Eating out is costing us a fortune.

We were doing great with eliminating fast food for quite awhile there, brown bagging it to work and cooking dinners at home. Unfortuntly this has taken a turn for the worst as it's becoming quite common that were eating out at least once per day.

When working with a family of 5 that can easily throw your finances out of whack as the average meal for us at any fast food place usually averages around $30 dollars. Which it doesn't take a genius to figure out that averages out to $210 a week. A huge waste of money!

We really need to realign ourselves with our goals and get back on track here.

Mint is it refreshing?

Ok let's face the fact I need a software like Mint.com! We need to get our financial and family life's back together. Is it cool and refreshing like a mint always is?

I've been trying to get a hold of the early beta realease from Mint.com for awhile now with no success then I notice SavingExplained is running a contest to win one of 5 invites into the refreshing world that is Mint.com.

Now my post isn't unique or filled with images or creative images and video's to get one attention. It's strickly a post of need. Reading the information from the Mint.com page I believe this would be nothing but a handy tool in our adventure to reduce debt and improve our finances.

Definitely not a good start to the morning!

I am so frustrated right now, one because I was woke up at 7 a.m. by a raving lunatic by the name of my wife yelling at me where's the money! So here's the deal I get home last night from work at about 12:30 in the morning and the house was dark everyone asleep so I decide to have a bite to eat and a beer. I hear her voice come from the bedroom all sweet sounding, clearly not asleep can I have some money for the States tomorrow?

She's going to finish up the back to school shopping and I already gave her $100 U.S. and she asked if she could get another $100 earlier in the week just in case. So I said fine but remember the initial budget was $300 and that she already spent $210 on back to school last time she went to the States.

So I grabbed a $100 and placed it next to my wallet. In her sweet sounding voice can I have some more? Uh no that's $200 US for you it should be more than enough, to make a long story short this went on for about 15 minutes till I finally said no this time I'm putting my foot down that's it your not taking anymore!

So back to the raving lunatic this morning 7 a.m. where's the money? She's checking our bank account online there's only $116 left in our account what happened to the rest of the money? I reply back half asleep I don't know your the one that makes all the cash withdraws that I can't track you can see everything I spend it's right there in detail. She replies back with while I checked your wallet and there's no cash in there so where did it all go, we still need to pay the babysitter $180.

Oh ok she's not worried about the finances she's trying to grab more money to take with her to the States, so this is where the argument gets into full swing because somehow everytime were without money it's all my fault. Which of course is on a bi-weekly basis and I'm so sick of having the finger pointed at me. I always use the debit card so everything is documented as to my purchases which usually is a case of beer and a tank of gas I'm such a bigger spender on myself. Everything else goes to the bills.

Now if you've been reading my blog you'll remember the post earlier this week Nothing better than completing your goals about how finally I was getting out from behind the financial black ball. So you might be asking what happened with that, while basically it's starting to fall apart apparently I put the horse before the carriage.

I haven't been completely honest as I was embarrassed to admit 2 weeks ago I went back to the 2nd Paycheck Advance place that I got out of, read Victory against payday advance . I thought no big deal I knew I was going to get paid out my vacation pay from my former employer, I would get the money and be back out of it and the other one as well in two weeks.

While granted that hasn't happened now, I did reduce the amount significantly but I'm still stuck with the two of them. And the $1000 that was to go to repay the loan of $1200 while now it's down to $900 and I still have to pay the sitter the $180 which is clearly not in our bank account as well as we still need groceries for the week. So that $1000 payment is quickly starting to dwindle down! What a great way to start my morning off as well as my financial week!

If the raving lunatic and myself can't start working as a team here nothing is ever going to change as we've been going through this for the last 7 years. It's really time for it all to stop.

3 New financial goals for the future.

As promised I would lay out three new financial goals for our family to replace the 3 goals completed as of this week. Here are the two financial goals that still need to be completed:

4) Pay off another personal loan in the amount of $3060 by August 08'
5) Pay back money that was withdrawn from children's account of $1000 by December 08'

Which of course moves to #1 & #4 (reason follows later) here are the following three.

1) Pay off another personal loan in the amount of $3060 by August 08' 14 months ahead of schedule.
2) Pay off car loan of $7600 by December 08' 8 months ahead of schedule.
3) Another personal loan of $5000 + interest that hasn't been paid in quite sometime I can't even imagine what the total is now, by December 10'
4) Pay back money that was withdrawn from children's account of $1000 by December 08'
5) Have an emergency savings fund of $5000 by December 10'

Now upon review I noticed I need to go back and make some adjustments to my NetworthIQ.com profile as well as my NCN profile which at the current time I can't seem to find. As my debt listed is incorrect, apperently I'm deeper than I thought that's what I get for not listing each item down on paper and going off of the top of my head. The children's account has been shuffled to the #4 spot as right now I think it's more important to get the interest baring accounts taken care of first.



Related post:
Nothing better than completing your goals
New goals for the future
NCN Network
NetworthIQ Full Review

NCN Network

Pre-Warning as I am starting my new job and I have quite a bit to learn my postings might be a little irregular over the next month. Just wanted to give everyone a heads up while I continue to search for help on the debt-o-meter which I hope to feature on this blog. I have joined the NCNnetwork.com one of the grandfather and premier debt blog movement sites, as you'll be able to track my progess there as well as NetworthIQ.com and Wesabe.com

Do you let your wife go shopping alone?

What in the world was I thinking? Let my wife go back to school shopping alone in the States! You can read about our plans for Back to School Shopping and how we planned on saving money. Low and behold my wife comes home last night starts showing me everything, this was $3 or this was $7.

My only concern and question to her was did you bring back any money with you? To which she replied yes, so now I'm estatic thinking she brought $200 U.S. with her and she even managed to bring home money with her. Later that night I hear her talking to her sister and I hear the amount of $290, $290 where did that figure come from did you take $290 with you? At that point she makes sure to tell her sister thanks now he knows and tells me how she brought back $80 with her. Ok did you get everything the kids need, um no I still have alot more shopping to do.

So let's see were down $210 U.S. probably in the range of $225 Canadian and you have more shopping to do, we have your cousins wedding this Saturday which you want to give a $100 too. And yet were still behind on some of our bills great! Now I know some of you out there are going hey $225 on back to school shopping for 3 kids isn't bad at all, it is when you consider most of the clothing that was purchased was summer wear aren't you suppose to be buy fall clothing?

Not to meantion they really didn't need that many clothes in the first place, and she should have discussed with me prior to how much she was taking with her instead of being sneaky. Hope she can keep the rest of the spending under $75 as that's what we budgeted for.

Gambling Addiction?

Here's a dangerous game you can play, gambling and seeing how the regular season for the NFL is right around the corner I thought I would touch on the subject. Here in Canada we have this great lottery product by the name of Pro-Line I have to admit I love the game.

Basically how it works is you have to make a minimum bet of anywhere between $2-$100 on a minimum of 3 games up to 6 games with your odds increasing with the more games selected. All the teams you selected to win must win and cover the spread you selected otherwise you lose. There are other variations of the game but this is the one that I most commonly play.

Now the reason I'm writing about this is not to show support for gambling it's more of an issue in our household that can and does often send out finances spinning out of control. For example with Pro-Line I started playing it years ago with one $2 wager just for fun. The problem came that me and my wife were always fighting over the t.v. on Sundays. Soon she was watching over my shoulder as I was placing my bets and decided she wanted to give it a try.

No problem maybe it will get her to pay more attention to Football on Sundays a win win. So we started placing two $2 bets while I won on watching my Football on Sundays, but found the bets escalating to several $5 tickets as she got more into it. Now you might be like several $5 tickets isn't bad while that may be the case, when you tie in her love for instant tickets, bingo, weekly lottery and the casino that amount quickly grows out of hand!

At one point in the past when things really got out of hand, I'm glad to report it's much more under control now but to give you an example of how fast you finances can spiral out of control and by no means are we the quote un-quote high rollers.

Pro-Line = $30 a week

Instant Tickets = $40 a week (ballpark as she never shows me all the tickets she purchases only if she wins do I see them usually)

Bingo = $90 a session 4 X a week =$360

Casino = $200 a week (I was playing roulette consistently in the casino if I won I would be in the casino night after night, until the dealer told me one day that I might be developing a problem. Here I thought that dealer was my lucky dealer so I would always go to his table, turns out he was because I started avoiding his table due to the comment and started losing consistently and I haven't been in the Casino since over 2 years. If your out there thank you)

For a grand total of $630 a week!!! Just short of my take home pay per week! We were spiraling out of control, sure we won some but not enough to cover the losses. I'm glad to report that this isn't the case anymore. Not that we don't gamble at all anymore but it's much more inline.

Pro-Line will keep it under $20 a week.

Lottery Tickets $2.50 per week as we only play in my group pool at work now.

Instant Tickets $15 per week (she still doesn't show them maybe she's hiding them better but I don't see nearly as many tickets around anymore)

Bingo $90 every two weeks (her paycheck and it is her form of entertainment I can deal with $90 every 2 weeks I couldn't deal with $360 every week it almost caused our separation!)

Casino as stated before thanks to the dealer I haven't been in a casino in over 2 years.

Grand total $82.50 per week still alot but a significant drop. We could probably make some more adjustments to this I would rather see it around the $50 mark.

NetWorthIQ.com Full Review

As many of you are already aware of from past postings I’m a huge fan of NetworthIQ and several people have asked me to post a full review on the site. So I feel obliged to honor the request of my readers. First thing first I found out about the site due to the badge on A Canadian and Her Money you’ll see the same badge on the right hand side of my blog. I decided to click on it to find out what it’s all about which of course took me to her personal financial page which she decided to share and at that point knowing how I wanted to keep everything visible and accountable on my blog I decided to follow in the_money_diva footsteps.

NetworthIQ gives you several options, which will go over each one in short detail:

Explore- Allows you to do just that you can view the newest users or the most active and the high and low gainers for the month. You can also look through categories listing which is the option I like the best, where you can break down the community by age, income and occupation these are just some of the options.

For example what I personally look at when I’m on the site is I’ll look at people who work in retail then I’ll find ones that are in the same income bracket as myself and see where their net worth is to gauge myself if I’m on the right track or not, you can also email the user to ask questions or comment on their progress under each monthly statement.

Questions & Tips - This is where the benefit of the community comes into play, you can ask any financial question and rarely have I seen a question go unanswered as the community is very active in helping each other out. The other section listed as Tips is just that, users can post various financial tips that they have decided to share with the community and once again you can comment based upon these tips.

Journals- If you decide to you can keep a journal of events really no different than using a blog for those of you who decide not to blog or even if you do blog. I personally don’t use the feature as each user profile has a link to their website or blog, if I come across a user that I’m more interested in finding out more about and they have a link to their site I always make sure to take a jump over to their site.

My Portfolio- Here’s where you come in to play, where you can post all your financial information and it should be noted that you do have the choice of either keeping it public or private. No one is required to share their information if they choose not too. You have access to your questions and tips, journal entries, your mailbox and account settings from here as well as your account profile if you wish to include one. You can get your badge from here as well.

As well as another great feature which I love the comparison report which will pop up a nice graph showing your net worth vs. the average net worth of everyone on NetworthIQ, your age range, your income range, occupation, education and finally if your in the U.S. your state. In my case I run about even in terms of my net worth with others in my income bracket but I’m actually quite far behind in all other categories so I have some work to do.

As far as the Pro’s and Con’s of the site goes:

The Pro’s are:
1) An active community that is willing to help out.
2) Excellent way of keeping track and comparing your net worth.
3) Requires only a few minutes per month to fill out your information and stay active.
4) User friendly and easy navigation.
5) You can and should use a nickname and no other personal information is reveled including your email address, as the site uses their own mailbox.

The Con’s are:
1) User profiles sometime become inactive for extended periods of time anything over a year old I believe should be cleared.
2) I wish more users would post a profile to go along with their financial information as it just gives you better insight as to what’s going on in their world as well as their goals.
3) Of course user’s can lie and post a much higher net worth, which just doesn’t benefit anyone.

So that’s what NetworthIQ is all about it’s a great community and hopefully after reading this you’ll decide to go and take a look for yourself and decide to join the community.

Feeling Great for Once!

I have to admit for the first time in a long time I feel great. I notice myself smiling more, not worrying myself to death and most of all sleeping better. I'm not sure if it's the creation of this blog or the new job on the horizon but I finally feel like everything is going to work out fine. Anyone that has been in debt knows exactly the feeling I'm talking about, where you feel like the whole world is crashing in on you and you don't know what to do to stop it.

If your in the same position as us or want to avoid becoming like us. I think that having your own plan of attack is just what the doctor ordered, you have to be honest with yourself sit down with your significant other and go through all your finances and determine a starting point. List all your goals and keep them within view and then determine how you exactly plan on attacking them. Don't worry if your looking and going I don't have extra money to place on this and that account, I'm barely making it by as it is. You just need to re-align your finances with your priorities.

Trust me we live paycheck to paycheck right now but I determined to make it stop and create a future for my family. I know alot of people that are heavily in debt in credit cards and car loans. Few I know are actually in the boat we're in fighting just to keep our hydro and phone on and on top of that paying outside debt as well. As I spoke about in How Were To Going To Achieve Our Goals you need to decide whether your going to live below your means or find another way to bring in extra money each month or a combination of the two.

The time to start is right now, create a plan and then execute on it and re-evaluate it if needed. If you need some encourgement start your own blog I'm telling you it's a great tool to keep everything in front of you and hold yourself accountable for your decisions. Keep an eye on our blog and watch us get the monkey off of our backs for once and for all. Or write me my contact info is at the bottom of the page and we can work through it together, just remember I'm by no means a expert otherwise we wouldn't be in this situation in the first place but sometimes it's just feels good to talk to someone else in the same situation.

Savings Account

We have begun the process of opening up an ING savings account for our emergency savings as it was the first goal to be completed of our New Goals within the timeframe of August. I just need to mail away the check now which will be done on Monday in order to finalize setting up the account.

At first were going to only put away $50 a month but hey it's a start right. Will continue to monitor our finances and if were able to in a couple of months, probably closer to the new year will double up the amount for each month. I'm just excited to get the ball rolling and follow through with our plan of attack.

Post That Caught My Attention

You want to know what's so great about blogging? You join a community and if you have read any of my post so far you'll know I'm a huge advocate for communities you can learn so much more from many than from a few. Many bloggers feel the same way we don't view other's in our niche as competitors. That's why I'm more than willing to share when I come across a great post and today I came across SavingExplained.com post on Take A Peak Under The Hood Of My Savings

It's honestly a great post on microsavings and planning ahead for future expenses it's so simple I'm surprised I haven't read about it before. It's definitely worth a read as I highly recommend it.

Wesabe It Is!

As I spoke about before I planned on joining a social money network budgeting site by either Wesabe.com or Geezeo.com to compliment my NetworthIQ.com account. Now I should note at this time I do not currently pay 2 post if your not familiar with it, it basically means I'll write post to endorse a certain company for X amount of dollars. You can check my bank account if you wish I'm broke :)! After posting today's earlier post How Were Going To Achieve Our Goals post I received a comment from the Jason Knight CEO of Wesabe.com of the following:

Knight said...
Hi, I'm Jason Knight CEO of Wesabe. First, congratulations on deciding to get control over your money.

I had a quick look at your goals and interestingly they map pretty closely to the most popular goals on our site. Paying off debt and saving an emergency fund are our members top priority.

I hope you will try out our service and connect with the thousands of people who share your goals and are actively working on achieving them.

If you have any questions about Wesabe please don't hesitate to contact me between 12-4pm PST 800.511.8544

Due to this I feel no other reason not to join Wesabe.com as I believe it shows how much he stands behind his site and the customer service that comes with it. In this day and age of the internet I think we've lost this personal touch so when someone comes out like Jason Knight has it only makes me sure that I've made the right choice and can only support his site that much more. Tomorrow after work I will finish setting up my account and you'll be able to find me under workingcanuck on Wesabe.com and thank you Jason for helping me make up my mind.

How Were Going To Achieve Our Goals

Day 3 and so far you've seen our Old Goals that were written several years ago that were forgotten about as well as our New Goals for the Future which we will follow right here on this blog. Now I know people are saying wait you have old goals which you didn't follow through on and forgot about, how do you plan on attacking your new goals and improve your personal finances. Quite simply I've come up with a plan of attack, here are the tools I'll put into place to ensure that we follow through with these goals:

1) Creation of this blog creates accountability to ourselves, everything is out in the open for all to see. In other words I'm calling myself out and knowing that if I get off the beaten track that the readers will have a field day calling me out on why am I not saving for this or your spending to much money on that. Much like the social money networking sites. I'm hoping that you guys will help us stay on track on eliminating debt and putting our money to work for ourselves.

2) As many of you are already aware I'm already part of the community at NetWorthIQ.com which is a great site at tracking your net worth but for budgeting I'm going to join the community at either Wesabe.com or Geezeo.com which were two of the sites I talked about in my Talking Money over the Net post awhile back about social money networking. As this will hold us even more accountable, as well as the ability to use others experiences to hold us much more in line with our goals. I'll let you know which one of these sites I join in a future posting as I haven't yet decided.

3) Finding other ways of bringing extra money into the house. This one is tougher due to the fact that I am on salary I don't get the opportunity to work more hours in order to bring in more income. So we have two choices either live below our means or bringing in extra money, preferably I would rather bring in extra money as Christmas is on the horizon and I want to attack these debts rather aggressively. So I'll look at opportunities such as Ebay, Craigslist and a second job.

So there we have it the ways that I plan on attacking our debts and hopefully at the same time improve our personal finances and do some investing in our future.

Part 1 Old Goals
Part 2 New Goals for the Future

New Goals For The Future

As promised here is my new list of goals. I decided to break it down into both short term (under 5 years) and long term (5 years +) to keep myself motivated. As one goal is completed a new one will be implemented to ensure constant progress. Drum roll please:

Short Term Goals:

1) Set up an emergency savings account by the end of August 07' with direct withdraw.
2) Pay off a personal loan in the amount of $1200 by October 07'
3) Get out of paycheck advances by October 07'
4) Pay off another personal loan in the amount of $3060 by August 08'
5) Pay back money that was withdrawn from children's account of $1000 by December 08'

Long Term Goals:

1) Our wedding by 2012
2) Mortgage paid off by the time I turn 45
3) Net worth of $500,000 by the time I turn 50

So that's the goals that have been set, some are more achievable than other's as some of them will make us stretch financially to achieve. If anyone knows where I can get one of those bar meters to place on my blog, so everyone can follow along with our progress it would be greatly appreciated. Tomorrow I will post on how I plan on us achieving our goals.

Part 1 Old Goals

Old Goals

It's funny today I picked up an older book I had by The Motley Fool flipping through I came across some old notes that I recorded in the pages. Including old goals I written for myself some accomplished some not. They are as follows:

1) New Home by the end of 2007 (I must have picked up the book a couple of months prior to purchasing my home as I purchased my home in 2002)

2) Getting Out of Debt by the end of 2007 (Still a work in progress)

3) Wedding by Sept. 2004 (We live common-law does that count lol? We have to finance our wedding ourselves and even though were planning to keep it under $10,000 luckily my I already call her my wife is very understanding and agree's that other things need to be taken care of first)

4) New Car by the end of 2004 (By new car I didn't actual mean new car I would never desire to own a brand new car, but I did pick up my truck in 2004)

5) Start a Business by the end of 2010 (Actually I did start a business back 2 years ago that I decided I wasn't going to quit my job prior to my own business being successful. Unfortuntly between the time and money commetments it wasn't in the cards at that time and only lasted just under a year I will give it another shot though sometime in the future)

So that's the five goals I had written down approx. 5-6 years ago I think that for tomorrows post I will follow this up with New Goals that I will set for myself.

Budget

Let’s start with the basics, the nasty B word Budgeting. Even if you just tally your expenses for a month you might be shocked to find out how much extra your spending on non-essentials. Of course it’s important to keep a log of every penny spent regardless of how trivial you think it is, for example that 50 cent Nevada ticket. As stated before even if you just tally one month of expenses you’ll become more conscious of what you’re spending in the future. In my family we found the excess to be your typical dining out, coffee, gambling (bingo as well as lottery tickets) and my personal favorite beer. To the tune of approx. $1200 a month! Not small change by any means especially when you’re trying to support a family of 5 on only one consistent income.

Now I’m not going to try and say, you can go without everything that you enjoy let’s be serious here. It’s just changes that need to be made in order to try to get back on track. Coffee hasn’t changed it did for awhile till my son broke my coffee pot, which I can’t find a replacement for, so back to Timmy’s in the morning. My wife’s bingo habit has went from twice a week to twice a month, brown bagging it to work and dinner prepared at home except on pay day which we treat ourselves, lottery played in a group pool at work has taken it from $15 a week on average to $5 every two weeks and finally beer I try to constrict myself to a case a week. In total our average now is around $500 a month. A savings of $700 a month or equal to our mortgage a month.

We’ve used several programs over the years as we flip back on and off the budget train everything from pen and paper, my own excel worksheet. A great free budget program available on the net Pear Budget which works in excel and of course Microsoft Money which probably offers the greatest flexibility the only thing I don’t care for, is it seems very time consuming since my bank isn’t available on the list I constantly have to go through and reconcile all bank statements. Another program available that I haven’t had the opportunity to use although have heard many great things about the program is Quicken. Again very basic information things we have heard many times over but it is the starting point as the old adage goes a penny saved is a penny earned.