Give Me Back My Five Bucks a quest for financial independence
This is going to be an interesting month. I’m hoping to keep my expenses low as I get settled into my new job.
I’ve also accounted for an increase to my mortgage payments, as well as car expenses (insurance and gas). I checked out the cost of a bus pass ($124 for 2 zones), but it’s just not worth it. For the same amount of money, I could drive and shorten my commute by 90 minutes each day. Maybe there’s a car pool at work, or better options that I haven’t thought of yet. But until then, I’ll be commuting by car. Now that I’m thinking about car expenses, it’s probably about time I get some car insurance quotes to make sure I’m getting the best deal for my money.
Other than that, this budget will likely be a work in progress over the next few months until I can find a good balance.
January 2013 Goals:
- Run 50km outdoors. I’ve been running mainly in the gym, but I’m looking to return to outdoor running now that I’m back in Vancouver and have a park across the street from me.
- Increase my mortgage payments. While in Germany, I reduced my mortgage payments down to the minimum. Now that I’m back, I’d like to increase it to what it used to be – accelerated bi-weekly, with an extra 20%. That works out to an extra $222 each month.
- Get back on track with my Retirement Portfolio. I need to increase my savings rate, so I’ll be creating a plan over the next month or so. Right now I’m thinking of contributing $700 or $800 per month, divided between my TFSA and RRSP accounts.
- Start contributing monthly to a charity. Self-explanatory!
Have you looked into lowering your cel phone costs? Being in Vancouver there are likely more options than Rogers Bell and Telus (think, Public Mobile, Wind, Koodo, Mobilicity etc) and it may be worth seeing if you’d save by cancelling a contract you may be on.
Yes I’ve looked into a lot of different carriers, but my cell phone bill also includes additional data for my iPad so that’s why it’s so high. And it’s an unlimited long distance/minutes plan b/c I make a lot of phone calls for my freelance work and don’t have a landline.
Thanks for sharing this, it’s very inspiring.
I am curious to know what the percentage split will be between the TFSA and the RRSP contributions. Do you still support investing in RRSPs or are you only contributing an amount that gets you the best tax credit?
I think about the time when I am ready to withdraw my funds and I am leaning toward more TFSA after I have taken RRSP credit to get a tax refund.
I am wondering for $70 what is included in your Rogers plan?
It’s a $60 plan, but I was just being generous with the taxes. :) I upgraded to an unlimited Canada-wide plan because I found I was making a lot of long calls, as well as long distance calls. I also upgraded my data package so that I could tether data to my iPad.
I love the fact you can tether!!
When I changed my Rogers plan in October, they had a promotion. Pay $5 to get 6 GB of data from 500 MB.
It’s such a great deal, I toke advantage of it.