Friday, October 28, 2011

TGIF

TGIF! This has been a crazy week! We had our carpets replaced on Tuesday and Wednesday, so husband and I and our two fur babies moved in with my in-laws temporarily from Monday to Wednesday. I'm so grateful that they allowed us to stay there with the cats. Otherwise, we were looking at having to board the cats and sleep in the commotion or find a hotel room that will accept pets. Either way, it would have cost us some money, and the in-laws let us stay for free. Plus they fed us and stepmom-in-law even offered to do laundry for us! (I politely declined, but what a sweet offer).

It was a lot of work though. We had to move everything from the bedrooms into the living/dining room before Tuesday morning when the carpet guys came in to replace the carpets in both bedrooms. Then Tuesday evening after work, we had to move everything from the LR/DR into the two bedrooms. And once the carpets were replaced, everything had to go back into its rightful place! Whew! Thank goodness that husband has two brothers!

And now, we have plush new carpets. Our old carpets were stained when we moved in and after a couple more years of use, they had definitely seen better days. The new stuff is great. And best of all, it was all free! (Other than a couple lunches out, as I normally go home to eat lunch, but couldn't when the guys were working in there). Thank goodness for apartment living. For now, I love not having to worry about home maintenance costs.

Thursday, October 27, 2011

Our Money

Personal finance is a huge part of my life. I'm the bill payer in the family and I love it! I know many others who can't stand when bills come in or hate having to transfer money, but I get a kick out of it. And no, it's not because we're millionaires. We make a normal amount and our finances are anything but perfect, but for some reason, I just love playing around with dollar figures. Even though I generally suck at math!

Right now our finances are a bit chaotic because of the wedding, going on our honeymoon and buying a car, but for honesty sake, I'm going to lay it all out there.

We have just over $4,000 in debt right now. This is the end of a personal loan from way back when I was in school/just graduated and a young 20-something who spent money foolishly.

We also have a new car loan. I honestly don't know what the balance is on that as we literally just bought the car right before the wedding, so I haven't had time yet to get the full loan amount after our down payment and the first payments. Once I do though, I'll put that out there.

We also have money in savings - about $7,500. I'm not sure how much it will be after we pay for the rest of the wedding and honeymoon though (some of that money was earmarked for these things, so this is not unplanned). This savings account is primarily for a down payment for a house.

Our upcoming costs are:

- pay for the rest of the wedding and honeymoon. I'm waiting for our wedding photos from our photographer and when we receive those our third payment to him is due ($653). We also have to pay for the rest of the honeymoon, but I'm awaiting the credit card update. This money will come from our chequing/wedding savings accounts.

- pay for Hawaiian cruise. Our first honeymoon, which we took right after the wedding, was a smaller trip within Canada. This trip to Hawaii is our full on honeymoon (we wanted a warm destination honeymoon, but we wanted to wait until it was actually cold enough here to enjoy it). We owe $3,566 (after the $700 deposit was made). This is due next month. We currently have $1,600 in our vacation TFSA account and we'll pay for the rest with a freelance writing cheque that should be coming in very soon. We still have to book a hotel for the last couple days that we're in Hawaii post-cruise, but we can do that once the dust settles from all the other money flying out!

I think that's about it! My to do this week is to find out our car loan balance!

19 Days after the wedding

Husband and I got married 19 days ago! Our life leading up to the wedding and immediately afterwards has been crazy! But post-wedding, I'm not too sure what to do with all my free time that was once spent perusing bridal magazines and emailing vendors, so I thought I'd start a blog. It will be about us, our lives, our personal finances, our fur babies, and anything and everything that comes up.

To give you a bit of a background... I work in advertising, husband works for a local transportation company, but is hoping to get a job in the food industry (his passion). We have two young cats (Milo and Molly). We were dating for just over 3 years when we got married (living together for about 2 of those years). We live in a fairly big city in Canada, right in the heart of downtown. The rest you'll pick up as we go along!