2012 Goals

Today is the first day of the rest of my life. Such a cliched statement, but it's very true of me today as the final loan payment comes out and I will have paid off the nasty debt in our life! We still have our car loan that we're working on (just got the car in October), but this other debt was stupid spending from my early/mid-20s. Now, we can have a fresh start - be smarter about our spending, save more money, and set more realistic goals. With that in mind, I wanted to outline my 2012 goals. I did an earlier post on my '12 goals, but this expands on that.

Financial

1. Save $15,000 for a down payment.
2. Build up emergency fund to $2,500.
3. Implement the electronic jar system.
4. Start a baby fund (see #4 in Personal/Health goals).

Personal/Health

1. Work out 3 to 4x a week.
2. Start doing pilates again.
3. Stop drinking Diet Pepsi.
4. Get pregnant. (I know this isn't something I can necessarily control, but hopefully this works out in 2012!)

Professional

1. Finish my certificate in management.
2. Build up freelance.
3. Network more.
4. Gain some management experience.

I did it!

I've been hemming and hawing over what to do with our savings/personal loan. We had the money to pay the loan off in full, but I've been uncertain over what to do. I love seeing that money in the savings account, but I know that whatever little bit of interest I get from it is not enough to make up the interest on the loan (as low as that is).

Well finally today, I gave myself an early Christmas present and I put a big chunk of money on the personal loan! The balance previously was $3100 and I put $2685 on it. That means the next payment, which comes out on December 29th, will be it! Only $415 to go. Now that it's done, I feel sooooo good about it! That frees up $850 a month, so now we can start 2012 debt-free (other than the car loan) and we can begin to put money aside for a down payment. We will put that loan payment towards savings, increase the car loan payment to get it paid down faster, and just relax a bit and enjoy ourselves more. Leading up to the wedding, we weren't spending much on ourselves at all, so this will be a nice change.

I can't believe that in just over a week that loan will be gone! That means no more debt from school and stupid spending!

Car loan

We bought our car very recently (October 2011) and I finally bit the bullet and called the bank to find out exactly what our balance is. We're at $16,381.92. That's after a couple of payments since we purchased it. The car loan is amortized over 48 months, but I'd like to pay it off within 36 months (3 years). Our payment was $172.96, so when I called for the balance, I increased our payment to $175. Not a big difference, but it a) makes it easier to keep track of a nice round number, and b) gets us that little bit closer.

Once our other loan is paid early next year, I will do the math and figure out exactly how much we need to pay bi-weekly to get that paid off faster. I'd be a very happy girl if that loan is paid off before we buy a house.

Our Money

Personal finance is a huge part of my life. I'm the bill payer in the family and I love it! I know many others who can't stand when bills come in or hate having to transfer money, but I get a kick out of it. And no, it's not because we're millionaires. We make a normal amount and our finances are anything but perfect, but for some reason, I just love playing around with dollar figures. Even though I generally suck at math!

Right now our finances are a bit chaotic because of the wedding, going on our honeymoon and buying a car, but for honesty sake, I'm going to lay it all out there.

We have just over $4,000 in debt right now. This is the end of a personal loan from way back when I was in school/just graduated and a young 20-something who spent money foolishly.

We also have a new car loan. I honestly don't know what the balance is on that as we literally just bought the car right before the wedding, so I haven't had time yet to get the full loan amount after our down payment and the first payments. Once I do though, I'll put that out there.

We also have money in savings - about $7,500. I'm not sure how much it will be after we pay for the rest of the wedding and honeymoon though (some of that money was earmarked for these things, so this is not unplanned). This savings account is primarily for a down payment for a house.

Our upcoming costs are:

- pay for the rest of the wedding and honeymoon. I'm waiting for our wedding photos from our photographer and when we receive those our third payment to him is due ($653). We also have to pay for the rest of the honeymoon, but I'm awaiting the credit card update. This money will come from our chequing/wedding savings accounts.

- pay for Hawaiian cruise. Our first honeymoon, which we took right after the wedding, was a smaller trip within Canada. This trip to Hawaii is our full on honeymoon (we wanted a warm destination honeymoon, but we wanted to wait until it was actually cold enough here to enjoy it). We owe $3,566 (after the $700 deposit was made). This is due next month. We currently have $1,600 in our vacation TFSA account and we'll pay for the rest with a freelance writing cheque that should be coming in very soon. We still have to book a hotel for the last couple days that we're in Hawaii post-cruise, but we can do that once the dust settles from all the other money flying out!

I think that's about it! My to do this week is to find out our car loan balance!