Zero Money to Hero Money

Over the past couple of years I’ve tried everything for budgets, limiting how much I would spend, removing money from one account to another, breaking everything down in spreadsheets etc etc.  None of it ever seems to work, I’ll write down what I buy every time I buy it, then miss a day, or a weekend, and suddenly I just give up on that.  Or I’ll examine my quicken at the end of the month and it will blow my mind that I spent $800 on dining in one month, or on drinks.

I have a few vices, namely Golf, and eating out.  Previously I had the gear itch with photography, but I have a reasonably good set up that works really well for me, and have managed to resist and not really had the urge for at least a year to purchase more gear.

So back to my new strategy, when I say that I’m terrible with budgets and money, I really mean it.  I have good intentions but they never work.  Usually when I think I’ve done well for the month, I look at my credit card bill and realise I just put everything on there instead of paying for it.

The new strategy, I’m going to leave my credit cards at home, take out my budgeted money for the next week on payday, and see if I can make it till the end of the week on what I allotted.  I get paid this Friday so I’m going to try it out.  I’ve allotted myself $50 for gas, and $20/day for groceries & entertainment (which unfortunately includes golf).  So this Friday to next Friday I have $190, if I can come out with even 10 cents left over, I’ll be really excited.

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.