Some snowflakes/August Change

I went to the bank today after work and made an extra payment on my LOC.

My change for the month was hefty. I purposely didn't spend any that I got buy when buying things, because I  needed this little psychological boost.

1 roll of Toonies - $50
1 rolls of loonies - $50
3 rolls of quarters - $30

for a total of $130

Added to that was some leftover gas money and grocery money which added up to $100.

Together that was $230 down on my LOC.

I need to keep up the focus and get this debt DOWN.

And.................he is gone

With a quick dash back into the house to grab his mother's dog eared copy of Voltaire's Candide, DS2 is gone.

Don't tell DS1, but the tears have been far more copious this time than when his brother left for the first time.

I think it's because it means this phase of motherhood is truly over.

Waiting for all the money pieces to fall together.

Money is whipping in and out of my accounts like crazy and to be honest, I will be happy when both boys are settled in to school. Then I know the tuitions are paid and I can get back to whatever my new budget will be.

DS2's tuition was paid yesterday. The RESP money is in, so as soon as it shows up on my MasterCard, I can take care of that.

DS1's tuition is still pre-scholarship so we are waiting for that to be applied. I forget how long that took last year. The online College account says the 20th of August but I know full well it was in September before it actually was applied. So we are waiting to see how much that is, and if any of his accommodations are covered.

DS1's MC bills for his travel down are finally posted. He stayed in a hotel last Wed night and the charge just showed up on the MC today. So that is all paid. What a difference in gas prices between the countries. A fill here was about $50 and down there it is high $20.  It does annoy me that it takes that many days for the charges to show up on the card.

My laptop is still in the shop. I stopped by yesterday and talked to the guy. It made it to their bench Friday.  The Trojan is deeply embedded in my system and they are having trouble wiping it out. So it will be another couple days.

Funny thing - I noticed the weird popups (Trojan) when I was ordering shirts for DS1 from Holister.ca (Abercrombie and Fitch). Hey, $10 Tee shirts!  And good quality ones too. He has one and loves it. Anyhoo, that is when this popped up.

Enter my school laptop that I brought home with me last week. DS2, who hates clothing shopping, said he liked his brother's shirt and since they were cheap, could he get a couple since he needs new shirts anyways.

I never even 'thought' and went to my school laptop to the webpage and after picking a couple, I went to start the check out process and the SAME popup came up. Coincidence???? I think not.

I shut it down and restarted it. Apparently the school has better virus protectors because it is gone. I checked with the techie at school.

I called the company to tell them what happened from their webpage on two different occasions. They could not have cared less.

The money for DS2's hail damaged car came through. I put that in  a savings account. It will be there when we decide what his new to him vehicle will be and find one we can afford.

And that's the money poo.

It's payday today so it feels like a brand new start to things. 

One gone

Well DS1 left yesterday. His girlfriend spent the weekend with us as they tried to make the most of their last few days together.

We spent Tuesday packing and making sure he had all his proper documents to get across the border. This would be the first time he would be going alone, by vehicle. 17 hours is a long long drive. I hope he doesn't choke to death on the stench of his hockey equipment.

He dutifully texted me after he got through the border and again when he checked into a hotel in North Dakota. A lot of the boys that drive far just pull over at a roadside stop or a 24 hour gas station, but that made me nervous.  He spent a night in a vehicle when he went to Craven (outdoor music concert) this summer, when their tent got flooded, so he knows how uncomfortable that it.

He should be on his last leg of the journey by now. When he texted last night he said he was glad to be back in the land of low gas prices. It's crazy expensive up here.

The house felt emptier last night, for sure. The cats were looking for him.

Part of me felt the tiniest bit relieved. Now I can focus on getting DS2 ready for his departure and give him my full attention. I am sure DS2 is thrilled LOL

DS2's car

So we had our appointment with SGI (claims) for them to see DS2's car after the hail storm. They are used to seeing lots of little dents but they said it was rare to see such massive dents all over a car like that.

He did his once over and documented everything and stopped when the damage value was at
 $10 000, saying that was enough for the car to be written off. Then we had to wait for  a claims adjustor to evaluate the worth of the car.

It took awhile as everyone is on summer holidays. They came back with an initial value of $7600, which was more than I thought, honestly.

Then I had to take in the $6000+ in receipts from the past year for all the repairs we did: struts, transmission, upper and lower control arms, etc

Know what they offered us for that? $200. That's it. Said nothing counted but the transmission.

I was shocked.   Kind of sad that all that work was valued and almost nothing.

That cheque will come in a week or so and I will tuck it away until DS finds a vehicle he likes and we can afford.

Little Grumbles

I  am working very hard on being positive and light hearted because.........it makes me feel better.

But....Totally first world problems here, I know. Nothing that will stop me from living and breathing and functioning, but just a teeny bit annoying.

So small vent and then I shall move on.

• Laptop. I was told it would be done by last Friday. I called this morning and it hasn't even hit the bench yet and could be another week or two as they are 'super busy'. (then don't promise a week if you are super busy, silly).   I said I needed access to some files for school and, well....school starts next week. He said "bring your USB in and we will transfer the files onto it".  Thinking that they need to be reminded that not everyone has multiple devices I laughed and  said "and what would you like me to stick the USB in to open said files?" I said it very light hearted and he didn't take the bite and offer dark suggestions of where to stick it :-)  It just miss mine and wish they had kept their promise

• Dentist: I have been calling multiple times a week all summer trying to get an appointment for cleaning and it always rang busy. Now summer is over and my window of flexible time is over.

• VISA: I called to see if I could get my credit limit temporarily raised so I could pay DS2's tution on it (for the reward points). It would be paid off immediately. I have room on my Mastercard but collecting airmiles has proven to be a why bother since there are never flights when we want to use them. Anyways....despite me never having a balance owing for the past 7 years on my VISA, they would only up it $500. It would take a credit inquiry to raise it up more and I have no desire to tamper with my credit rating for reward points. .

(freaky coincidence....phone rang as I typed the word airmiles and it was FROM airmiles. I think they can hear me!! I had called them this morning about using miles to book a flight and wondered if there was a list of dates where there were no flights available instead of my guessing and trying for over an hour Answer...there isn't.)

Bright spot: DS2's college does not charge a fee for using the CC to pay tuition. DS1's charges something like 4% to do that. ouch

• school laptop. We had been told that teachers being moved would have their computers taken care of so that we had access to the new school's printers, etc. I called this morning and we have to reimage them ourselves. I don't mind doing it. I just have no idea how. Apparently there is some magic portal in the library I have yet to be in, where I do this. Should be an interesting experience.
• Still playing phone tag with SGI about DS2's car and how much they are willing to give for it.

Anyways, I am off to withdraw some $ from my RESP. My old advisor is no longer in that position so we shall see if my new one is experienced, or not.

Super grateful for the flexible time I have to take care of all these little details.

Where the money stands

as of August 15

Seriously late to the game posting this.
Debt
Mortgage - $20 084.78
College LOC - $18 500

Total Debt - $38 584.78



Savings/Planned Spending
TFSA/EF - $7100
RESP - $16 900
RRSP - $9 847
Summer 2015 - money in use
Back to School - $400 (started to use some)
Plates - $1100 (goal met)
RRSP in holding ($1500)
XMAS -1400


I really really don't want to add the LOC to my total on the upper right. It is going to be in flux up and down and up and down for the next three years.   I am not in denial about my debt totals. I think of that LOC balance and all the amounts I have to pay upcoming all...the...time.

I have already made headway on the LOC, lopping off $1500 since I moved things around.

As part of the shifting of money around before adding on to the LOC, I moved enough money to finish my 2015 savings goals of RRSP and XMAS. I needed to streamline all the transactions happening each month.


On the bright side, the next mortgage update will be under 20, 000.  When I started this blog in July of 2008, it was $44 537.19

A bit of a boost

We got word earlier this week that DS2 received two bursaries to go towards college.

We applied for these through the college in early July. Competition is tough and DS doesn't qualify for any special circumstances so only about 5% of the scholarships available were ones he was eligible for.

Happily, we received $1000 and $500 . Both go straight to the college  and are applied directly to his account. I definitely appreciated them.

We need to do thank you cards for them. This school offers four different rounds of scholarships throughout the school year and to not do a thank you pretty much writes off all future chances.

US money decision

Our dollar is dropping and is rumoured to not improve in health until at least after xmas.

I needed money for tuition and money for living expenses so I had to bite the bullet and borrow money on my LOC and take the hit converting Canadian dollars to US.

I went in a couple weeks ago and went through the paperwork of getting the limit of my LOC raised to $25 000. The good news is my credit score is still very high. She was surprised and impressed.

I then borrowed tappd into that LOC from $8000 to $20 000.

I then converted that $12 000 Canadian to US and took an evil hit on the exchange

Why oh why did I not convert last Aug when the dollar was at 91 cents?

I now have, counting the bit I had before, just over $10 000 US.

DS1's tuition was posted yesterday. $9400 US. We have to wait until Sept to find out how much of that will get covered by the scholarship. I am guessing I will be paying around $4500 of that.


DS went with me to the bank yesterday to convert his summer earnings to US dollars. It made the dollar exchange much more real for him, thinking of how much money, how many hours of work, disappeard to make that conversion.

Now to work on paying down that LOC

oh boy! a trojan

Coming to you from my school laptop. My home computers managed to pick up a lovely Trojan called Hiloti on Monday.  Despite every effort, I could not get it out of my system so off to the computer shop they went.

Cost per device $117.50 for removal

Gotta love viruses.

I don't even go anywhere interesting to get a virus :-)

RRSP Update

OUCH

We took a hit.

When last we spoke, my RRSP was sitting at $10 196. I was excited to have finally gotten my RRSP over that magical hump of ten grand.

Imagine my disappointment when I opened my July statement and found this balance: $9 847.

Ouch.

That's a pretty big hit. A $ 349 hit

I am attributing it to the dollar drop but would welcome other thoughts on why? I am going to ask when I go put in my next $1500 for 2015.

Goals for July - update

25 large garbage bags of stuff out of my house ( trash, recycle, donate) 26 done

46.5 KM walked or an ave of 1.5 km a day. I am still weak physically and need to get my energy levels up (21 done)

25 books donated to our library (45 done)

2 books read for school (1 done)

7 pounds lost (4 done)

use my jars for my variable expenses (so so)

my new room unpacked and organized (in progress)

find DS2 a place to live in college town (done)

snowflake $490 to meet mini goal (goal met)

Newly added:

• colonoscopy (done)
• apply for DS2's scholarships (done)
• get vehicle fixed (done)

The worst part about July, other than the immediate colitis effects was the absolute lack of energy/exhaustion. Most days I was lucky if I could get 15 min of work done without being out of breath/shaking exhausted. Not thrilled about that and not sure of the cause.

I did get things off my list and out of my house but my goodness I could have done so much more with energy.

Sunday Night Chit Chat - lake edition

Coming to you from my iphone from the lakeshore in the north.

What are you...

Reading? Not much of anything to be honest... I have books that need read & reviewed, but I haven't had much in the way of 'free time'.

 

Watching? I just watched Hairspray with the kids. Such a fun movie... we all like it!

 

Listening to? the crackle of the fire. my sisters smack talking while playing Kaiser. lots and lots of laughter.

 

Budgeting for? Both boys heading to school in a month

 

Excited for? Seeing my kitties. I do miss them.

 

Adding on your 'to do' list?  I found two more scholarships for DS2 to apply for.

 

Grateful for? Looking around.... my family. There are 29 of us gathered this weekend. A few had to work and one of my nieces is due in Sept but went into early labour with her last two (6 weeks and 7 weeks) We are hoping she can keep this one in for at least 4 more weeks so bed rest is a must.

 

Thinking about? Both my boys leaving me in 3 ish weeks. I know it's only Aug 1st but DS leaves on the  23rd and DS2 soon after that and I am sad. I see DS1 especially really appreciating the family time. We know how long 10 months away is.

 

Doing this week? Scholarship applications for DS2, DS1's phone needs replacing and he needs dress shoes. Double checking DS1's forms to make sure nothing needs renewing before he leaves. Finishing up my classroom. Attempting to create a budget for Sept when the boys are both gone.

 

 

Thanks to Sunday Night Chit Chat for hosting.