Zero Money to Hero Money

The first week is over, it’s Friday again and I have to say I did pretty good with my budget.  I alotted myself $140 for the week in spending money, and $50 in gas.  The $50 was all used up, but I managed to come out $21 left over from my $140, even with the long weekend.  Here’s what I spent it on:

• 3 rounds of golf - $45
• box of golf balls - $20
• Concert tickets - $20
• Coffee & breakfasts - $20
• Beers - $15

Needless to say I’m pretty happy with myself, that was for a long weekend as well.  I also got some more work to the tune of a couple hundred dollars for this weekend, plus the event I’m shooting on Sunday.  Now I just need all those cheques to roll in.

The best news of the week came on Wednesday, we had a huge meeting at work with the entire company, things have been a little bit slow lately so the meeting was slightly worrysome.  When we sat down there were 3 new faces in the meeting room, it turns out our company got purchased by another company.  The deal isn’t finalized but it should be in a couple of weeks, however both parties were very confident that it’s a done deal.  Why is this so awesome?

1. They’re paying out retention bonuses to keep staff on board
2. The company that bought us has been voted top 5 High Tech companies to work for, for the past 3 years straight
3. They’re relocating our office, the new office is less than 1km from my new condo, and about 2.5km’s from where I’m living now.

Less than 1km from my new condo!!  I couldn’t believe this, currently I’m driving 30kms each way to get to work, when we move this summer I’ll be walking for about 5 minutes.  This is enormous to me both financially but more important emotionally.  I previously had a job where I was about this close to the office and I loved it.  I felt like no time was wasted during the day, whereas now I spend about an hour in the car everyday.

This week I’ve limited myself to $120, and will try to hang on to another $20 to put into my LOC.  Next weekend I’ve got a trip coming up, and a few more weeks away I’ll be in Cuba, so I’m trying to cut back on my spending until then even more so I don’t feel as guilty.

Last night I got paid, I’ve set up the new budget as described in my last post, and went to the bank on my way to work this morning to withdraw the money.  I skipped my usual Tim Hortons as I figure that $2.50 would be better spent elsewhere, possibly this weekend.  I took out $160 in cash for the week, which includes my $50 for gas,  the other $30 I put on my credit card (which has no balance) for the 2 rounds of golf that will be coming off of it for this weekend.  So now I’ve got $110 in my pocket to last me till next Friday, I don’t think it will be that bad.

A bonus is I have about $600-700 coming in next week from photography (sold a print this week) and web programming (did a few hours of work a couple nights this week, and last Sunday).  I also have a photography contract to shoot an event next Sunday which should bring in an additional $400.  I’m almost on schedule for hitting the $10k mark for the year from outside income sources, that would be amazing.

So my paycheque I divied up like this:

• $100 gas
• $280 spending (groceries, entertainment, golf etc)
• $250 car loan payment
• $17 gym membership (I use this 6 times a week, so it’s well worth it)
• $50 travel fund
• $50 electronics fund
• $50 car maintenance fund (I have a feeling I’m going to need new brakes sometime this summer)
• $125 RRSP
• The rest onto my Line of Credit

Can’t wait to see how I’ve done next Friday.

I bit the bullet, and started up this personal finance blog as an extra motivator to get me to save money, and spend less.  I already do the budgets, the spreadsheets, the automatic withdrawls etc etc, but I still go way over my monthly alloted budget without realizing it.  I’m hoping that by setting goals and monitoring them through this blog I will pay closer attention to where I’m spending the money and hopefully achieve saving more than I normally would.  Every month I hope to set financial goals to reach for the next month, and track them through this blog.

A little bit about myself:  I’m 27 years old, and almost a first home owner who lives in Canada.  I work in high tech doing software development and photography / web design as a side job.  I’ve been working full time for a couple of years now and should have a lot more money saved than I do.  I did however make the very stupid mistake in university of spending way more than I made in my part time jobs and summer jobs.  Resulting in almost 25k worth of debt on credit cards and lines of credit by the time I graduated.  It took me nearly 2 years of full time work to pay it all off, and actually I’m not fully out of debt yet.

Currently I’m sitting at 10k paid to the company I’m buying my home from as a partial downpayment, an additional 9k in RRSP and I still owe $3500 on my line of credit.   On top of that I have a car loan that still has roughly 2 years left at $250 bi-weekly for my 2005 Mazda 3.  By September 15th my goal is to have 30k total for the downpayment on my condo (just over 15% of my mortgage value).  I’ve got some work to do.