Tipping Point (A Confession) - Part 2

Continued

For those of you who are new to this blog, I'd suggest checking out yesterday's post before reading this one. It will make more sense all together. But for the rest of you, continuing on:

April 2010

Having put well over $10,000 into my RRSPs the year before, along with the new homebuyer's tax credit, renovation tax credit and professional dues tax credit, I figured I'd be in for a pretty solid tax return. Imagine the nasty surprise I got when I found out that not only was I not getting a tax return, but I OWED the government money. My former employer did not take off even CLOSE to the amount of tax they should have been taking off. 

Oh to have been a fly on the wall in my room that day...

All of those RRSP credits and other tax deductions went towards my balance owing, and I ended up paying the government several hundred dollars. On top of this, I was now carrying a debt I had been expecting would disappear when tax time came around.

The only upside to this month is that I got a small raise at the end of my probationary period, and my salary was now sitting at $54,100.

May 2010

Despite the financial slap I got in April, I stayed the course of spending without paying attention to my accounts in May. Nothing really noteworthy happened this month.

June 2010

The tax assessment for my house came in, and it was higher than the previous year. My biweekly accelerated mortgage payments went up another $50, which really sucked. However, I wish that's all that had happened this month.

I had an emotional upheaval in the relationship department on the order of: boyfriend's other girlfriend sends me a message on Facebook basically saying "Hey, I've been dating _____ for a few months. He's met my friends and family, I'd like us to be friends too :)"

Yeah, you read that right.

She had no idea he'd been seeing me for years, and that I was waiting for his work to run it's course so that he could come home again. He had made it sound like I was a really close friend to her, and he had made her sound like "the guys from work" to me. He was working out of province at the time.

I soothed that pain and rage with personal spending like nobody's business.

July 2010

July was a lot of carry over from June. I had emotionally shut down and start culling my emotionally draining/toxic friendships. My now pseudo-boyfriend was trying his best to perform damage control on the relationship, and I just couldn't care less. Needless to say I didn't really pay attention to my finances this month other than my month end update. I can tell you that update wasn't pretty, but I still maintained the position of the proverbial ostrich with my head in the sand.

August 2010

My boyfriend came home for a couple weeks and tried frantically to patch things up with me. I was still pretty checked out and emotionally spent, but I let him try. I wanted to believe things could get better again. I was naive, and it did a huge number on me.

Outside of the relationship realm, I wanted to finish the renovating my kitchen before the snow hit, so I bought more construction supplies for my home. I also pre-paid a hotel room in Vancouver for a couple days in the next month. I needed to be within a reasonable distance of Stanley Park for the Vancouver Triathlon, and there really wasn't much in that area that was either a) cheap, or b) not booked full.

September 2010

I knew at this point that I had to do something about my money, I was beginning to feel the pinch when it came to paying the bills every payday.

I was also freaking out in the personal department, because there was a distinct possibility that I was carrying a little mini me. This was causing me a LOT of stress.

After finishing the triathlon in Stanley Park I went back to my hotel for a bath, some soup and some tea. After warming up a bit, and taking my bike apart again for the plane ride, I made the misguided decision to walk around the shops in Vancouver for a while.

Now, I'm in love with trench coats. I have wanted a Burberry trench coat, no word of a lie, since I was 12 years old. God only knows what a 12 year old knows about clothes or what they cost, but I've been stuck on this coat since then. Through all of the seasons and different styles, it has never changed: beige, knee length, dark buttons. I had been looking for one in my size since university, with no success. I searched for it like Bridget did in her the hunt for the Herve Leger dress over at hithatsmybike.

I found one.

In a moment of sheer stupidity fueled by high running emotions, I emptied out what savings I had to pay for it. It wasn't enough. Despite swearing up and down to myself that I would never do this, I called my credit card company and had them increase the limit. For a coat.

That afternoon I bought a Burberry Manston Trench. $1595+HST. I've kept the price tag as a painful reminder of that; it's sitting on my dressing table at home.

What should have been an exciting purchase (I've wanted it for over a decade...), made me sick to my stomach. What the hell did I just do? I couldn't return it, the store was closed and my flight left before it opened again in the morning. I sat on my hotel room bed staring at the bag wanting to be sick. I was having a hard enough time paying the bills, how was I going to pay for this too? What if I am pregnant, how am I going to find the money to raise a kid? What if I have to do it by myself? What am I doing??

I had a problem, and I needed to do something about it. My money was out of control. Seriously, a year ago the only debt I had was my car, what on earth had gotten into me?

I promised myself I was going to turn this around.

October 2010

I started this blog.

Now I'm digging my way out and up.

Having Doubts

I'm having doubts about whether or not Engineering is actually a good fit for me personally.

I suppose you could say that since the layoff scare back in January that my confidence has been severely shaken. I feel really lost right now. I can tell you with utmost certainty that I have not been enjoying the last couple months; I go into work with the fear of losing my job. I used to enjoy my work. Now... I kind of dread it.

Add this to some of the experiences I've been having lately at work, and I just feel deflated. I've been getting a lot of "slow down and take more time on your work, but hurry up because you're taking too long"; and "I want to be able to send your reports out the door without looking at them". I'm an EIT. I'm still learning, and I need people to look at my reports so I can find my mistakes and learn from them. I feel like a sledge hammer has come down on my head over the last couple months.

I know I'm not the only person going through this right now, I was talking to a friend this weekend who apparently has been experiencing the EXACT SAME THING at work, minus the layoff scare. I do wonder if it's a case of Engineering being a bad fit for me, or a case of all EITs go through this before getting their P.Eng.

Right now I don't know if I'd actually have the confidence to stamp anything, its feeling pretty shot.

I know the company is restructuring, we have a new President, people are getting shuffled and the managers are stressed, but I could really use some positive feedback right now. It's hard to believe the people saying my job is safe when I haven't heard anything positive out of anyone in weeks.

*sigh*

Even if my job is safe, is this what I want my career to be like? I'm not so sure anymore that this is what I want. The problem is that I've been focussed on Engineering for so long now that I don't know what else I would even be interested in. My friend that I talked to on the weekend started a custom cake business on the side of her Engineering job. She's thinking that when her and her husband have kids that she would like to transition to full time cake baking. Given that she's an awesome baker, I can see this working out great for her. I on the other hand have no idea what I would do.

I did get a comment from a coworker on Friday that surprised me a little, though I suppose in retrospect it shouldn't have. I had just gotten back from working on site and I was walking around in my jeans, a hoodie and my steel toed boots. He said I look so much happier when I'm working onsite. He's right. I may be exhausted and frozen into a little Cass-icle, but I'm happier doing that than I am hunched over a computer at a desk.

I hate job jumping, but I feel like I'm trying to force a square peg into a round hole right now. I'm not sure how long I should actually give it before deciding if this is a hard learning experience or just a bad fit? If it wasn't for the fact that I need the money, would I actually stick around for this? I don't know.

I just want to find my square hole.

Getting Stressed

I've pretty much come to the conclusion that my job security has all but run out.

Needless to say, I'm freaking out internally right now. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't crying at my desk this morning.

I came in to a very strongly worded email in my inbox this morning. The catalyst for the email was actually a misunderstanding, as the person writing it misread the report I wrote, but it gave me a pretty good feel for where the mindset at work is. I'm seriously afraid to make a mistake right now, lest it cost me my job.

I'm sending out feelers to see who in the industry is hiring right now.

To say I'm stressed out would be a LARGE understatement.

I think the only real uplift to my Monday was opening up my email and seeing a message from YoungandThrifty saying that I had won one of the copies of tax software from H&R Block. That was quite possibly the only thing that made me smile yesterday. THANK YOU! That software couldn't have possibly come at a better time.

It may possibly have come just in time for me to need my emergency fund.

Keep calm and carry on.

*laughing hysterically*

*crying*

Interesting Rate

I received an anonymous comment a couple days ago on my month end review telling me that my line of credit interest rate was exceptionally high. I hadn't actually given my line of credit interest rate any thought at all, it was just something that was there so I accepted it. The comment however spurred me into gear. I didn't expect to get the 4.5% interest rate he/she mentioned, but if my interest rate was high why not look into getting a decrease?

To google I go!

Apparently the internet isn't a very good place to go to find interest rates on lines of credit in Canada, the banks play that information pretty close to their chest. So, I called my bank Tuesday at lunch, and managed to get an appointment for after work on Wednesday. That was fast!

I almost got my hopes up there!

So, I went in and discussed a rate decrease. No dice. Apparently the major banks tie their line of credit rates to the "customer relationship" they have with you, ie: The more financial credit products you have with them, the better the rate they'll give you. So, if you have your mortgage, credit card, line of credit, RRSP, TFSA, and other investments through them, they'll give you a better rate than if you have just a chequing or a savings account with them.

Lovely.

If you wanted my investment business to build our "customer relationship", why did you try to convince me to lock into a 5.5% fixed rate mortgage when I was being offered 3.99% elsewhere? That doesn't sound like good relationship building to me.

Save 1.5% on a $237,000 mortgage, or save... any number... on a $11,000 line of credit balance.

You tell me what to pick.

There was the option of securing my line of credit to my house equity, but that wasn't guaranteed to be successful. Along with the application process there was an assessment cost of just under $200, and other application/closing fees of close to $500. Those fees alone are essentially the same as tacking another 6% onto my interest rate for the year. Why on earth would I want to do that for a drop of a couple percentage points? I'm trying to pay the thing off, not float it.

The other option offered was to look at increasing the limit on my line of credit. Apparently if I bumped the limit up to $20,000 it would put me into a different "relationship" category, and COULD possibly drop my rate 0.1 - 0.15%

Excuse me if I don't jump for joy on that one.

I contemplated the very financially dangerous maneuver of increasing my credit limit and using the money to pay off my credit card to save myself a few percentage points. I thought better of it.

If I'm going to be shopping around for a better rate, I want as few credit inquiries as possible. The financial advisor did offer me a useful piece of advice though. She said that if I have investments with another bank, I should consider looking to them because they might give me a better rate on a line of credit. Definitely something to remember.

I was just hoping to get a better rate through my existing account. The last thing I wanted to be doing was rate shopping with a balance sitting at 90%+. Not good.

Makes me want to rethink my savings vs. debt repayment plan.

Any Canadian guys/gals know what the banks are offering for line of credit or loan rates right now?

Avoiding Temptation

Reason #437 to bring something interesting (and filling) to work for lunch:

Avoiding the brand new shiny restaurant downstairs. Damn does it smell good.

For the last 8 months or so the restaurant on the first floor of our building had been under renovation. And I believe new ownership. What that meant for me was that my office, conveniently located directly above the bulk of the work, has been noisy as hell with them sawing, drilling and banging away to their hearts content on the kitchen ceiling and plumbing. Those pipes run up my office wall, and the sound was downright deafening at times. I actually went to the safety department, got a stash of ear plugs, and went around my corner of the office offering them to people. Everyone took a pair. I think someone may have finally taken us seriously and lodged a complaint, because towards the end the louder noise held off until 5pm on the dot. We all thought we should get coupons to the place for having to endure that, but no such luck.

But, it's over now, and what was once a fairly dated run of the mill restaurant and salad bar is now a brand spanking new Brazilian BBQ joint.

*insert drool here*

If I'm not mistaken it will be featured on the show "Opening Soon", because their camera crews were hanging around the last few days. Opening day came, so I decided to check out their website rather than tempting myself by going in to have a look.

Holy crap. It's going to be a while before I go there.

It's a fixed price meal that uses what is apparently called a "rodizio" concept. You have a little disk you flip back and forth between the red and green sides. Green signals the servers to bring over a selection of meat skewers from the BBQ, red signals them that you don't want any more meat at the moment. You pick up your side dishes from some form of salad bar off to the side. It doesn't say whether or not appetizers, drinks and dessert are included in the price, but considering they have a bar in there and the dessert pictures look plated, I'm going to say probably not.

Lunch is $22

Dinner is $45

This girl will go broke(r) in there.

I can see why they need the keep the price up, especially since it looks like an all you can eat meat bar. Very Alberta friendly. Very not Cassie's wallet friendly.

And I smell it every time I go downstairs now.

So not fair.

Employment Uneasiness

So apparently someone at work doesn't like me.

That was news to me, especially seeing as I get along with everyone. No one acts even remotely off towards me at work. But, they're there.

And they're after my job.

I very rarely work with this person directly, it's more like we work on the same floor and some aspects of our jobs overlap on occasion. They're higher up the chain too. Most of my interaction with them involves seemingly pleasant lunchroom conversation about what we're making for dinner tonight and what our weekend plans are. Nothing out of the ordinary.

Behind closed doors though, they're arguing for my dismissal. Until about 8am yesterday morning, my head was on the chopping block for a round of layoffs for corporate restructuring. The higher ups that I do work for directly argued on my behalf and managed to get me taken off the list. I found this out from my manager at lunch time. Can you say blindsided? I asked if there was a problem with my work, if I had done something to piss them off, what I could have done differently.... nothing. There wasn't even any way for me to have seen this coming, because it's happening at a much higher level that I don't get to see. It would have literally have been good one day, gone the next.

Gee, think I feel secure right now?

It's sneaky and underhanded, and apparently this isn't the first time this person has done this. If they like you, it doesn't matter how poor your work is they'll argue for you to stay. If they decide they don't like you, they'll try to get rid of you. It's very political, and you'll see from the about me on the side that I hate politics.

*grumble*

They've been trying to do it to do the same thing to another person at work, based on her appearance. She works in a creative field, and her appearance reflects that. It doesn't fly with Mr. Not-Our-Direct-Manager though, and it doesn't matter that her work is freaking awesome, she was on the list too.

But I still don't know why they has a problem with me.

&%*^%$#!!!

I hate pettiness...

But anyway, it's making me rethink my debt repayment schedule again. Right now my plan was to hit my credit card hard, and knock the debts off one by one by the highest interest rate before I moved on to anything else. Now I'm thinking I should consider bulking up my emergency savings. I currently have about a month and a half worth of savings in investment form, which might not be enough if I didn't find a job right away. Our job market is improving, but I really don't want to be banking on that.

What would you guys do in this situation? Would you keep attacking the debts, build up the savings cushion, or both? And if savings, how much? I could use a little clarity in a bit of a stressful time.

Waiting For Interest to Work In My Favour

My annual mortgage statement came in the mail last night. I'm glad, I was beginning to wonder where it had gotten off to. That was right about where the glad part ended. There is something rather unfortunate about paying almost $17,000 onto a loan and only seeing the balance improve by about $4,500. It's like having one of those payday loans, only it has a nicer name.

Hey you, yeah you Interest, I've got something to say to you: Bite Me.

I have the sudden urge to empty my wallet into my lump sum payment jar right now. In fact, I'll probably do that as soon as I'm done typing here.

The envelope wasn't entirely filled with suck though. Apparently my mortgage provider is starting a website where I can go to check my balance, review my statements, change my payment frequency or amount, or make lump sum payments. That last one makes me happy, it will make the process much easier come the end of the year.

Home sweet home. One day you'll be all mine.

Month End - January 2011

Every once in a while I have to sit back, look at my finances, and go wtf?


This is one of those months

	31-Mar-10	31-Dec-10	31-Jan-11
Chequing	$116.66	$1,140.22	$149.68
Savings 1	$0.24	$0.26	$0.26
Savings 2	$100.00	$0.90	$0.90
Savings 3	$500.00	$0.07	$0.07
Investment	$2,189.67	$1,182.81	$1,154.89
TFSA	$0.00	$2,463.64	$2,423.86
RRSP 1	$1,525.96	$1,594.74	$1,632.31
RRSP 2	$3,868.08	$4,016.84	$4,016.41
ASSETS	$8,300.61	$10,399.48	$9,378.38
Car Loan	($13,138.27)	($9,760.77)	($9,397.49)
LOC	($10,000.00)	($11,100.00)	($11,000.00)
Credit Card	($5,155.65)	($4,978.23)	($4,433.32)
DEBTS	($28,293.92)	($25,839.00)	($24,830.81)
Net Worth	($19,993.31)	($15,439.52)	($15,452.43)

It's more a question of where my money went, so I guess I should be saying WDMMG, rather than WTF.

I know I finished off the last month with an extra pay cheque, which skewed my assets higher and mostly went to a mortgage payment, but I'm not entirely sure where the money went. My net worth changed by $13 in the wrong direction? I'm shaking my head at this one. 

I've tried writing down every penny I spend before, and unfortunately it's failed miserably in the past. I had been thinking about making it a mini goal to write down everything I spend in the month of February. This post seems to be heavily encouraging that - coincidence?

Tomorrow I'll be taking a look at my slip ups in the cash only department in January, maybe I'll be able to shed a little light on this situation? I hope so.

End of Month Sobriety Test

Am I drunk? Nope. But I kind of wish I was seeing as I'm looking at this.

	31-Mar-10	31-Oct-10
Chequing	$116.66	$110.04
Savings 1	$0.24	$0.26
Savings 2	$100.00	$0.89
Savings 3	$500.00	$70.07
Investment	$2,189.67	$800.24
TFSA	$0.00	$2,235.01
RRSP 1	$1,525.96	$1,558.50
RRSP 2	$3,868.08	$4,009.75
ASSETS	$8,300.61	$8,784.76
Car Loan	($13,138.27)	($10,629.89)
LOC	($10,000.00)	($10,820.00)
Credit Card	($5,155.65)	($5,591.72)
DEBTS	($28,293.92)	($27,041.61)
Net Worth	($19,993.31)	($18,256.85)

It isn't the worst month I've had. That distinction goes to the month of June this year. Both the assets and debts moved in the right direction this month, I just thought I had made a lot more progress than I apparently did. I think next month's goal is to get my credit card balance down below where it was back in March.