with lower interest available credit. Also, I think that over time by doing this Cascading or Snowball debt elimination will actually give the same list order of debts.

You should note however that in my case I have the 5.47% mortgage decreasing while the 6.25% home equity line of credit growing, the reason is that both are actually make up my $187500.00 mortgage. The 5.47% principal from my payments is being added as available credit to my open variable rate home equity line of credit. BTW all of my interest rates are actually 0.5% less except for my fixed and closed 5.47% mortgage.

As always comments are welcomed.