It's a-happening!  The EF is going to experience contributions again.  The balance of which is $1.66 at this moment.


I set up 10 Automatic Transfers of $5 to come out every week starting January 20th.  It's small, but it's something.  And something is better then nothing.  We'll do the $5 for 10 weeks and then see about increasing the amount.

I certainly enjoyed having an EF before.  I remember knowing that we had money there if something went wrong.  I especially remember being able to pay for a new tire on the car and paying for a new washing machine with EF money.  But I can also remember us using the EF to 'cover' when we were short of money.  We did this a few times before our savings scheme completely fell apart last summer and drained all the money out of the savings.. 

Something else I need to remember is that while we saved all this money to go to the UK and saved money in our EF and saved money in House and Car funds, at the same time we accumulated more debt.  We filled up our LOC and our CC balances grew too.  What we saved in savings accounts was negated by consumer debt.  It happened slowly.  It's not like it happened overnight.  We didn't have to get a new furnace or fix the roof or anything like that. It was just dinners out, lunches out, the odd grocery trip, clothes, that kind of stuff.  We have nothing to show for it.  As usual.

So, while it's great that I'm starting to save again (yippee!) I also don't want to overextend our saving to the point where we are cash short and resort to using our CC/LOC.  I also don't want to trick myself into thinking that just because we are saving money that we have stopped spending as well.

Well, I would just like to say that for about 1 week our EF had over $1,000 in it. We achieved our initial goal of $1,000!!!!!!

Then the washing machine broke. Leaking on the underneath, cracked pipe. We talked about getting it fixed, but then we discovered that brand new that washer is under $250. It didn't seem worth it to try and fix it.

We purchased another one for altogether $532. I took $32 out of our House Fund (leaves $7) and the rest out of the EF. It's a Samsung front loader and it arrives Jan. 19. Until it arrives we are creatively doing laundry at the laundromat. We wash the clothes there and then bring them home to dry them in the dryer.

So we are now down $500 in our EF. In some ways I'm sad. It took so long to get it to 1K and now we've emptied it back to almost halfway.

BUT

It was wonderful and almost exciting to just go out and buy a new washing machine. There was no worry. There was no question about which cc to put it on. There was no panic about cost. There was no arguments. There was no lost sleep. There was no uncertainty.

It was just go out and buy what we needed. It was an awesome feeling.

I've started updating my side bars. It's slow going because...well...I'm slow at it. :P

EF is still plugging away. A few months ago we used some money out of the fund to help cover costs.

UK trip is trucking along nicely. I hope we save up lots!

My Christmas Jar is doing pretty good too.

I didn't make a saving tracker, but we have all our money saved up for our little trip to Calgary to stay with my aunt. Husband, child, dog, and me are going to drive up to Calgary for 10 days in November. I've got $500 earmarked.

The only sidebar I haven't updated yet is the LOC. I can't remember the log in to the bank account. lol.

With the arrival of Scout and Husband's holiday pay being disbursed on every pay cheque we need to re-evaluate our saving scheme. It feels like I spend quite a few many posts doing this. :P But that's okay, because life is always changing! Nothing in our financial plans should ever be set in stone.

The new plan for our savings program:

Currently saving $210 a month. Husbands holiday pay is about $80 a cheque (so $160 a month) and adding in money for Scouts fund.

380 a month into savings and planned spending to be distributed in this
way:

$80 - EF
$20 - Scout Fund (this is for trips to the vet, medications, unexpected things like that - her food and treats will come out of our general
spending)
$20 - House Fund
$20 - Car Fund
$240 - Holiday Fund

I know it seems like a lot to put towards the Holiday Fund but we really really really want to go to the UK next year for husbands friends wedding. Husband looked up plane tickets for the 3 of us to Manchester and it was 4K, so it is an expensive trip and we are hoping that his parents will help out with the costs seeing as how they won't be coming here that summer for a holiday.

Once the EF reaches 1K (our first goal) I was thinking of reducing our monthly contribution amount from $80 to $60 and redistributing that $20 a month into our planned spending. Yay or nay?

I got paid today and saw my pay stub and I realized that I've gotten my yearly increment increase. Although I'm not entirely too sure why...I'm running with it. My increase has upped my pay by $5 so I'm implementing one of Gails ideas again.

Live on your pre-raise income. If you get a cost-of-living increase or a performance raise pretend you didn't and save the extra money you're bringing home each
pay.

I really like this way of saving. You don't feel like you're 'missing' out on anything because you never had the money in the first place. Your incoming money stays the same but your savings increases with virtually no hardship to you.

So, I've set up my 10 weeks of automatic transfers into our savings account for $45 a week. The distribution will be as follows:

$20 EF ($80 a month = $960 a year)
$20 Holiday Fund ($110 a month = $1320 a year)
$2 House Repair/Maintenance Fund ($8 a month = $96 a year)
$3 Car Repair/Maintenance Fund ($12 a month = $144 a year)
$45 a week = $210 a month = $2520 a year

Seeing the numbers out there in print makes everything so much more real and inspiring. :)

I've updated my side bars. Our EF savings is up to 73% of the first goal of 1K! Yay for us!

The LOC repayment is not happening as fast as I had initially planned as Husband needs to purchase some tools for his job so we are using my lump sum payment money for that. But it is being paid down and I am happy for that.

My Spare Change Challenge is up to $24.89. I'm quite pleased with that. It'll be good for when Christmas rolls around.

I've also increased our weekly saving from $39 to $40 a week. Infinitesimal I know...but we seem to work best with baby steps. Savings are going to look like this: $20 to EF, $18 to Holiday, $1 to House, $1 to Car. Sounds quite lame I know...but it's all about baby steps for us. Baby, Baby, Baby, Baby steps.

Anyways...it's taken me most of tonight to write this...so I'm going to hit post now. Have a great weekend everyone!

I realized I hadn't updated my sidebars in ages. Check them out!

82% on the way to our camping trip! 59% towards our first goal of 1K in the emergency fund! 6.26% paid off of that darn LOC!

My Christmas fund (not on a sidebar) is sitting at $19 bucks! Not bad for just pennies, nickels, and dimes for the most part. The house and car fund are sitting at $11 and $14 respectively (also not on a side bar).

I am really enjoying seeing my savings amount rise every week. Saving really is addictive for me. I keep thinking of new funds to start and trying to think of new ways to save.

I updated my sidebars and we are over halfway to our first goal of $1,000 in our EF! Yay us! I'm so stoked right now.

Some updates for blogland...

We had our taxes done today. We went to H&R Block...and I know what everyone is thinking, "Why would you do that? They are so easy to do yourself...what a waste of money..." (I know because I got the earful from my father). But every time I have done taxes I have made mistakes and ended up owing myself or ended up making my spouse owe money. It's just not something I'm doing myself anymore.

Anyways...We got the return it's being distributed in this way:

We paid this months (and a little of next months) Hydro Bill. That was quite nice as it was large because of the dreadfully cold winter we've had. We each are getting $100 for spending money (clothes, Wii Games, lunches out, beer, that kind of thing), we threw $100 onto the LOC, and added $20 to our EF. I will also be paying for the mistake that I made last years taxes when we did them on our own (about $260 bucks). Anyways...taxes always stress me out and I'm glad that this years are done.

Adding the $20 bucks onto the EF today brings it to the grand total of.......(drum roll)....$473.05!!!! that is sweet! I am so pleased with our progress. :) We are 47% to our first goal of $1000 dollars! Our camping trip fund currently has $43 in it or 14.3% of our (liberal) $300 goal. I have plans to start saving for a general house fund too in the next few weeks. Starting small again and building slowly.

I have started participating in a Frugal Village Challenge. It's a spare change/penny challenge. So far I have $9.11 in my spare change jar. The money I save in this jar is going to go to wards Christmas Presents. I started taking part in this challenge about 2 weeks ago. Normally I used to scrounge all our change to pay for Tim Hortons...so I'm hoping this challenge helps me to curb the Timmies addiction.

Today is my 3rd week of being a smoke free human being. I am feeling very proud of myself for not smoking for 3 whole weeks. It hasn't been as hard as I imagined it would be. I've slowly eliminated the places I smoke at and the less I've smoked the more I've noticed how gross it really smells. I've stopped smoking before for months at a time...but I've always restarted. The key for this time is to recognize situations that would make me start again and find some kind of alternative to smoking.

On the weekend I did bake. I made mini-muffins & granola bars! I was quite the Martha Stewart on Saturday afternoon. The muffins are great (they are organic oatmeal with banana).
The granola bars were yummy...although they did not stick together. I don't know what I did but I ended up with granola instead of bars. That was OK though because they were heavenly! I loved them. S gobbled them all up on Sunday night. Andrew, however, would not eat them because he 'only likes granola bars with marshmallows and chocolate in them'. Spoiled little bugger. :P So, I did achieve one goal! The other goal...has not happened yet. I've got the mailer, the items, and labels all lined up...I just haven't found her address and mailed it. I'm getting there...slowly but surely. lol.

Tomorrow we are recommitting to doing the Money Jars. We are going to do CASH ONLY for 1 month and then re-evaluate. It should be interesting. I hope we don't crash and burn like we did last time.

The big thing I have to decide now is...what to spend my money on!

Our EF is currently sitting at $432.05 (43% of our first goal of 1K). I upped our weekly contribution by $1 to $21 a week. I know it's not much, but it's something and every little bit counts, right? $1 a week is $52 in a year. We're going to do $21 a week for 10 weeks and then re-evaluate.

My pay was also adjusted to match the new pay scale (finally!) and so I get a bit more on each cheque now. Because of this I've upped our "Planned Spending" contribution as well from $10 a week to $18. We are still continuing with the $15 that gets deducted right off my paycheck and goes into a Payroll Savings Bond. Right now this account is for saving for our camping trip in May. After the camping trip goal is reached we will begin saving for a trip to England in 2010. S's friend is getting married and he wants to be there....so we are going to try to get all 3 of us there. This savings account is moving from the original idea of saving for house/car/stuff and is soley becoming the HOLIDAY fund.

The next step in the savings plan is to open a savings account for house repair/maintenance, car repair/maintenance and miscellaneous items that might need purchasing that are 'big' ticket items. Like all things we do, we are going to start small and then slowly increase the amount every 10 weeks. We seem to have the most success this way. Start small, watch it grow, then make it a little more as the weeks and months go by. Hopefully we will make it to a PC pavilion this Saturday morning and we will be able to set a savings account up to get started.