Thursday 20 April 2017

Pay Banks, Then Me

Okay, so as I have said before, during this whole journey to Total Debt Freedom my cash has been divided into three categories:

1) What I need to exist (Living Expenses)
2) What I may need to exist (Savings/OOPS Fund)
3) Debt Servicing/Debt Elimination.

As you can imagine this last category has always been the largest one, with the middle being the smallest . . . so far.

This is why, for most of my life and even still, my paycheque is not mine, it belongs to everyone else. 

On payday I feel like the scrawny kid standing with my lunch money before the bullies handing over most of it just to keep them from pummelling me. 

All the while they, and the school authorities, tell me this is “fair” and it is the “free market system” and all that. 

With the help of my Yearly Budgeter, I am able to see what can happen more than a few paydays in advance, up to the end of the year, as a matter of fact.

Of course with each payday budget based on the results of the one before, all going on down the line, the further you go into the future, the less reliable the predictions become.

With that in mind I have predicted that by the end of October I should be able to pay off the Wanda Loan and also have paid for my Truck and Trailer insurance up front.

What then? What do I do after that? I know that I need to put at least two months of savings directly into my RRSP.

This is in order to complete the “payback” from the “loan” I took out of my RRSP to finish my BA a few years back. 

I know that it just has to get done, and that this is the reason for my tax refund troubles. (Don’t get me started on the atrociousness of the RRSP system.)

The question is when to do that and when to start the savings plan for the property (or whatever) in earnest. 

In my original plan I would pay the RRSP off by the end of the year and then start the Property Savings Plan right away in January of 2018.

There is the matter of my Mid-Term Savings which will be decimated by that point, and not to mention the mattress that I have needed for the past year at least.

(As it is now I am pretty much sleeping on plywood.)

The original plan was to just push the mattress off by six months yet and just build up the Mid-Term Savings up by trickle saving . . . over time.

After some reflection, and a timely and wise comment from a reader of this blog, I have decided to use the last two months of this year to build up that Mid-Term Savings and buy the Bloody Mattress! 

I will use the RRSP Grace Period of January and February of 2018 to put the two months worth of savings into my RRSP and have it count for this tax year.

After that I will begin my Property Savings Plan but continue to trickle save my Mid-Term Savings account.

My intent to use this for my large expenses such as Truck and Trailer Insurance . . . as well as for . . . heaven forbid . . . discretionary spending . . . *gasp* . . . (within reason of course).

This will put me in a better and more relaxed frame of mind as I move forward after I have achieved Total Debt Freedom. 

It is a nice plan and any number of a thousand things could derail it, but it is what I am working towards. The nice carrot, as it were, to keep me trudging forwards and be a good boy.

For now though, I still need to continue my miserly ways and work the plan in hand . . . the one leading to Total Debt Freedom. There is nothing but that . . . for now.

As always: Keep your head up, your attitude positive, and keep moving forward!

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