The Good, The Bad and the Ugly

So here's the deal. We've had some bumps in the road but the statistics are not in our favor as most divorce's are caused by money issues no surprise to anyone reading this as it's common knowledge. We're trying to work through things and this week has been good for the most part until Saturday when she wanted to pull some money out of the account to find insufficent funds.

Here we go again the car payment came out and I was working with the company on Tuesday trying to change the date till my payday and ran into some problems as I've already changed the date once. I forgot that they had yet approved the change and forgot to delay the payment so it came out on Friday leaving us $1.30 in the account.

Naturally it lead to another fight and everything came out on the table once again with exception to me leaving her although I have to admit I was tempted to pack my bags while she was at work, but I also had to work that morning and she called me later at work and everything was fine at that point. So I left it at just that and the rest of the weekend has been fine.

I'm not sure where this blog has turned from personal finance to relationship plus personal finance but when I created this blog I said it was about the good plus the bad and I guess that includes the ugly as well.

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.

Deadbeat Dad

My step daughter's father has once again decided to quit his job, without anything else in line. This happens to us every couple of years. Which means no more child support for awhile. It's only $280 a month but it helps at least take care of some of the bills. And of course he never let's us know when he's working again so it takes time to track him down and start receiving payments once again.

I owe, I owe, so off to work I go.

Grrr... I received a reminder as to my owing the Canada Revenue Agengy $1700 for last years taxes in the mail today! In all honesty I completely forgot about this debt, now to add that into my total of debts. So far my debt reduction is not going so well as it keeps increasing as opposed to decreasing.

I still have full intention of reducing our debt one way or another, I'm not going to let this get me down.

More hectic times ahead.

Sorry folks, between the new job and kids going back to school things have been just a little hectic, so for the next little bit you might find my postings a little more sporadic. If you haven't been a longtime reader please scroll through the archives to find more information about our financial conquest. If you have been a reader for a little bit bear with me as I'll be back on track before you know it.

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.

Saving money on car insurance

It's always a great feeling when you save some cash. I finally received my new premium on my car insurance thanks to the job change. Now that I won't be driving 40 clicks one way to work it just saved me $30.90 a month on my insurance! My renewal comes up in November so at that point I'll look at changing my policy from monthly to an annual payment to save myself the 3% financing charge as well.

Related Post:
New Job

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

Nothing better than completing your goals!

So I have an exciting update to our short term goals that I listed in the post titled New goals for future. Our short term goals at that point in time was:

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'

As far as #1 on this list goes I'm still waiting for ING to cash the check to link my accounts together, but it should be completed by the end of the month. Goal completed.

2) I have $1000 of the $1200 in hand and will complete the transaction with the remaining $200 within the next two weeks. Goal completed.

3) This will be completed as of this Friday I will be finally free and clear from all paycheck advance establishments.

Now you might be asking how did you pull this off so quickly did you rob a bank? No changing jobs became a blessing in disguise not only from the savings of my time of travel each day to and from work and wear and tear on my truck.

My past employer released me earlier then my resignation letter was for, yet will pay me out till the date of notice. Bonus as I called my new employer and they had me start yesterday, job is going great by the way. So I'll overlap my paychecks by one week. Second I pulled my deferred profit sharing from my old employer which between the extra week of pay and my DPS gave me a great jump start ahead in our finances.

Now coming into extra money wasn't exactly the way I planned to achieve these goals but hey I'll take it anyway I can, as it's 3 goals down with 2 to go from current. And as I stated when I wrote the post New goals for future I will replace these 3 completed goals with 3 new financial goals tomorrow, so stay tuned as more is to come.

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

What does it take to be the next millionaire?

I was watching the Millionaire Inside on CNBC tonight and some of the comments from the panel really got me thinking. The panel biggest thing tonight was surround yourself around successful people. I question that thinking I do know personally a couple of millionaires, many middle class. My thoughts is I have something to gain from everyone. Sure I love picking the minds of the millionaires and learning what it took for them to be successful.

But at the same time I can relate much more and push that much harder not to end up like some of our middle class friends. Just do to the fact there so busy trying to keep up with the Joneses that their running themselves further into debt. I want to be financially free not debt ridden with alot of nice things. And when I do purchase something it needs to make sense, I need to see value and the opportunity for the item to make money.

For an example I would love to pick up a laptop right now reason being is between my wife and kids it's getting more and more difficult to gain access to our desktop. I want to be able to devote more of my free time to working on this blog, why I'm not going to lie. One to focus myself, two there is the opportunity to earn income from the advertisements although I do not pay to post, but I do contain ads in order to help us achieve our goal to become debt free and financially independent.

If were constantly chasing the Joneses were not getting any further ahead just further behind. I truly believe it's more of a mind state, since I was young I knew at some point in my life I would be a millionaire today at 32 that hasn't changed I still know I will make it. Some might say your a daydreamer but I honestly know deep inside it will happen and I focus to ensure it will.

What if a tree came crashing down on your finances?

Last night here I am working on my blog and I notice the sky turning green, sweet it's going to be a great summer storm! Wind starts whipping, lighting, thunder and pouring buckets of rain. Boom the power goes out no problem it will be back on in a couple of minutes right. Wrong 1 hour past and still no power.

At this point I thinking a transform must of blew, or a tree must have came down on a powerline. Well I was right about the tree, I decided to look out my side window and I notice a large branch from my tree in the backyard hovering 10 feet up in the air, oh no this is not good at all! So I head outside to further investigate. Upon inspection there's my tree branch hovering thanks to landing right on my neighbors hydro line.

The police show up shortly thereafter I inform them that I was trying to get a hold of the hydro company, they state that they have already contacted them. I'm left in the dark complaplating whether is this considered an act of god or will I be charged to handle the repairs on my neighbors home as the tree branch bent their hydro stack? 4 hours later the power comes back on. And I'm still left wondering how much will this cost me.

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.

Is Middle Class Actually Better Off?

We commonly have this discussion at work regarding the middle class and are we actually any better off? I remember reading a news story earlier this year where it stated that if you earned $50,000 a year take home after all payroll taxes as well as GST and PST you actual take home is more in the range of $30,000! Now how I have to ask is a family of 5 suppose to live on an income of $30,000? That's only $6000 per person!

It's absolutely ridiculous! Now let's say my wife was to leave me and take with her our 3 children, based upon her earning of $6000 last year. Her child tax credit would jump from $220 a month to $780. Child support of $946 per month due to her. She would also receive a GST check paided out quarterly of $212 after filing her next year taxes. She would also fall under the low income bracket for taxes due to child tax credit not being taxable in Canada she would only have to pay taxes on the $6000 plus the child support of $11352 bring her total to $17352 after tax $14402

+ gst of $848 for the year
+ child tax credit of $9360
bring her total income after tax to $24610 for the year.

Without even figuring in probably a sizable tax return for the year and access to numerous government programs which are not available to us currently due to all programs looking at before tax income. She would actually be better off without me. Now in no way am I saying that single mothers or quote unquote low income families have it easy so please don't misinterpret it. I'm just showing how again the quote unquote middle class isn't always better off and maybe it's time for Canada to re-evaluate it's LICO.

Debt-O-Meter

Still looking for that debt-o-meter if anyone can tell me where to find the widget or the coding for it, it would be greatly appreciated as I would love to install it so you all can keep track of my progress.

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.

Second Job?

So earlier this week I applied for a second job as a server in a local restarant in our area to help bump up our money situation as spoken about in How Were Going To Achieve Our Goals item #3 was to bring in more money.

Reason being for applying for a server position was quite simple actually as I have previous experience although going back almost 10 years, cash money at the end of the day and even though the hourly wage is terrible if your good at it and have a good day in tips you can pull in a fair amount of cash in a short time. Personally I would rather serve tables as a second job then say working as a cashier only earning a straight hourly wage.

Granted I haven't heard anything back as of yet it's tough to find a second job when your current job is a management position it seems like no one wants to hire you, they either think your over quailfied or think that your after their job. As for right now though after getting the call back for my new job I think I'm going to put the search for a second job on hold for a little bit till I become more comfortable in my current role. If the restarant that I applied too does call back great but right now I'm not going to concern myself if they don't.