Why I decided not to roll all of my credit card repayment money into my student loans. For now...

In early October 2014, I had officially and completely eliminated my credit card debt, debt that I had carried since 2006. It was a good day for me and one that I am incredibly proud of.

Depiction of how I felt eliminating a balance I carried since 2006.

But since then came the dilemma. What do I do with the money I had directed towards the credit card debt now? Especially given that when I had originally planned on paying off my credit card this summer, I had budgeted around $200 of my regular monthly wage to service said debt.

Well that's easy said all personal finance planners, bloggers and extended family in the world. Snowball it into your student loans and get that next nasty bit of debt paid off lickity split and all that!

Well... not so fast. Some things have since came to light since I budgeted that original total that has ultimately changed that game plan for me.

For one, since paying off that debt, I had since opted into my employer's pension plan, which garnishes around $80 per month of my before-tax wages.

(Although frankly speaking, I'm kicking myself at not having opted into the plan sooner, as it is a defined benefits pension plan, which in Canada is hugely beneficial in retirement and also increasingly rare because of how beneficial it is to the employees. And I basically missed out on six months of future wealth and for what? An extra pair of shoes? But this really isn't the time to discuss this... maybe later.)

Then there's the two other programs I opted into through work. One is a company share-buying program, which I'm giving around $20 dollars per month to, largely because there's a company match involved in my contributions. Then there's the RRSP through my company, of which I also contribute around $20 a month to to act as an additional safety net for me in the future, because well... safety nets! And also some company perks are involved as well.

So if you're doing the math, about $120 dollars of my gross income ($110 really if you consider that some is a before tax total) that once went towards my credit cards have since been swallowed by retirement financing instead.

Well, okay, says some personal finance people who can understand the reasoning behind investing in my future now when compounding interest can have its greatest effect rather than pay down a student loan as soon as possible. That still leaves me with $90 dollars to roll into my student loans every month... right?

Well... yes.. but I can hardly justify contributing to an RRSP to myself (even at a pittance of $20 a month) without putting more of my money into a TFSA, especially since I'm not even close to maxing it out. So I made the decision to start putting $40 a month of my regular wage into it for now with the intent of upping it eventually.

Which leaves me back with the $50 dollars extra I've been contributing to the student loans on top of my minimum payment since January 2014 when payments became required, and a number I arbitrarily chose earlier this year as a means to get me over the $500 a month payments I wanted.

And an extra amount I only briefly paused in order to pay down my credit card debt!

It is hardly an amount that can match the $200 I could have put towards my student loans per month.

So I failed dramatically at the whole snowballing my payments into other loans thing, but frankly, I'm hardly ashamed by my decision to put my money elsewhere. It's not as if that money is being re-introduced as discretionary spending and wasted, and that money once used to help my debt is still being saved and still going to contribute to my eventual net worth here, just not in lowering my debt load.

Now, some will argue that I should not be contributing to an RRSP when I hardly make enough to justify it. Or that I shouldn't be saving money in a TFSA with such a huge student debt load. And I admit that there  is a well-reasoned argument to support that stance.

But at this immediate moment, I'm more concerned with getting something going in long-term savings and for that to happen I needed to form a base, whereas before I had none. Which means that for a short time at least, my resources are being spread out in a lot of different directions in order to build something.

Will things change? Absolutely things could change. For one, my student loan interest rate is a floating one, so as soon as that starts to show signs of floating upward (a phenomenon that is predicted to possibly happen at some point next year), you can expect me to become more anxious about controlling my debt.

Also I happen to know that as a person that cares about how she's able to spin things (I was a media major in school. I learned how words can change perceptions), I'm often tempted when I see the opportunity from being able to say I owe "over 30k" to "just under 30k" - a distinction that can be as little as $5 dollars.

But what is probably my most important point on the matter, the money I speak of is the money that just comes out of my regular salaried wage at my full time job and is just the money I budget with (and rather strictly to be honest). It doesn't take into consideration the (admittedly fairly decent, but irregular) money I earn freelancing. Or the money I earn working holidays. Money that basically paid off 95% of my credit cards to be honest.

But that is a different story for another day.