Budget...Revamped

Okay, okay, okay...so i've re-vamped the budget. I took part in The Simple Dollar's '31 Days to fix your finances' (You can find it here). Admittingly, I did all 31 days in about 2 afternoons, but a lot of the tabs didn't apply to me (home insurance, vehicles, debt, etc). I would highly recommend it, I learned a lot and it really opened my eyes. I have learned a couple things about why my previous budget won't work, and I have come up with a new one.

Okay, so, a brief summary of my finances: I make $12 an hour. I work a full 40 hour week. That adds up to about $24.960.00 before taxes. The past 3 paycheques I have seen about 13% taken off in taxes. So that means that my take home yearly salary is around $21,715.20. I have only two monthly expenses: my cell phone ($40/month) and my bus pass ($75/month). This means that my actual take home pay after those deductions is $20,435.20. So, seeing this for the first time puts my goal of saving $20,000 a bit difficult. So, instead, I have come up with a new savings goal: $16,000 in savings and a $2,000 emergency fund by the end of June 2008.

So, the plan is the same, for my first paycheque of the month (the 15th)- save 80% for savings and 10% for the emergency fund, while 10% goes into chequing for my spending pleasure.

The plan for the second paycheque of the month (3rd last buisness day of the month), I take $115 out of the total($40 for my dad for my cell phone and $75 to buy my buss pass) then split the rest into my 80/10/10 scheme.

However, the plan for June's paycheques deviate a little bit from this plan because of some money I owe my mom for the vacation. I owe her $702 for the week-long stay in the apartment in London. So, I will put that money aside from the paycheque, after which I will only have a couple hundred bucks left. That remaining money will be split 50/50 between my chequing and savings in order to pad both accounts a little bit. June's second paycheque will be back on track with the regular scheme.

I feel relieved that I have it all sorted out, and although i'm a little disapointed that i'm not going to be able to save what I had originally planned, however, I haven't added in any of the extra money that I get during the year, including GST/HST rebates and odd money I get from bonuses or gifts, etc.

Hope you are all doing well!

RSP's and 38 million dollars

So, up here in Canada we had a &38 million dollar lottery wednesday night. I did what I usually don't do and bought some lottery tickets. I didn't win. Boo. Oh well. I'm not terribly disapointed since I never truly believe that I am going to win, however, it is nice to dream once in a while.

I got my taxes back yesterday. This year I actually didn't do anything wrong! Usually I forget to adjust something minor and it usually results in an extra $10 bucks or so. This year I was right on the money. I also discovered that I can deposit $6,000 some-odd dollars into an RSP this year. I've gotten notices like these ever since I started doing my taxes a couple of years back- but I never really gave it much thought. I think this year may be the year to open one up. I'll actually be making a decent amount of money this year - so I would be able to swing it. I'll have to re-work my budget, though, which is alright since it's not set in stone anyways because I haven't gotten my pay schedule all sorted out.

My new job (from what the other guy told me) pays pretty odd. I get paid on the 15th of every month and then the 3rd last friday. So basically I have one huge paycheque - tallying up about 25 days or so, then another tiny one that barely covers 5. It's strange, but I'll deal with it if that's the way it has to be.

I have to fill out some tax forms for the school too. Because i'm doing my work term, the school pays me and then my company reimburses the school. Because of that I have to fill out a couple of forms - TD1's, I think they're called - to determine how much (if any) taxes I want taken off. It's a horribly confusing form so I may just wing it and see how much taxes come off - I get them all back anyways since I have so much tuition banked from previous years. $11,000 provincial and $18,000 federal, to be exact. I don't quite know what the whole 'banking' thing is, so this year's taxes may have to be done by a professional who knows what they are talking about.

I get some weird pride in doing my own taxes, though. It's a strange accomplishment for me knowing that I'm doing them myself and I don't have to pay anyone else to do them for me. My friends always seem shocked when I tell them I do them myself. Mine really aren't that hard - income, tuition, total. That's about it. I don't have dependents or rental properties or anything, really. I'm sure when my life gets more complicated i'll seek out a tax-return professional. Until then i'm keeping that extra $20 bucks and spending it somewhere fun.

Until tomorrow, keep saving!