Review of 2010 Goals

Financial Goals
a) Boost Emergency Fund to $2000
A+ I reached that goal by the end of August and it's now part of a TFSA.


b) RRSP 2010 of $1500
A+ - I reached that goal by the end of September. I went in November to the bank and had this added on to my wee RRSP portfolio.


c) Xmas 2010 $1000
A+ -> I had this saved by the end of June and it was wonderful to have that money in place.

d) Summer 2011 of $1000
B    I have just under $600 in this. It is first on my to tackle list for the new year. 

e) Pay off Consolidated Loan
A+++ --> this was done at the beginning of April and was now paid off a full year ahead of time. It was an incredible feeling of success.

f) Pay $1500 extra on my Vehicle Loan
A+++ --> Thanks to paying off my consolidated loan early I was able to stream $5400 extra towards my vehicle loan. I am almost, not quite, but almost a year ahead of schedule on payment.I will be excited to see this loan grow smaller.

Ahhh then we hit the sad sad failures.


Personal Goals
a) Go to the gym at least 101 times this year.
F --> holy fail batman. no excuses. bad jolie. very bad jolie. and a waste of money to boot.


b) Read 40 books 
C --> I read about 25 ish. I did not count the books I re-read as that doesn't seem quite fair. I guess I don't get to read as much as I used to. Darn work and kids LOL

c) Try 25 new recipes
D --> only about 10. sheer laziness.


d) Cook more with my children
C-->ish . didn't do enough of it.

e) Lose 40 lbs.
Epic F Fail . again. no excuses.

A year of snowflakes

(The title of this piece is 'Where snowflakes are born'. I thought it was lovely)

Well I have been diligent about keeping track of  the amount of my snowflakes each month throughout the year. I find it motivating to see how the little bits can add up and serve the greater good.


I will have to be honest. I think, often, that these little snowflakes give me more childlike excitement than the larger amounts that come with a paycheck.


Last year   I managed to watch $4295 of flakes fall. I honestly thought I'd have fewer this year as I had reallocated money. Reallocation means less left over.

but I did suprisingly well again this year. $5070. It's mind blowing when I stop to tabulate.

Where did this money come from? Well just under $1000 came from my income tax return. Other bits came from taking my bottles/cans in for recycling. A guestimation of $700 came from rolled changed. Loonies and toonies can add up. A good chunk (about $600) came from my garage sale this August.  The rest came from the bits left over in my jars each week.

Where did my snowflakes go? Debt. Almost all of it. A bit went to purchase the new sectional, but the rest went to pay of my personal loan a year early and the rest went to extra payments on my vehicle.

I guess my own personal growth lesson out of this is that little bits can add up. Long live the little bits!!

A grumpy day

DS1 got a phone upgrade (mom coupon) for christmas so we went over to change his up. After we pick out the phone he wants we know it comes with a $25 activation fee and then $50 plus a 3 year contract. I asked the lady helping us about four times what the bottom line would be on my bill. DS1 could see me twitching as she kept going through itemized numbers instead of the bottom line. We finally got that sorted out and we about to change up his phone. He is on my account and was on the 'add a phone' option for billing. It was very busy there and it took her a long time to get through to the activation folks on the phone. Then came the bad news that we could not continue the 'add a phone' option we were used to. Reason? DS1s new phone is a data phone and mine is not (it's older). Can't do add a phone with two different species of phones. So either I have to pay for a data phone package for me (even though I don't have one) or we have to split the bills apart. Either way it comes to the same amount. $50 extra a month. Ow. big ow.  The lady knew I was not pleased about this. I told her I knew she was just the messenger, but that I was still grumpy about how one gets trapped into decisions.


This took an hour. they were very busy in there.


We headed over to my mom's and discovered she had upgraded her 6 year old cell phone and got the same one DS2 got for Christmas (his first phone). Still with me?


DS2 looks at his phone and says "well I thought that seemed weird". His phone has a slide keyboard and the framework around the letters was all raised. He had thought it was supposed to be that way. what did he know? His phone is under his father's contract. Father and I separated our cell bills a few years ago after we had one too many fights about how much long distance and charges he was making on there, yet not paying any money towards the bill. It was just easier for peace of mind to split. So I phone the 1 800 number and sure enough they won't let ME go exchange DSs phone as it is under his father's bill. Father is out of town so that makes it harder. I finally get them to agree to phone husband and get his authorization for me to act on his behalf and off to the store we go again.


En route to the store, DS1 tells me that  only SOME of the letters on his keyboard work. others do not. I tell him to be sure before we go and tell him to get his brother to look at it first to be sure so we don't look like idiots. nope.


DS1s lady looked at me and probably thought  'oh hell what does she want? explained and they went off to see what was up with his phone.


DS2 and I stand in line and when it's finally our turn we explain to lady2 what the problem is and say we'd like to exchange the phone. She says she's never seen anything like that before and that it didnt' seem to affect texting except that you had to push harder. I said 'all that is true but this phone has to last for three years and if it's already starting to come apart, I don't know that it would last for the three years. She was grumpy about that. then she asked if i had the box that DS2s phone in. "well no," says I, "I actually didn't make it home from purchasing DS1's phone and it's not working'. nope they won't replace it without the box'. I did  understand that but  I was soooo tired of driving back and forth to home.


Home I went. Then back. again. DS2s lady has disappeared. "oh she's gone for her break' says lady 3, whom I actually taught a few years ago'. " or she doesn't want to talk to me again" says I. "Well' says lady 3, "she did say you were grumpy". 'And I AM" i say, 'for suchnsuch and such reasons. but I wasn't rude to her, I didn't swear, and I hope when she told you I was grumpy in private and not out front where others could hear'. I didnt' care much for the way lady 3 was snippy at me given that she knows me,but at this point I just let it all go"

End result: I think both phones work. I spent way too long fixing problems that were not my fault. I am paying more than I want to and I'm not even sure at this point what I'm paying for.

Time to curl up with a glass of wine and watch the Canadian Jr Team play hockey. DS1 actually played on the same line as one of them at a WHL camp he went to, so we are cheering, in particular, for that young man.

Update: I called Sk Tel thurs and spoke to an incredibly helpful woman who told me the lady was wrong yest about DS1's phone package. She said we were actually paying too much before too. She tinkered with things around, got us a ton more minutes, DS1 gets unlimited local evening calls and his data/online thingie. My bill will only be about $15 more, which I expected with the new phone he has, instead of the $50 to $60 the lady said yesterday. I thanked the lady today profusely for her help in explaining and fixing things. She laughed and said 'that's what we're here for'. I laughed and said 'perhaps you could tell that to the ladies yesterday who thought I was a biatch.

2010 A quick glance

I thought I'd do a quick glance to see how my year went.

For dates I am using the beginning Dec 2009 to beginning December 2010, for simplicity.

Debt December 2009 - $70 771.99
Debt December 2010 - $52 410.25

Total Debt Reduced over the year - $18 361.74

I think that's pretty darn good! I eliminated my consolidated loan, paid down a fair bit on my vehicle and the rest is the little bits of dilligent monthly mortgage payments.

Let's look at savings.

Savings December 2009 - $2225
Savings December 2010 - $10 640

Total Savings Increase - $8415

Again a woo hoo Jolie. In this category are the RRSPs, the RESPs and the TFSA (EF).

I like what I am seeing here. I hope I can have some wonderful additions for 2011.

Over Budget

Well it looks like the budget was busted again. I scrolled back in the blog to find last year's and I was over budget then too. Last year I was over budget by $350 This year is almost exactly the same. I was over by $400. Which means I spent $1400 on Christmas this year.

I know from reading many other blogs this is an atrociously high number. And in many ways it is. There were a couple surprises (read - I was not THINKING ahead).  It leaves me wondering what I will do next year.

First budget 'surprise' - a gift for my student teacher. He was with me for 4 months. He gave me a gift set and card from Tim Hortons worth $50. Unwritten rule that the teacher gives a bit more than the student so I gave him a gift card for $75 for a restaurant in the city he's from. I won't have this in my budget line next year so it shouldn't be a concern.

Second Budget 'surprise' - my new Great Nephew. He wasn't a twinkle when I made the budget in January and it's my mistake that I didn't make things work to include him within the budget. This was a big decision as he is the first of many great nephews and nieces to come. Precedence. There are four sisters in my family. Sister 1 has money. Or debt. or both. probably both. Her gifts are beyond extravagant and I am not in the same league and there is no point in trying to be. Sister 2 is the new grandmother. She fits different gift giving protocol. That left Sister 3 and I to decide how to set the precedence. We wanted the money to go the baby and it was my idea to give our niece something to start her son's Education Fund. Sister 3 was really excited about this. We gave her money in the form of a money order (with son's name on it) and wrote our note in our cards to say that we wanted the money to go to start his RESP fund. They don't have a lot of money and I think this is the most valuable gift to give that will last. Of course Sister 3 and I had to decide how much. We threw around a lot of numbers. Understood was that the baby's first Christmas would be a larger amount, with each following Christmas (or birthday) to be a smaller amount. We decided each of our gifts would be $100 and the following years it would be $50 each.  I don't buy for any of my nieces and nephews so this seems more do-able. Our niece was very touched at our generosity and said her father had also given  her money but she didn't know how to set up an RESP. Sister 3 will take care of her tutorial on that and get her started. It was a very good thing Sister 3 and I set up some rules and guidelines for ourselves as my nephew, who just got married in August, announced that he and his new bride are expecting in June. This would be Sister 1's first grandchild. I had already used my auntie intuition to determine she was pregnant at Thanksgiving. She had lost one at 6 weeks, a year or so ago, so I didn't want to say anything until she felt comfortable announcing it.

The rest of the money??? Well at work I had secret santa, I paid for a good part of my class's potluck, and I bought them all treat bags. I can't give them nothing, when many of them give me very thoughtful gifts, so it is my way of giving back. I spent about $130 ish there at work.

Tree misc. - I bought the tree from a fellow staff member's son, who has to sell them for his hockey team. I bought the big honking turkey for our gathering of 25 at mom's. That came from another of my former students who had to sell them for hockey. I bought some stamps and a bit of wrapping paper. I bought veggies and fruit to make trays for Christmas eve at my sister's. We had the offering for Christmas eve service and we had the basket we got for the adopt a family for Christmas at the Food bank.

The rest went for gifts. The boys didn't get a lot of items but the things they got cost a fair bit. They were very appreciative of what they got.

Where did the over budget money come from? you may ask? It came out of grocery money and entertainment money. No debt was incurred.

So what does that mean in terms of budget? I suspect it means that my budget is going to be $1400 for next year. I will have that money saved ahead of time, as I have done before, which means no debt.  I will watch more carefully the price on little things. I know that can save me a fortune.