As far as spending and savings is concerned for this month, I don't even know how best to describe it to you or anyone else. In the sense, I don't think I did a good job with my spending, however I actually did have a lot of success when it came to my savings for the month. Or at least, when it comes down to the percentages I did a phenomenal job and really need to look at it in that sense, even though frankly I feel as if I failed a little at that too.
As you can see, it's rather contradictory as far as whether I succeeded or failed miserably at my goals at all.
How about a yes to all of the above here?
INCOME: Why is income first? Because for once my income was the big story for the month and the source of my confusion as far as how to rate my month's performance in spending and savings.
Why? It was a triple pay cheque month.
Yup, I got three pay cheques this month. This meant an extra set of contributions to my RRSP, employee shares plan and my pension plan. Not only that, said third pay cheque also finally came with my Thanksgiving overtime pay... finally! All in all, I got a good extra $1000 dollars added to my earnings for the month.
But that's not all!
I also got my final instalment of GST cheques for 2014 and also got my pay cheque from freelancing which also added a cool extra $500 on top of everything else. Score!
All in all, I had a good month as far as earning money went. So... what did I do with all that extra cash?
DEBT REPAYMENT: Student loans, welcome to the $32,000 club, something that I hope we'll both be out of by the midpoint in March.
This is one of the things I would call a big success for the month of January, but mostly because of on top of my minimum payment of just under $500 dollars, I was also able to muscle in another $270 extra on top from the extra money I earned this month, which was enough to make me able to only need two months instead of three months to get my student loans under $31,000 owed.
It really is sad how excited I am to get under $30,000 owed on my student loans. Mostly because it means I owe only my net salary instead of over it.
On the credit card front, I also paid off my Mastercard and Visa in full before the closing date in order to give me as close to a clean slate before starting a brand new credit card regime (involving some weird magic) that I'm aiming at doing in order to best aid my credit rating.
Of course, paying them off in full loosely translated to me paying down a good extra $200 that was left on one of them from spending in December... which is where some of my "extra" money also went towards.
SAVINGS: So here's the mark I'm personally pretty conflicted on.
See, not including the forced savings into my pension, RRSP and work share buying plan, I myself saved around $750 dollars.
$400 of it went to refill my emergency savings after practically draining it in December (and am now roughly $100 away from totally catching up to where I was before my spending spree), $200 went to my TFSA for long-term investing and savings, and the remainder was split into some form of savings either for the short or the long-term that will probably get spent this year due to upcoming medical expenses for the year.
I have to co-pay for a crown at about $500, not to mention front the cost of allergy serums at $700 before my insurance can refund me. All of that needs to have some funds set aside for it. Health care costs are the absolute pits.
Percentage-wise, the savings are pretty solid. Excluding the forced savings (as I don't count those towards my net earnings from my pay) I managed to set aside 25-30% of my take-home pay this month.
But with that said, I made close to $1,500 extra dollars this month compared to what I am supposed to or usually make and therefore is what I budget off of. So why or how did I manage to set aside half of that sum into my savings?! Granted, around $400 of it went into debt repayment but that still leaves around $300 of my money unaccounted for, right? Where did that go?
EXPENSES: Well... the extra $300 I made went here. Into my budget. Which I blew to high holy heaven this month because I had no self-control.
January (and frankly, February as well) is usually pretty a bad month for me and my money. The long nights and cold weather don't sit very well with me and my brain and tends to sabotage any legitimate attempts to well, be proactive with my goals and behave for the most part.
It pulled a fast one on my transportation costs this month in any case and that was with only two taxi trips one way!
It also exacerbates my built in laziness. I cooked less because I rather stay wrapped up in my comforter and watch Top Gear for hours on end. This led to me eating out way more than I should have and I blew my new restaurant budget past any desired spending possible. And I pulled way less than my share when it came to household duties like dishes (although I did manage to clean out the fridge, one of the few things I manage to do regularly) which annoyed my roommates some.
But that wasn't the real kicker in my budget. Yes I spent about $80 or so above what I had intended to in my food budget this month. Yes, I caved and bought a t-shirt and some make-up this month when I had zero intentions of buying clothing and make-up this month. Yes, I dropped $60 on printer ink when I could have made do without it. (although I would argue, necessary for what I've been up to lately)
But that isn't what siphoned up most of my money.
I obliterated my limit on entertainment spending this month. Two nights out with a friend and a pair of books that was impulsed because "I just felt like it" equalled me spending around $280 on my personal enjoyment... when I generally only budget at most $80 for such frivolity monthly.
I did manage not to spend to the limit in other places, but the fact of the matter is, I went about $300 over my intended spending budget. Which is exactly how much that disappeared from my extra cash that I had hoped to save.
And that is why I can't help but feel my month was a bit of a failure as far my savings and spending went. Even though it really really isn't if you get down to some of the harder numbers of what I did with my money. Somewhat.
CURRENT NET WORTH: $-30,829.63 (+4.18%)
This would be the first month so far that sees my savings, including my forced savings, making a bigger impact to my net worth than my student loan repayment, which is awesome given that my student loan repayment saw me pay down $600 on the principle this month.
This month's net worth numbers have also given me a bit of a head start on my goal of increasing my net worth to as close to $15,000 as I can make it. Honestly though, I'm more or less looking for about $1000 a month legitimately set aside for this scheme while finding enough extra to hopefully make up for the $3,000 I'm short for the year. So this will be a good head start.
On to February now!
Oh and I have no idea why confused led me to googling Jimmy Fallon GIFs for this post. It's okay, he's still pretty awesome so it worked out!
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