Zero Money to Hero Money » personal finance
I sort of neglected the blog for a bit, but did manage to keep up with my personal finances, although i’m about $500 in debt on my credit card right now. My car needed some repairs (new windshield), I got a speeding ticket, and I’ve been spending more on gas than anticipated.
The good news is I made about $2,500 in extra income in June and half of July, and should be receiving 2 cheques next week for about another $1,200. My $10,000 goal for 2008 is definitely going to be attainable, and probably surpassed, this makes me feel great.
I made a major purchase, lease, which might not have been the smartest decision, but it’s something I’ve been looking forward to owning and will help my side photography business. I leased to own a Nikon d300, grip, a new lens and some extra stuff. I opened a 2nd bank account, where all money earned by photography sits, and all money for the lease comes out of.
I have 4 more paycheques until I move into my house, that’s pretty scary actually, I need to move my $23K up to $29K minimum to meet my 15% downpayment, but hopefully get it around $31K so i can pay my lawyer and building inspector in cash.
Assets:
- Partial Downpayment on house - $10,000
- Car - $16,000.00
- Retirement - $8,500
- Cash (checking & savings) - $0.00
Total Assets: $34,500
Liabilities:
- Line of Credit - $4000
- Car Loan - $13,250
- Couch - $1300
Total Liabilities: $18,550.00
Net Worth: $15,950.00
Goals for June 1st 2008:
- Line of credit - under $1500 owing
- RRSP - add $250
- Car Loan - under $13000
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.
