Paid off my car and other life blurbs

This past weekend I tried this recipe I found on Pinterest. I omitted the stuffing and added potatoes and yellow pepper. It turned out amazing!! So tender and the pepper added that little kick of sweetness. I made a bunch more today as well! 

I also made some banana bread and these muffins, and these cookies.The banana bread was quite bland I'm afraid, but the muffins were ok, and the cookies were fantastic!  Here's a little baking secret I learned from Pinterest (of course).

That's right. Marshmallows in my brown sugar. It keeps it from going hard! I had tried buying one of those little clay disks from the bulk store but it didn't seem to work for me. I've had these in there for awhile now and its still soft. 

The other day after work I decided to head to Marshalls to see if there was any good deals. Here's what I ended up with:

Those jeans are Seven for all Mankind ($29.99!!). I was actually looking for mint jeans for the summer and this brand fits so well! Then I got that striped top which was on sale for $19. The little cuff part on the sleeve there is actually almost like a leather material which is what drew me to it, because its got the two different textures.

Another thing I wanted to show you is my new favourite snack:

They are so super addicting and not that many calories! Try them out, you won't be sorry. 

And the biggest news of today is that I have paid off my car!! WOOHOO. This means I am completely debt free right now. And I plan to stay that way until I can buy a house, which wont be for a few years still. It feels so good knowing that you don't owe anything to anybody. Tonight I'm going to a nearby town to visit my friend and go out for dinner. We haven't seen each other for a few months so it will be nice to see her and her little girls, and it will be a celebratory dinner for myself, so I can't wait!

Almost There!

One thing I neglected to mention in my holiday re-cap post was that I received a check from my grandfather for $1000.00. Yes, one THOUSAND dollars. I was in shock and disbelief.

Today I called him to say thanks and then I proceeded to put that $1000 towards my car loan. My loan is now down to $2000!! I am sooo close to being completely debt free. I hope to have it gone within the next few months and then I can start to get serious about moving out.

2010 Goals

I have finally decided what my goals for 2010 will be. I did a lot of thinking about these and I didn't want to have too many because I felt like I would overwhelm myself. So I came up with 3 and they are pretty simple.

1. Take better care of myself.
Instead of saying I am going to exercise X amount of times or lose X amount of pounds I came up with the idea of simply taking care of myself, mentally and physically. Recently I posted about how I am slowly starting to feel comfortable in my own skin, and this ties into that. I need to show myself that I love myself enough to take care of ME. So what does this mean exactly? It means I will try really hard to think about the foods I am eating and whether or not it's really good for me. When I have a craving for fast food, I will stop myself and think of what's best for ME. When I have free time and I am bored, I will try to motivate myself to go out and go for a walk, or put on John Mayer and do some yoga (atleast the poses that I remember). Of course this also means I am not going into super crazy diet mode and denying myself all the time, because that is going to backfire. I just need to learn to moderate myself better. I also plan to do some research about how to find meat that comes from farms that are feeding the animals organic foods/treating them better.

2. I will not pay full price for a single book!
( The exception is if it is a gift for somebody else, or if I received a gift card as a gift.)
I came up with this idea because I am an avid reader. At work we put all our breaks together so I am on break for anywhere from 45 mins to an hour. It does not take me an hour to eat, so I need to have a book to read. Having a book to read also prevents me from eating more! lol. So naturally, I go through a lot of books. So I will be mostly buying books from the used book store where you can also bring books in for store credit. So this rarely results in actually having to pay anything. I will also buy used books from Goodwill or Value Village. And if I have to have something that's brand new that I cannot find used I will buy only from Amazon where the books are SO much less money, and then it will be mostly with gift cards from Swagbucks.

3. Pay down my car to $9000.00
I calculated that after all my regular car payments at the end of the year I will owe about $9500 and change. I am going to try to pay down that extra $500 to make it $9000 even. This works out to be only about $47 extra a month so I hope I can do it! I used a free debt reduction calculator online and calculated that I will be cutting 11 months off my term and save me $330 in interest. ( This is using my current interest rate of course, which is variable so yes this can change and probably will) .

Another thing I wanted to mention is that if nothing changes with regards to my financial situation, by the end of the year I will have a fully funded $3000 emergency fund! That was the amount I decided awhile ago that would be about 3 months living expenses if I was to lose my job. So I am pretty stoked about that as well!

It's a happy day because...

This morning I made my last student loan payment! So once it is finished processing, in about 4 days I will be debt free! It feels really good! In about a month or so I am planning on getting a car, so being debt free will not last that long. But I will enjoy the feeling in the meantime!

I realized today when I was logged in to the OSAP website, that they had given me 9.5 years to pay it off!! I ended up doing it in 2.5. Can you imagine if I took 9.5 years to pay it off! Imagine the interest I would of paid...it's crazy to think about it. My mom said this will look good on my credit and she thinks I will be able to get a good interest rate from the bank for a car loan. I am going to go in on my next day off to discuss that.

If there is one piece of advice that I would offer people that are in debt I would say always pay more than the minimum payment they ask of you. Even if you only pay like $10-20 more all that little extra bit adds up. Even when I was living on my own paying rent and bills and everything I would always pay a little bit more, and when I moved back home and was paying low rent and hardly any bills I started paying hundreds more. Just put every extra penny towards it and you can really cut down the time it takes you to pay it off :)

Almost There!

*drumroll please.......*

I am happy to say that my OSAP is now under the $1k mark!! It is at $977.89!!! This makes me soooo happy! This means it will be cleared in about 2 months time.

And also, my net worth is now over $1600. This is really great. I am doing even better than I thought I would be at this time.

Student Loan update..

I recently set myself a goal to try and pay off atleast $500 a month towards my student loan, because I really want to pay it off as fast as possible. So far it has been easier than I thought!

When I got my pay last Friday, I was able to make a $575.00 payment! I had already made a $200 payment at the beginning of the month so that means that this month I have paid a total of $775.00 towards my student loan!

Now I am wondering why I have not been paying this much before?? What did I do with all that money?! I guess I would have put more into savings but I am really wanting to aggresively pay off this loan, and focus more on that than my savings right now.

So about a month ago my loan was at $3700 and today its $2978! I have to admit I am really proud of myself right now. December can be a really bad time for spending and I have done really well. I already had money set aside for Christmas presents, so this is what really allowed me to start paying so much toward my loan. I really hope that I can keep this up in the coming months.

November Goals

Well I am officially under the $4,000 mark on my student loan. It has now been 2 years since I first started paying it off and I have paid off approx. $4900!! My interest rate has also gone down 0.5% in the last month or so. In total since I first started paying it off, it's gone down 2%. I am really excited that its under the $4K mark because I am hoping that with my next tax refund in the new year, and if I try really hard, I could possibly have this paid off by the end of 2009. Wouldn't that be great?

Anyways, I've decided to come up with a few goals for November.

1) Keep tracking spending. I bought a little notebook to keep in my purse so I can write down everything. I think I will keep tracking my spending for Nov and Dec and then make myself a budget for the new year. Along with this comes #2....

2) Keep track of my No Spending days. Each day that I don't spend anything, I mark it on the calendar. After this month is over, I will see how many there was and then set myself a goal for Dec.

3) Get a new gym pass. I got a monthly pass for the new gym near my house and it was up a few days ago. I need to get another one and keep going. I think I will eventually buy a yearly membership but I will probably wait until the new year, since I will be saving for Christmas.

4) Send in my first deposit for ING savings account. I really don't want to buy a box of cheques for $20 bucks just to use one and probably never use the others. But then again, they have the highest interest rate than anyone else. Probably worth it, I just need to get around to it.

Update on OSAP..

I am soo happy right now! My OSAP debt is now down to $5120.96!!!!! Less than a month ago it was at $5900.00! This is mainly because of my tax return, but I am still pretty proud of myself. I am really determined to get rid of this debt as quickly as possible. Mainly because I need a car. lol. Which will be another debt..but I want to get rid of this one first or atleast get it WAY DOWN before I buy a car...I also need to save for a car aswell. I am just really happy to have gotten it down this far...plus now that I've gotten a raise at work I will be able to get it down even faster than before..yay me!

Huge OSAP payment!

Well I finally got my tax refund and it was $1078.00!!!
So far with that I have splurged on:
- "Pure Poison" perfume by Dior (about 70.00 including my employee discount)
- a pink limited edition CHI flat iron

Last week I made an OSAP payment (student loan) of $185.00, and then today I paid off $650.00!! That means this month I have paid $835.00!! THats pretty good considered my min payment is like $115.00.

Does anyone shop at Garage Clothing? This used to be my favourite store and I couldnt walk in there without getting anything. But lately it seems they are just getting so expensive. These days, I pretty much only buy things on sale there. There is always stuff on sale in the back, if you see something that you want, you just wait a few weeks and then its on sale. Thats if it doesnt sell out. Today I got a tank top for $10 that used to be $15 so I saved $5. My CHI flat iron was also on sale for $179 (according to the sticker it used to be $250 ). I think they just pretend it used to be more so you think you are getting a deal. Do you notice stores doing that alot?? I do, even my own work does that. As if no one will notice! I would love to hear your experience with this if anyone has a story to share!

Quick Update

I haven't updated for a few days since I have been busy with work and such and haven't had a lot of time. But I just wanted to talk about a few things I added to my blog here. One is the list of my earnings so far from various PTC/ Survey sites. Please keep in mind I have not actually been paid yet by these sites because I have not yet reached minimum payout. But I know that other people have been paid so I am not really worried about it.

Another thing I wanted to point out is my student loan status. I have listed what I started with and what I owe today. So far I have paid off $2892. 75!! Part of that was a $1700.00 grant that I got from the good old government that was put toward my debt. So not counting that I have paid $1192.75 myself. I don't think that is too bad to have paid off in less than 2 years when you are not making a lot of money.

I only have to pay 115.00 a month but lately I have been paying off more than that since I live with my parents and dont have many bills. I usually pay about 150.00 or so but I won 70.00 at the casino the other week so i am going to add that on to the next one!

Another cool thing to mention is that today on Netwinner, I won 500 points in one Banko game! That is a lot to win in one day so its great! That's all I've got today, hope everyone is having a great day!