Spending Money Update: Debt Progress
Happy Sunday Cent’sers! I am happy to give my spending money update this week because we were able to pay off one of our expensive debts this week with our last payment of $2700.00! This is a great weight off my shoulders and I am now able to focus my energies towards some of my other debts.
I also paid some bills – insurance, utilities, and such – and I was also able to put towards another $400 towards are credit card debt. This was sitting at a $12,000 two months ago and now we’re down to $10,500 so we’re making good progress there.
I allotted $100 of my spending money towards entertainment and I spent $103.00 this week. I was slightly over but it was still within my budget. I think for this week, I am just going to pull out $100 cash and carry it around with me. I think I will be more successful with sticking within my budget with the ever-dwindling cash reminder in my wallet.
I had another blip with an automatic payment – the life insurance payment came out before my automatic pay deposit went in so it went into over draft again! It’s not that we don’t have the money, it’s always just sitting in some other account that they end up having transfer it over from somewhere else. It occurred to me this weekend that it would be easier for us as a couple to track our finances if we moved all our incoming/outgoing automatic payments to the joint account.
It would be way more transparent if we were able to see everything that was coming in and going out of one single account. We will start doing that this week and see if that helps. I’m also going to put automatic reminders on my phone so that it will make a sound every time something will be deducted from the accounts. Hopefully I this works and I can feel organized!
Spending Money Update: Emergency Fund
I have also been throwing so much money at debt, I’ve been neglecting starting an emergency fund in case something happens that we have to address. Our only resort now is to use credit if the hot water tank was to blow up or the roof needed fixing. I am going to look at the numbers this week and see how much I can start putting aside as a contingency fund. Even a small amount of money will be helpful to put away.
So this was my spending for the week and what I’ve learned from it. How about you Cents’ers? What have you learned about your spending this week?
Link love
Budget Blonde What to do if your site is clickbombed
Canadian Budget Binder Are you making a difference?
Debt Round Up How debt started my quest towards financial literacy
Mo Money Mo houses Mo’ Money tips for the beginner blogger
See Debt Run Stuck in the middle with you
You are so awesome – Thanks for the link love! Argh, sorry about the overdraft. I just made a stupid mistake with one of my credit cards. I need to blog about it soon!
Hey hey!
No problem-o, my pleasure with the link love!
I have to say that this money thing isn’t something that comes naturally to me – it seems to be taking a lot of work to set up a system that works for me. Oh well, gotta’ keep at it, it’s the only way to make it work. : )
Lindsey
Good for you paying down deb the way you are. I like to have a balance if I have debt meaning I have debt and an emergency savings just in case something were to happen. Once we pay our house off next month we will have to build our ES back up again otherwise we will have to resort to a line of credit to pay off anything that pops up. We keep around $500 extra in our main chequing account just so we don’t get hit by surprise or miss a payment coming in and having to go into overdraft. It sounds like you are well on your way and with some small adjustments you can nip the blips!! Cheers mate
Hi Mr. CBB
Thanks for the feedback, I liked the idea of having $500 extra in the account in case something comes through! We might have to play with numbers to find a workable figure for us but the idea is very sound. We’ll keep adjusting things around – it’ll come together!
Congratulations on paying off your house next month, that’s amazing!
Cheers!
Lindsey
Wow! Great job at paying down your debt! Keep up the good work 🙂
I went a bit over budget this week buying accessories for my new bicycle (which was free) and a girl’s night out on Saturday. But the bike is for exercise and the girl’s night was totally worth it, so much fun 🙂
Hi Morgaine
Thanks for commenting and thanks for the congrats!
Good job on finding the free bike! I like to think the going “a little over on the budget” on the bike accessories were still a deal since you didn’t have to buy the bike.
And as for the girl’s night – we all need to do that! Viva la girl stuff!
Lindsey