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!

Balance transfer

I got Visa cheques in the mail with a low-interest rate of 1.99% until the end of May. Right now the interest rate on my personal loan is 7.24%. Obviously saving 5.25% in interest each month is appealing, but the credit limit on my Visa is only $2,000 and the loan is just under $4,000.

So our options are: use $2,000 in savings to pay down the loan and then transfer OR keep paying the loan as we have been, and then transfer when it is down to $2,000.

The difference in interest is going to save us more than any money we'd make by keeping that $2,000 in savings. BUT, there's the always important emotional side of things. Husband and I both like having a nice cushion in the bank. What if one of us lost our job tomorrow? Or what if I got pregnant? Or if an emergency happened? Sure we have the beginnings of an emergency fund, but it's not that much right now, so that general savings account is our cushion. This is money that we'll be putting towards a house one day. Not anytime in the near future, mind you, but it's there and right now, it's our piece of mind.

So, do we keep our piece of mind and keep chipping away at the loan until it's down to $2,000 (which will be in February) or do we pay that $2,000 now and transfer immediately? We're definitely both sitting in the camp of the former. I like logging on to the bank balance and seeing that we have money. Maybe because it's still a novelty after being in debt for so long, but whatever the reason, I like the feeling and plan to keep that for as long as possible.

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!