pay off debt

Today we got the tax bill. They had charged us $2.99 in interest and then reversed it. I had deliberately overpaid them 2c and they added 2c to the bill to clear it to zero. I think it’s cute.

The reason I overpaid was to make sure we didn’t have a zero balance. Sometimes when you have a zero balance an organization won’t send you a bill. It can be hard to tell then if we still owe interest but the bill got lost. I had my credit card bill go astray that way, and they got really shirty about it, so I like to throw some small change onto things just to keep getting the bills.

The reason they charged us the extra 2c is because they have a policy of neither charging nor refunding balances less than about five dollars. It’s not worth the processing to them.

This is good. The debt now stands at $5,387.83

But man, will we be able to pay it off before the EI runs out? I don’t think so, but it might be close…

I was feeling cranky about never having any money so a couple of days ago I deliberately went out and spent money on things I wanted!!!!!

I bought one package of six pairs of plain white underpants, and three big plastic laundry baskets. It all came to $23 after taxes.

Profligate, I know, but sometimes these little explosions are a big help to my morale.

Dd got her tuition contribution early this month so her rent check wouldn’t bounce. Dh got his EI report forgotten this week, so the grocery money isn’t coming in until later in the week.

Cue the circus music and a shot of Dondy juggling rainbow coloured balls which, when the shot zooms in turn into envelopes with various threatening rubber stamps on them, like “Past Due” and “Pay Immediately!”

Luckily I keep LOTS of food in the pantry and in the freezer. My reaction to an austerity is to buy food in bulk so when we run out of food we run out of milk, fresh fruit, fresh meat and fresh vegetables. And no matter what I keep the money for the milk. We have enough pasta to feed the family for two weeks, and enough rice to feed the family for two weeks and enough beans to feed the family for two weeks and enough flour to make bread to feed the family for a month. Don’t even ask me how many bags of frozen vegetables I have. Meanwhile downstairs we have four full boxes of laundry detergent and a month’s worth of cat food and cat sand…

Having had babies, my definition of running out means “down to only two remaining full packages”

Now if only I could figure out how to stockpile the treat food that makes the diet more interesting. Can’t seem to keep frozen cheesecake in the house no how.

It turns out that my dh’s EI was started this Wednesday, so we will not have a shortfall between his severance pay and when money starts to come in again. I had presumed we would when I took his severance and paid off the credit cards.

Unfortunately my dd who is at school in Montreal has run into a financing snag, since her bio-Dad has fallen through on promised financing (he forgot to mail it and went to Singapore) and she was looking at only having 2/3ds of September’s rent, and that only if she didn’t eat anything in August…

Now, being over protective I can’t allow that to happen, so I transferred her an immediate $200 for groceries. She will need more between now and the end of the month to have her $500 rent stored up, but there should be more money coming in with my EI and I think we can muster the cash to tide her over. In any case she may prefer to get a cash advance on her own credit card since he has mailed the cheque and I might not need to send her more, or only a hundred or two more…

We now have one payment left on the taxes, and the loc to pay, so a debt of above $7,000. We shall have to see if I can pay off the taxes in the middle of this month. If I do it will be done, and one month ahead of the payment plan.

The trick is not to lose momentum. Yes, we have some more money coming in now, but no, we need to make sure we don’t get into spending money just because we have it. The debt comes first.

Since the layoffs we have been spending very little money. New clothes? No. Well yes. I bought one 15$ pair of jeans for myself after I lost weight. Stuff for the house? Not much. We spent less than $10 for dust masks and earplugs so we could do some construction work in the cellar.

We do spend money though. I haven’t cut off the internet which could save us about thirty a month.

I do keep the four of us all in bus passes. Since we have no car and it is a fifteen minute brisk walk to the nearest store and a half hour to the library and further to the malls I figure the bus passes are an allowable expense because they help prevent cabin fever.

And we will be buying ink for the printer today, since the kids use it for their school work and I did buy them high school courses. Niether have I cut my eldest daughter’s stipend. She is away at university, living in a small apartment and I contribute something every month. I figure the education is an investment to not give up on.

My dh gets 20$ a week for discretionary spending and both kids at home get 10$ each.

Other than that we pay the taxes, electricity, phone -no, no cellulars just a land line, the mortgage and the groceries. The groceries are pretty expensive. At this point they are even more than the debt.

We could cut the groceries, give up on the allowances, tell the eldest the stipend is over, cancel the internet and the bus passes if we had to, give up on ink for the printer… We could cut deeper if we have to. But the fixed expenses of mortgage and electricity and basic food are still hefty enough I wonder if we can manage on one person’s EI. Mine will run out near November and so far there has not even been a nibble in my job hunt.

Doing without is not uncomfortable. Almost everything I like to do is nearly free and I have the resources to begin with so is not costing me money. Like walking in the park and writing fiction and reading. It’s not hard. It’s even rather peaceful.

The debt now stands at $8626.89 but from here on in we will not have any extra pennies to pay it down with. In fact if there is a significant shortfall between when the cash in the bank runs out and when the dh’s Employment Insurance begins we will have to borrow more money on the line of credit and run it up again.

But this will still mean lower interest charges both because the total debt will be lower until about September, and because the line of credit charges rather lower interest than the credit card that I paid off did.

We now owe the taxes and the line of credit, no more credit cards. Both of those are smaller than they were. It is very good to no longer have credit card debt.

My dh’s severance pay was deposited today. I made a couple of payments that I had been saving up for some time when we had cash flow. Not that they were overdue, and not that I couldn’t have paid them if the severance hadn’t come in until after the due date. But I was getting perilously close to using up the cushion in both bank accounts.

The debt now stands at $12,500 down from the original $31,000 over a year ago. Basically I have been paying off $15,000 per year, but that was when we were both employed instead of both not.

I have applied for a job I want to get, but expect I won’t even get an interview… At least I found a job I wanted to apply for!

This is going well.

This week I spend $468 on glasses for my dh, $320 for high school courses for number one son, and am looking at spending at least $100 on birthday presents for the same young man, depending on if I win that last Ebay auction.

This is not going in the right direction. But the glasses and the high school course are both essential and the presents are the cheapest of all the expenses and are important to me also.

In addition to that I will be spending $200 tomorrow on a church weekend for spouse and two kids.

Never mind. One does what one can.

Dh is going to get a lump sum severance pay in May which should help defray a lot of the debt and I am going to get my inheritance, eventually, god knows when. My older sister in the States has already received her portion since there was less paperwork for her. Mine could come any day, including not until November…

I’ll get back to you on where the total stands once the dust settles.

Along with the lay off, my dh got “stip” which is a company performance bonus. I didn’t mention to him that it had been direct deposited to the account because what he doesn’t know can’t tempt him to spend it. Instead I took the whole amount of cash plus some more from housekeeping and last month I paid off my only credit card that had money owing from the deathbed and funeral trips to Maryland.

Needless to say, it didn’t pay off the whole thing. Nothing is ever that smooth. There were finance charges as well. Today I got the bill: $6.44 and I paid that.

So next month, fingers crossed it should be done, finished and down.

That will leave the line-of-credit, dh’s taxes and dh’s credit card to pay off… just three more things. Not counting the mortgage of course.

I’d like to announce the total debt today to be only $13,365.54 but of course there are all those trip charges that dh put on his card to take the church youth to Maine. Probably about a thousand I guess. We are not so far ahead as it appears at the moment. But there is still progress

This is very heartening. The debt now stands at less than $15,000. That means, barring interest, I’ve paid off half of it.

Not only that the water and sewage bill arrived this week and I had enough money in the bank to simply write them a cheque, not messing around with half now and half later like I did last year.

I figured the lay-offs would really mess up our finances but so far we are still doing well.

I made two big payments this week and one little payment. Right now the debt stands at $15,492.87. This is of course before I get the statements recording the two big payments I made, so next month I should see even more improvement. Next month we will have actually reached the halfway mark… except for interest.

Oops. No. Wait. The church trip got put on the credit card too so it’s going to add about 700$ to the debt. We’re supposed to get car rental and gas refunded, but there will be more, such as meals and addmission fees and treats and the air mattresses that were bought.

I still have to write a cheque for February’s church pledge. But I’m going to combine it with March and hopefully send it in this Sunday.

Even with layoffs I haven’t had to stop whittling the debt down. This is good.