9 Feb 2010 at 20:51
There you have it folks, over there on the right sidebar you’ll see my new Current Debt ticker. It now shows the one-and-only debt that I currently have, my consolidation loan. Yippee! You might also notice that the number is almost $9,000 more than my previous current debt, and that’s because we paid out my car lease at the same time. In order to get the consolidation loan the bank said I had to get rid of absolutely every credit vehicle I had, which included the car lease, so we paid that off and rolled it into the consolidation loan. Not bad as that essentially reduces the number of bills I pay to one, my combo cable/internet/cell phone. Isn’t that crazy? Oh, and rent too, but that’s not really a bill now, is it?
I am so excited that:
- I am only paying one creditor right now.
- My loan payment is manageable enough that I’ll be able to save for both my retirement and regular savings.
- I’ll be saving for my retirement
- I’ll be saving for both an emergency and to pay off the car when the lease is up next year.
Gotta love it when things come together and life gets a bit easier. Me and my FA are going to meet again in 3 months to see how things are going, and to tweak any of the numbers. If my life isn’t impacted too much by the current RRSP and savings withdrawals, we might increase those to maximize things. By increasing the savings, I’d be able to pay off the car next year in cash. I could actually do that by dumping all of my current extra money into the savings account, but then I wouldn’t have anything left over for RRSP contributions, so by splitting it I’ll have both. And the RRSP contribution also gets me a refund from the government on this year’s income when I file next year, which I could then use for the car as well. It won’t make up the difference by any stretch of the imagination, but it’ll bring me a little closer, that’s for sure.
Success, huzzah!
8 Feb 2010 at 20:59
They really do! Remember how a few weeks ago I mentioned I was going to go see a financial professional to see if he could help me out? Well, he helped, he really did! I am now the proud owner of a 5-year open loan at prime + 1% (this is where working for a bank is paying off). Originally the bank would only give me the loan if I closed all of my credit cards and lines of credit, which I was intending to do, although I did want to keep one card for those situations where you do need one (like getting a Blockbuster membership). And that’s what my FA (financial adviser) thought of too, so he was able to do that for me. I get to keep my one credit card with a $1,000 limit, which is fine by me. In fact, this was a variation on the plan I was trying to work on! All in all it worked out nicely for me, if I do say so myself.
Now I’ve got a $340 bi-weekly loan payment ($680 total) for the next 5 years that comes out of my bank account on payday. It’s an open loan, which means I can make extra payments whenever I want. My FA also got me enough money to cover the rest of my car lease, which gives me enough time to save up money to buy out the car next year when the lease is due. I’m so excited about this, it’s not even funny! Instead of having to pay 5 different things, I only pay one. As my FA kept saying “your credit score will go up because we’ve moved all your debt to one bank, which looks better.”
Yee haw!
24 Jan 2010 at 10:59
As we’re in full-on RRSP mode here in Canada (you can still make contributions to your RRSP now and have it apply to your 2009 tax year), we’re getting bombarded by ads for financial advisers and such. I usually ignore all of these, however this year I’ve been paying a little closer attention as I was thinking of meeting with a financial adviser to go over my situation and see if there was anything I could be doing better (aside from paying off my debt, natch). One of my colleagues had recommended her financial adviser, and I did send him an email last month asking for a meeting, but he never got back to me, so I figured he was too busy. His ears must have been burning this week though as he finally got back to me, and so we set up a meeting for next week to go over things.
I’m excited about meeting with him as I’ve a number of things I’d like to discuss:
- my current debtload
- my RRSP situation
This adviser works for my current employer (remember, I work for a bank), so I’m interested to see what type of things he can come up with. I was so excited and interested to hear what he had to say that I actually showed up to the appointment a week early! (I input the date incorrectly in my calendar, so I showed up this past Thursday when the appointment’s actually NEXT Thursday.) But he was quite gracious and we had a quick chat about things while I was there. I did offer to just come back on my actual appointment day, but he said it was actually good that I was there early as he’d be able to crunch through numbers and have some good suggestions for our appointment next week. (I had brought the latest copies of all my statements with me.)
The major thing he pointed out quickly was that as my car lease is up next year and I want to keep the car, we’ll have to figure out what to do with the lease buy out amount. Count 1 point for him, as I’d not really been thinking about this. What I’d ask him to figure out was this: Determine the best course of action for me so that I could pay off my debt as quickly as possible without severely curtailing my life, and save me money by consolidating the debt to one payment with a lower interest rate.
So while I’m pretty good at figuring out my finances, sometimes you do need to ask for professional help. Right now I’m plain tired of dealing with this on my own, so let’s see what Mr. Adviser can do for me. Stay tuned!
Edit: Had to postpone the appointment till next week as I came down with a nasty cold this week and couldn’t make the appointment. But I’ll let you know what he has to say!
18 Jan 2010 at 17:17
The financial snowflakes have been falling fast and furious lately, so I’ve updated the Snowflake widget on the site. Each month’s snowflakes will be listed out as they happen, but once the month is over, they’ll be rolled up into the first line.
Managed to sell off some of my brother in law’s comic books last week, so I earned over $36 from Amazon.ca, and then also another $22 from my colleagues as they purchased some of them too, which is nice.
