Pay Day July 2014

My income from disability insurance when I’m not working is a total of $2,519.98 for this month.

Housing

Mortgage - $1,564.82

House Maintenance - $175.00

Housing Taxes - $200.00

House Insurance - $72.00

Utilities – $215

Total – $2,471.82

Transportation - $0

Savings - $0

Life

Food - $120

Cell – $30

Internet - $60

Health Insurance – $23.52

Clothes - $0

Gifts - $0

Misc - $20

Big Ticket Item - $0

Entertainment - $10

Social/Sports - $0

Financial Planning - $14

Cat - $15

Slush – $0.64

Total - $293.16

Of Note:

- Transportation is at $0 since I still have my student bus pass and have a good chunk of change saved for train and taxi rides.

- Savings is at $0 for two reasons. The first is I won’t be making an RRSP contribution since my income will be low. The second is I’m concentrating on getting my house paid off to decrease interest costs and meet my 5-year goal.

-Non-essentials (Gifts, Clothes, Big Ticket Items, and a portion of Home Maintenance) have been put on hold. My pay from insurance went down because I earned some money at my day job, but I haven’t gotten around to picking up said paycheck from my day job. These will be topped up when I get my (2^nd) pay check in the near future.

Writing Camp Is Here!

This is a bit of a short notice announcement however I thought it prudent to give a last minute shout out:

Camp NaNoWriMo starts on the 1st of July. All writers welcome, no experience necessary!

The National Novel Writing Month organization is dedicated to helping writers and as a result runs two virtual camps in the summer when folks can get together, set a writing goal, and active it with the support of the online community. you can sign up here: http://campnanowrimo.org.

I've taken part in this year's April camp and last year's November contest. If you're intimidated by November's 50,000 word challenge then Camp is a great way to warm up your writing since you get to set your own goals and can chose to work in a cabin where a dozen writers come together to support one another. I've found that NaNo events help me to integrate writing fiction as a daily part of my life instead a nice to have after all of the Master's papers are done. NaNo's challenges have helped me to grow as an author and are well attended in the virtual world.

I'm looking forward to camp, hope you'll consider joining me!

Milestones - The Mortgage

Long time followers of this blog will know that I have some pretty big long term goals. One of them is paying my mortgage off in 5 years. You can find the details of my plan here.

Having big goals is great but they can seem daunting, which means that in order to reach them you need to break them down into smaller chunks. Each time you reach a mile stone you celebrate. This gives you a sense of achievement and the energy to keep going.

For example, every year when I make my 10% payment I celebrate. Sometimes it means a special dessert, or a night out with my friends, or even just a happy dance. I also celebrate when I hit owning 30% or 40% of my house. Today I hit another big milestone that I've been looking forward to for months.

Today the amount that is outstanding on my mortgage went from 6 digits to 5.

My outstanding mortgage is now $99,918.35. This brings my ownership up to 47.7% and gives me a total of $91,081.65 in equity. The next big milestone that I'm looking forward to is owning 50% of my house. I should reach this point in 4 months.

I look forward to celebrating with you then.  

Pay Day June 2014

My income from disability insurance when I’m not working is a total of $2,795.59 for this month.

Housing

Mortgage - $1,564.82

House Maintenance - $315.00

Housing Taxes - $192.00

House Insurance - $72.00

Utilities – $225

Total – $2,368.82

Transportation - $0

Savings - $0

Life

Food - $120

Cell – $30

Internet - $60

Health Insurance – $23.52

Clothes - $0

Gifts - $10

Misc - $10

Big Ticket Item - $100

Entertainment - $15

Social/Sports - $10

Financial Planning - $14

Cat - $15

Slush – $19.25

Total - $426.77

Of Note:

- Transportation is at $0 since I still have my student bus pass and have a good chunk of change saved for train and taxi rides.

- Savings is at $0 for two reasons. The first is I won’t be making an RRSP contribution since my income will be low (more on investing plans at a later date). The second is I’m concentrating on getting my house paid off to decrease interest costs and meet my 5-year goal.

-Food is back up to $120 because I’ve used up the excess over the last 6 months

-Entertainment got bumped up because I’ve been spending more time socializing with friends for my Masters program.

A New Kind of Present

In the past week my illustrious father celebrated his birthday. (Happy Birthday Dad!) While I won't go into details about the festivities I would like to introduce you to the gifts that my father choses to receive.

Last year my father decided that he had sufficient in terms of material goods and instead asked that each one of his children write him a letter telling him describing how the last year has gone and what they are looking forward to in the year to come. Which I had to admire as a pretty neat idea. While the move from a generic greeting card to a letter personalizes your emotions on any occasion I think that the letters my father requests are particularly neat. Instead of a letter poetically thanking him for being the coolest Dad around (which I'm sure I could prove scientifically given enough time and resources) it allows a chance to reconnect. While my father is involved in all of his kids lives a one year summary is kind of like the sports highlights, bringing the most interesting aspects of the year to the foreground for consideration. It also allows us kids to keep copies which we can look back on each year to see what has changed.

Needless to say, I love the idea of Happy Birthday letters and I would love to start something similar when I have kids.

Don't Call Me

… I'll call you.

The above isn't my philosophy with dating, rather it's my philosophy for dealing with businesses. On one hand if I want to talk to you, I'll let you know. Otherwise let me be. On the other, and more important hand, it protects me from fraud. For example just this weekend I got an e-mail from my internet provider asking me to update my credit card information. Failure to do so would result in additional fees due to late payment.

Minor inconvenience. I don't, and never have, paid my internet bill with my credit card.

Lets just say I didn't click on the link let alone enter my credit card information. Rather I woke up this morning and called the customer services number on my internet bill and after speaking to three people confirmed that (1) my account was in good standing and (2) it was a scam.

So, my philosophy will continue to be that the only time I will speak to the people I do business with is when I call them.

Working from Home: A newbie's perspective

Now that my master's courses are over I'm working full time on preparing my thesis … at home. Let's say that working full time from home has been an interesting experience and while I haven't managed to iron out all the problems yet I have picked up some important pointers.

- Take evenings and weekends off. Yes, my first pointer of of working at home is to not work! The point is two fold, it will make you more focused and productive during the time you are suppose to be working and it will help to prevent burn out.

- Be accountable to others. Of course, I am naturally accountable to my thesis supervisors when it comes to making deadlines but I also call or get a call from my Mom first thing in the morning to make sure I get out of bed at the proper time. (Thanks Mom!) Otherwise it's easy to get lax and let your standards slip.

- Keep a regular schedules. Wake up and go to bed at roughly the same time every day. It can be any time you want, just keep it regular so you don't get too much or too little. Same goes for food. Three healthy meals a day at regular intervals is important to prevent you from constantly snacking or skipping important meals.

- Have a designated work space. If I have a pile of articles to read I might curl up on the couch with my cat but for typing it's nice to have a proper desk, not to mention place to spread out your work without interfering with the rest of the house and which will allow you to shut out distractions.

- Get out of the house regularly. This means going outside at least once a day and breathing the fresh air. You also need to make sure that you take time to interact with other human beings, doubly as important if you live alone like me. Socialization is important.

Finally, figure out what works for you, you're not going to get it right the first time so feel free to experiment. Personally, I find it impossible to take my day's work seriously until I've made my bed. Don't ask me why, especially since I don't usually make my bed on days I work in the office or am going to class.