Posts Tagged ‘savings’

Nowhere to Go But Up

This afternoon I checked the status of my various accounts and saw that my emergency fund was much lower than I had previously reported. I had forgotten that I had to pretty much deplete the account in order to pay April’s rent and car payment. Of course this was before I had gotten my income tax refund, but still, the numbers have been adjusted.

Also, I was thinking about the emergency fund in general, and decided to lower my target for the moment. Since I’m pretty much at $0, okay, $8.30, I figured I’d aim for a smaller amount first, and then change the target as the savings grew. I’m the type that likes to see progress in larger chunks, if at all possible. Especially since I’m rather impatient with my debt load these days. So I’ve lowered it to $1000, the classic Dave Ramsay emergency savings amount. Once I get past that, I’ll decide whether to continue to grow it, or whether to let it earn some interest and put the extra money towards my debt repayment.

Plus since I’ll be starting the new job next week, I’m not sure when my pay schedule is, so I’m not sure what my contribution frequency will be. Ideally every pay cheque I would be able to transfer some over, but I’m not sure if I’ll be getting paid every two weeks, or twice a month, or what. I don’t remember what the schedule was when I worked for this company 8 years ago, but of course it could have also changed in the interim, so my info may not be up to date. At any rate, I’m excited about starting the new job on Tuesday, so stay tuned for an update!

How to Save on Vacation

Welcome back to me! Yes dear readers, I’ve returned from my week-long vacation in Vancouver, and I’m feeling refreshed and ready to tackle my financial situation again. Aside from this nasty cold that I seem to have developed while there (I blame the air conditioning and jet lag for that, not the wonderful city of Vancouver), I had a wonderful time.  How is it that I was able to travel 4500 km and back while being frugal? Here’s how:

1. Wait for a great deal on plane tickets.
2. Save up money for that rainy day trip.

I had already spoken to my friends who live there about the possibility of coming for a visit, so that if I was able to find a deal on a plane ticket, I could simply buy it without waiting to hear from them. And in mid-March, there it was: a 50% off deal for a plane ticket to Vancouver. That works out to $179 each way, and with taxes and fees, that came out to $470. That is an incredible deal! Most of the time it costs much more than that to fly within Canada. As usual, domestic flights cost more than international ones, although in this case I was able to find that deal. How did I do that? Well, I subscribe to the e-newsletter for two airlines, Air Canada and WestJet, and every Wednesday they send it out. There are always deals to be had, I’m just not usually looking for them. So I dipped into my Travel savings account and pulled out the $470 that was required.

Next up was spending money for the trip. I had actually already saved about $700 in my travel fund, as that was for my trip to Italy next year. However since I have a whole 12+ months to save up for that, I decided to use the money now for the trip to Vancouver. After taking the money out for the plane ticket, I had two more months to save up some extra cash. By the time my departure time arrived, I had almost $400 saved up for the trip!

So off I went to Vancouver.

Here I am at the Cleveland Dam, on a very spooky, foggy night.

By keeping my eyes open for deals, and saving some money, I was able to go to the other side of the country on vacation, and not have to go further in debt. Now that’s the way to do it.

RRPP Challenge

As part of my savings plan, I am now regularly contributing to my RRSP (Registered Retirement Savings Plan), as I’ve been a little remiss over the last couple of years, only contributing sporadically to it. Aside from the end benefits of saving for my retirement, the biggest draw right now is the tax savings I’ll be getting on my income tax next year. Because I’m making more than I was at my last job, I’m inching closer to a new tax bracket, so getting any tax breaks I can is important.

To that end, Melanie and I decided to have an RRSP challenge. Because we’ve both been a little remiss in our contributions over the last few years, we thought a little friendly competition would help us along. We haven’t actually discussed a “prize” for the winner, however just being able to save on taxes should be prize enough.

Without further ado, here are the “rules”:

• The challenge runs from March 1, 2008 to February 28, 2009, the current contribution year.
• Both of us will report our savings on a quarterly basis.
• The winner gets the bigger refund next year at tax time.

On your marks, get set, go!

Interest Rate Musical Chairs

While I was pleased to hear the Bank of Canada lower the prime interest rate 0.25% earlier this month,as it helps me out with my lines of credit, it means that one of my banks has lowered their savings account rates. I was disappointed to see that this bank has lowered its interest rate from 3.75% to 3.30%. This means that it’s now back to a “regular” rate for those types of savings accounts. This is the bank I’ve got my Emergency Fund with, and while 3.30% is still very good, that’s almost half a percentage point of a change. The whole reason I opened this account last year was because of the rate, the fact that it was significantly higher than my other accounts. That and also because I can simply withdraw the money with a bank card if I need it, which is a good thing to have for an Emergency Fund. But still, I am disappointed to see the rate change in general. This doesn’t mean I’ll be moving the money, however it means I’ll be earning a smidge less than previously on my savings.