End of August Update

The summer months are always good ones for us, financially and otherwise. Because of a large contract payment, I am able to catch up on a number of bills that may be lingering, and I have a year's worth of budgeting to do. In the past, there was no budgeting involved. We blew through the money in a couple of months, with nothing (or almost nothing) to show for it, and nothing saved. Thus, our crazy big debts. I crunched the numbers many times this year prior to payment and worked out a plan. It is working much better this way, and although it's not perfect, I do have several pots of money stashed.

Here are our August numbers:

Planned spending - added $50.00
Xmas Fund - added $284.97
Emergency fund - added $254.74
RRSP - added $405
General Savings - $20

$260 paid to Personal Loan
$265 paid to CC with 28% int. rate
$250 paid to CC with 0% int. rate
$204.04 to Auto Loan

I used the HBC card for a $50 purchase that will be paid off by the end of the billing cycle. Our rent, phone/cable/internet, cellphone and pager accounts are all current.

We took a $2500 vacation, had a $900 vehicle repair bill, and an unexpected $300 dental bill for DD1, all of which were paid for in cash.

We had to borrow from our other expenses like groceries and gas/auto amounts, and still have 20 days of our 'monthly cycle' left, but there is still some money in the household account to draw from. I'll just have to be extra diligent with that to see that we don't go over.

We put a total of $1014.71 into our various saving pots this month.
We paid a total of $979.04 toward our debt this month.

So far, we are on track for the year, although I've adjusted some of our yearly goals amounts.