I'm sorry for the lack of posts lately. I'm feeling frustrated. I can't think of anything to write about and when I do, I can't make it seem interesting like anyone would actually want to read about it.
The truth is, my life is not that interesting. Shocking, I know. But the other truth is that I am afraid. I'm afraid to divulge too much information on my blog about myself and my family. It's scary.
Don't get me wrong, there are things that I want to share here. I want to share the intimate details of my PPD with you all. It was through another mom blogger that I realized I had PPD myself and I would love to pay it forward by writing about my struggles here, but...I'm scared.
And I know I've promised in the past that I'd be writing about our debt load but once again, I'm scared. It's embarrassing to put that out there for the world to see. We've been so selfish and irresponsible with our money. Plus, my mom knows about and reads this blog. (Hi Mom!)
I'm going to try and put in a real effort again. I'm going to go back and look at what I was writing about when I was writing more often. Maybe that will help me.
Showing posts with label debt. Show all posts
Showing posts with label debt. Show all posts
Monday, December 6, 2010
Thursday, June 10, 2010
It's time to get real again
about our debt. We've been getting back into old habits. Not thinking about how much debt we have. Spending money on things that aren't necessities. Like eating out. A lot.
When I first posted about our debt I just said that we had over $20,000 in consumer debt. I didn't give exact numbers, exact interest rates, exact anything. I think in order to keep myself accountable I'm going to start posting here at least once per month, in detail, about our debt.
This is the post for June. Our debt in detail:
Bank of Montreal Credit Card
Balance as of today: $7524.51
Interest Rate: 12.9% (fixed)
ING Direct Line of Credit #1
Balance as of today: $4857.17
Interest Rate: 6.7% (variable)
ING Direct Line of Credit #2
Balance as of today: $4836.50
Interest Rate: 4.2% (variable)
Total: $17218.18
What I normally do is pay the minimum amount on the two ING accounts since their interest rates are lower, and pay as much as possible towards the credit card. I also transfer any available money from those accounts after the minimum payments are made back into our chequing account and apply it to the credit card. So the lines of credit are pretty much always maxed out, but they have lower interest rates anyways and it's best to put all the money we can towards our highest interest rate to get it paid off quickly.
I also haven't been focusing on our budget properly so we probably have an abundance of money on our chequing account that can go towards debt repayment. I will be looking into that today and also creating our June budget, which I haven't done yet. We have a wedding to attend in Quebec at the beginning of August and that's definitely going to have an effect on our budget, so I want to get this all settled so that we're in the best position possible when the wedding comes around.
It's time to get serious about this again and we really need to keep ourselves accountable.
When I first posted about our debt I just said that we had over $20,000 in consumer debt. I didn't give exact numbers, exact interest rates, exact anything. I think in order to keep myself accountable I'm going to start posting here at least once per month, in detail, about our debt.
This is the post for June. Our debt in detail:
Bank of Montreal Credit Card
Balance as of today: $7524.51
Interest Rate: 12.9% (fixed)
ING Direct Line of Credit #1
Balance as of today: $4857.17
Interest Rate: 6.7% (variable)
ING Direct Line of Credit #2
Balance as of today: $4836.50
Interest Rate: 4.2% (variable)
Total: $17218.18
What I normally do is pay the minimum amount on the two ING accounts since their interest rates are lower, and pay as much as possible towards the credit card. I also transfer any available money from those accounts after the minimum payments are made back into our chequing account and apply it to the credit card. So the lines of credit are pretty much always maxed out, but they have lower interest rates anyways and it's best to put all the money we can towards our highest interest rate to get it paid off quickly.
I also haven't been focusing on our budget properly so we probably have an abundance of money on our chequing account that can go towards debt repayment. I will be looking into that today and also creating our June budget, which I haven't done yet. We have a wedding to attend in Quebec at the beginning of August and that's definitely going to have an effect on our budget, so I want to get this all settled so that we're in the best position possible when the wedding comes around.
It's time to get serious about this again and we really need to keep ourselves accountable.
Sunday, February 21, 2010
Debt Repayment
When my husband and I decided in December to start paying back our debt, we had over $20,000 in consumer debt alone. Neither of us have student loans so that is our only debt not including our car lease and our mortgage.
How did we get there, you ask? We were very, very irresponsible. We wanted instant gratification. We didn't want to wait and save up for purchases. We wanted to live the way we wanted to live, and not the way we could afford to live. We were very stupid.
I get angry with myself frequently when I think back to how irresponsible we were. We knew we were living beyond our means. We thought if we didn't think about it, it wasn't real. I worked for almost a year before we had Pierce. And I knew I needed to do a budget and track our spending, but I honestly thought that if I did a budget and counted up all our expenses and subtracted them from our income, I would find that we couldn't afford to pay our bills. And I wanted to be in denial about that.
Finally, at the end of last year I decided that we needed to do a budget. I am on maternity leave now, making 55% of what I did when I was at work and I wasn't expecting it to be pretty. But it was. I found that with the money that we bring in, we can pay all our bills, have all our necessities, and still have approximately $600 left over to pay towards our debt! Just think how much more money we would've had to put towards debt if I had done a budget when I was still working.
I try not to get angry with myself for waiting so long to get real about the amount of debt we have and make a plan to get us out of it, but it's hard. Think about how much more we could have paid down by now if we had started living on this budget before I went on mat leave! But I can't dwell on that. It's in the past, I've learned from my mistakes, now it's time to reverse it.
What really motivated me to do this were the money management posts on Simple Mom. Simple Mom is another blog run by Tsh of Simple Living Media and offers "Life hacks for home managers." I love this site. So. much. Seriously, go check it out. But come back here when you're finished, okay? Okay.
Tsh posted in her blog about Dave Ramsey's baby steps and that's what we're using to pay off our debt.
I also frequent the Money Matters message board on The Nest. The ladies there are so knowledgeable. After we sat down and did our budget, I posted it there so that I could get some feedback on it. They're so helpful there, I would encourage anyone trying to get out of debt to post their budget there and see what the ladies have to say.
Anyway, I am very proud of us for the progress we've made in the past two months. And it feels good to make a decision not to buy something when I'm out shopping. Of course I don't always make that decision. But I am learning. And that's what's important.
How did we get there, you ask? We were very, very irresponsible. We wanted instant gratification. We didn't want to wait and save up for purchases. We wanted to live the way we wanted to live, and not the way we could afford to live. We were very stupid.
I get angry with myself frequently when I think back to how irresponsible we were. We knew we were living beyond our means. We thought if we didn't think about it, it wasn't real. I worked for almost a year before we had Pierce. And I knew I needed to do a budget and track our spending, but I honestly thought that if I did a budget and counted up all our expenses and subtracted them from our income, I would find that we couldn't afford to pay our bills. And I wanted to be in denial about that.
Finally, at the end of last year I decided that we needed to do a budget. I am on maternity leave now, making 55% of what I did when I was at work and I wasn't expecting it to be pretty. But it was. I found that with the money that we bring in, we can pay all our bills, have all our necessities, and still have approximately $600 left over to pay towards our debt! Just think how much more money we would've had to put towards debt if I had done a budget when I was still working.
I try not to get angry with myself for waiting so long to get real about the amount of debt we have and make a plan to get us out of it, but it's hard. Think about how much more we could have paid down by now if we had started living on this budget before I went on mat leave! But I can't dwell on that. It's in the past, I've learned from my mistakes, now it's time to reverse it.
What really motivated me to do this were the money management posts on Simple Mom. Simple Mom is another blog run by Tsh of Simple Living Media and offers "Life hacks for home managers." I love this site. So. much. Seriously, go check it out. But come back here when you're finished, okay? Okay.
Tsh posted in her blog about Dave Ramsey's baby steps and that's what we're using to pay off our debt.
I also frequent the Money Matters message board on The Nest. The ladies there are so knowledgeable. After we sat down and did our budget, I posted it there so that I could get some feedback on it. They're so helpful there, I would encourage anyone trying to get out of debt to post their budget there and see what the ladies have to say.
Anyway, I am very proud of us for the progress we've made in the past two months. And it feels good to make a decision not to buy something when I'm out shopping. Of course I don't always make that decision. But I am learning. And that's what's important.
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