Adventures in Debt

Fear not dear readers, I have not disappeared, I have only just escaped the mountain of work I was buried under at my new job. I’m 6 weeks into my new job, and things are going swimmingly.

I wanted to highlight the whole idea of emergency funds again, because it appears I will have to dip into mine this week. I spoke about emergency funds a few weeks back, and how I have been very diligent about depositing money into it. This week showed me again how handy it is to have the funds available should I need it for something unexpected. While driving into work this week, a teeny, tiny stone flew up and hit my windshield. By the end of the day I had a large crack develop on the windshield. What got me angry about the whole thing is that I had already replaced my windshield once before in the last 12 months, because I had another crack. I have never had such bad fortune with a vehicle as I have had with this one, so I will be exploring options on getting rid of it sooner rather than later, but more on that in another post. Here is a picture of the crack:

This time around I will be submitting a bill to the Ontario government, as the chip occurred on a stretch of a provincially-maintained highway on which they were doing some road resurfacing. The same thing happened to me last year on another highway in the area, and I didn’t think to submit anything to the government for reimbursement, but I will definitely be doing so this year. Because my car insurance deductible is $1000  (this saves me on my monthly payment), there’s no point in submitting a claim for that, but besides, I probably wouldn’t anyways even if my deductible was lower. I wouldn’t want my rates going up because of that. As a sidebar, isn’t that always strange, that you end up paying more on your insurance when you use it? Why is that? I mean, you get the insurance so you can use it, right? Anyways, I digress.

As I was saying, I will be submitting a claim to the government for any sort of reimbursement they’d like to give me. Even if it’s only $100, that’s fine, because it’ll cost me over $700 to get the windshield replaced. Any assistance is welcome.

This is why my emergency fund will come in handy, as I’ve got more than enough to cover that. Of course that depletes the fund somewhat, but that’s all right, because that’s what it’s for.  I’m just annoyed that yet again, I’ve got to use it.

Before any of you have a heart attack, or wonder if I robbed a bank, the answer is no. I didn’t do any of those things or anything else illegal to jump up to over $3400 paid off in my $5000 Debt Payoff Contest. I’ve actually been using the Manulife One method of payment, which means that I deposit my entire paycheque into my one line of credit, thereby decreasing the amount of interest that’s accrued each month (remember, the interest is calculated daily.) When I saw that Manulife was advertising this as a “new” type of “chequing account”, I thought that I could do the same thing. Sure enough, it’s saving me some dollars here and there. So that’s how I did it. I got my penultimate severance payment last week, so I dumped it all into one line of credit. The amount will be adjusted this week once I get my regular paycheque, but I wanted to add that amount into the progress graph, because seeing positive movement is helpful for the motivation, you know?

What do you do for motivation in your debt repayment?

My very first job in the city spoiled me for all future paychecks: they used to pay me on the 15th and last of every month, which just rocked. It made fiscal planning much easier, because I knew exactly what money I’d have when. Sadly, the rest of my jobs, including this one, pay bi-weekly. That means that every two weeks, I get a paycheck. Normally that’s twice a month, however twice a year that means I get three paychecks in a month. Yes, three glorious paychecks in a month! September happens to be one of those months for me, which just rocks, especially because I have two more payments left on my severance package. That means I’ll be able to pay off a significant chunk of my debt, and help me in my $5000 Debt Payoff Contest. Very nice.