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!

This is an official post from Adventures in Debt.

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.

This is an official post from Adventures in Debt.

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!

This is an official post from Adventures in Debt.

This is an official post from Adventures in Debt.

Total Debt: $23958.10 (+ 1062.97 from last month)

Debt Paid off This Month: Not applicable since I went back over my original debt amount.

Total savings this month: $200 (not including interest)

Emergency Fund total: $ 1,906.57 (including the savings interest!)

As you can see, I went up in my debt again, which I am not pleased about, however I did manage to pay off some from last month, approximately $3000, which is pretty good. I also managed to get myself a good balance transfer deal with another bank, so for a whole year I’ll not be charged any interest at all on about 1/3 of the debt, which I think is another win for me. So I’ll be plugging along, making my payments and lowering the debt bit by bit. I haven’t yet started my next round of eBay selling, which I’m hoping to do in March. That should net me some extra cash that will help out. Last year I earned around $600 or so, so I’m looking forward to some more of the same.

I know some of you must be wondering why I’m not completely stopping all my spending and just concentrating on my debt repayment. Well, it’s because I believe in living life, within reason. I have tried doing the “I’m not spending on anything” plan, and I found it doesn’t work for me. I know it’s a sacrifice, and it’s my issue that I can’t deal with it, but I believe that life shouldn’t be completely difficult and unenjoyable. So I reduce my spending by not going out all the time, by telling friends that I’ll pass on going out for dinner with them, but that I’ll meet them for coffee afterwards. These are methods that work better for me, and I’m able to slowly but surely make headway on my debt. I was doing just that until I had to move, so once I get back down to the waterline of debt (probably in the next two months), I’ll be back to making good progress.

This is an official post from Adventures in Debt.