To Crack A Twenty, or Not?

Okay, as most of you know, I have a few wallets that I use for my day to day expenses. They are dollar store wallets with labels on them, indicating what fund they hold.

I have one wallet for my Utilities, which is if I have to pay for an RV Dump, or buy Propane. I have others for: contingency, entertainment, treats, and yes Groceries.

This is how I am able to stay on budget because each payday I just refill each wallet up to whatever budget I have set for each individual wallet.

For reasons of simplicity I just use multiples of $20.00. This is because it is much easier to just get a fistful of twenties from the bank and count them out for each wallet. 

What this means is that what I do with regards to those wallets affects the next payday. If I spend $60.00 out of the groceries wallet during a payperiod, then I have to put $60.00 back.

Simple, right? Well, here is where it gets complicated. Since I refill those wallets in denominations of $20.00, anything less than twenty is not counted. 

So, if I actually have $70.00 in that wallet I would still put $40.00 back in it, to top it up to my grocery budget of $100.00.

This means that each time I am about to crack one of those twenty dollar bills I have a moment of pause. I keep thinking how I can get buy and not actually crack that twenty and still make it to payday.

It may seem silly, but it is a little game I play with myself to see how far I can push things. Do I really need to buy more mayonnaise or can I stretch what I have until payday?

Sometimes I will raid the smaller bills from one wallet to fund another. Usually it is the extra from the Utilities wallet to top up groceries (or sometimes Treats).

I can do this because I crack a twenty each time I refill a bottle of propane, yet it only costs me about $12.00. So that extra $8.00 is up for grabs.

So, here I am facing the weekend (when I usually buy my top up groceries) and facing that challenge . . . to economize some more and make it until a week Sunday, buy what minimum I need right from the bank account, or just crack a twenty?

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

Wanda Payment Update

Every second Thursday has become one of my favourite days. That’s because it is a Wanda Payment Thursday! 

I know that you must be thinking that I am nuts (for a myriad of reasons to be sure) but specifically for looking forward to making loan payments.

Why? You ask? Well, this is because I get to see just how much extra of a bite this payment will take out of the principle. 

As I have said before, back when I was only making my regular payments the extra amount taken off of the principle each payday was ten cents. 

Now, I get to see just how much more that amount is, currently it is fluctuating around the three dollar mark!

In fact, today that amount was up to $3.50! ($3.52 to be exact). I always imagine some banker throwing a hissy fit every time this happens . . . it makes me happy.

This goes to show that there are three things that people should learn from this when it comes to loans. 

1. Ensure that your bank will let you make as many extra payments on that loan as you want.

2. Ensure that any and all extra payments go directly to the principle.

3. Regularly make extra payments, even if it is just $50.00 a payday.

If any of you have learned anything from this blog and watching my Wanda Paydown Struggle, those three things should be it.

I will keep trudging along forward and keep a positive attitude about the future, despite the doom and gloom there seems to be with regards to global politics. 

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

Happiness and Contentment, Without Complacency

I had an odd moment yesterday, something that hadn’t happened in quite a while; I was happy for no reason at all (whilst at work no less).

I will admit that over the past few years at least I have been battling ill and negative feelings about my life, direction thereof, what is in it and what is not.

I have had ups and downs like most, soaring highs and crashing lows. I won’t go into the details but suffice it to say that my life has not been all sunshine and rainbows.

I am working hard to gain, and now maintain a positive outlook along with a genuine happiness with regards to where my life is, at this moment.

This acceptance of my current lifestyle and state of my life seems to indeed be the key to happiness, at least for me. 

Yet at the same time, I am not content to just laze around and live in this trailer for the rest of my life. I have plans, goals, dreams and all manner of things that I want to accomplish.

As I see it my life is not where I want to be but it is not hell or all that undesirable (winter notwithstanding). 

Even that I can deal with, even winter is not all that unbearable, and the bitter cold is only around for four months, if that. The other cold I can do, not forever, but for now, as it is a necessary evil to endure. 

Endure it I will, for it is through the highs and lows of this lifestyle that I will move my goals and dreams forward much quicker than any other way. 

Yet that doesn’t mean that I can’t enjoy the process of steadily improving my life. I will continue to pause and take in or make rather happy moments along the way. 

A partner in the soft and supple kind would be greatly appreciated, but I am not expecting her to arrive anytime soon. 

Neither is my happiness depended on the lady’s arrival. I am happy just as things are, yet I am not content with the way things are, they can always be improved. 

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

Stereo Woes

One of the other things that I did over the weekend was to look at a few items around Wanda that needed attention. One of those things was indeed Wanda’s Stereo. 

The stereo in Wanda is connected to a set of speakers inside as well as another set outside. As you can guess it is not only a radio but a CD/MP3 player as well as the DVD player for the TV.

Mostly I use it to listen to the radio. Well a few weeks ago the left channel started to drop in and out until it finally just went silent, on both sets of speakers.

The way the stereo is mounted in the cabinet, I can’t take it out with the slideout in, as it blocks it. I can still  get to it to use it, I just can’t take it out.

Well, since I was at my Western Home over the weekend, I could finally pull it out and check the wiring. 

My first suspect (and hope) was that a wire had worked loose in the back. That way, all I had to do to fix it was reconnect the wire and improve the connection. 

No such luck, no matter what I did that left channel still wouldn’t work. Then I did what I didn’t want to do . . . I pulled out the old radio, Wanda’s original stereo.

Since I bought the exact same model, all I had to do was pull the stereo out and connect the antenna, video output and wiring harness.

This fixed it, it is in fact something within that new stereo that has broken, the one I bought back in November.

Now I have Wanda’s old stereo back installed and so sure I have both channels working but the only way I can turn it on and off is with the remote control. (The power button on the stereo is broken off.)

I already called the place that I bought the stereo from but got nowhere, so I sent an email . . . that was yesterday morning.

I will wait until tomorrow morning until I try to call again. I fear I will be told to bugger off and contact the manufacturer on my own.

I am hoping that there is a one year warranty and not some useless ninety day warranty.

We shall see, but the one thing I am not doing is buying another stereo anytime soon, and certainly not this model if I can help it. 

At least I still have tunes, and I am still on track to be Totally Debt Free come October. That is more important than some stereo, after all.

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

I Ditched The Bushman Look

Saturday was payday and so that is the day when my budget cycle starts anew. It is the day when I do most of my spending but also when I set aside cash for scheduled payments. 

It is also the day when I know if I can squeak a bit of cash out of my budget for something personal. Most times the answer is no, but this time I decided to opt for a haircut. 

  

I will admit, not that I could hide it, but I also had my beard died. This is a momentous moment for me as it is the first time I have died any gray hair.

I thought about buying a box of the comb in beard colorant but I again decided just to do it in one shot. To my mind, sooner or later people will notice, so why not do it all at once?

The shorter hair and more controlled beard does suit my style, but over the winter I just let it grow, partly as a cost saving measure and also to see if I would like it . . . I didn’t.

The weekend also saw me returning to my Western Home, this time unharassed. I had heard through the grapevine that they were more forgiving with people staying a couple of days and decided to check it out.

I went there after my payday running around and stayed until this morning. It was nice to be able to put the slideout out and enjoy the space and configuration that Wanda is designed to be lived in.

I enjoyed sitting in the sun (when it was not hidden by clouds) and listening to music. This always does lift my mood, of that I can assure you. 

I don’t know if I have “Seasonal Affected Disorder,” I just know that I hate winter and I hate being cold, so I will revel in the sunshine whenever I get the chance.

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

Determination, Drive, Destination

I have a goal, I have a plan and I have the wherewithal to see it through to the end . . . yet not end . . . as one journey’s end is another journey’s beginning. 

In truth each of these goals are but a mile marker on the path that is our life, just be sure to remember that you make your path and you choose your destination, so set good goals.

For me, the next mile marker is to be Totally Debt Free. After that comes building up my savings as I start towards buying some land . . . somewhere.

They key part will be, and what keeps me going, is that I will finally have control over my paycheque and actually have say on what goes where and to whom.

I am more fixated than ever now to finish this journey. The warmer weather does help to improve my enjoyment of this lifestyle as everything is nicer when the weather is warmer. 

I can do winter, I can endure it, I know what to do . . . but I hate the cold, almost as much as wasting money.

I will keep going and I will finally turn the page on debt and work on building up my finances and fiscal position instead of building up that of the banks and corporations.

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

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!