We Paid Off the TD Loan

This morning before going to work I checked the bank accounts and the cheque from the PCF loan, that I've talked about before, had finally cleared in the TD chequing account. So after work we dropped dropped by the TD Bank and paid the remaining balance of the consolidation loan off. I'm not getting too wildly excited about this because we've just exchanged a debt at one bank with a debt at another. However, the new loan is at 7.5%, 3.5% less than the old loan. This means that every payment will be paying off more principle. And that's a good thing. Hmm...well it's actually worth about $1.72 per day difference in the interest on $20,000.00.

I been working out the details on changing from monthly budgeting to biweekly budgeting. For us it's just going to make everything easier. The budget will be the same for each two week period. To me the fiddly part weeks in a month alway seemed to make budgeting more difficult, did you budget extra for them or did you just try to stretch last weeks money to cover an extra four days?

Tomorrow my pay should be direct deposited into the PCF chequing account. Mrs. B's was deposited today. We both are paid biweekly, her on Thursdays and I on Fridays. So the first biweekly budget period will start tomorrow. The biggest single item is rent at 21.5%. The biggest aggregate is debt repayment with 3 items at 13.2%, 11.8% and 6.5% totaling 31.6%.

The biweekly budget lets me slip in a little extra because the two extra monthly pays are divvied up amongst biweekly items. This means that two biweekly periods are about 8% less that a monthly period. This works as long as there is enough float in the account so you don't go into the hole. I'm keeping a $1,000 cushion in the chequing account so I think that I'll be ok. This 8% is allowing me to budget for a couple of things like replacement glasses and vacation. My current glasses (invisible bifocals) were $500 and my employer only has $200 coverage for optical. Maybe if I don't need to replace them I'll be able to save up for laser eye surgery.

The other day, over at Loonies and Sense, the author posted about chequing account cushions as well.


Tune in tomorrow for my story about my Christmas excesses!

More PCF Loan Stuff and Stray Thoughts

On Tuesday we signed the loan paperwork and yesterday the money was in the account. It's always seems a little daunting to suddenly see an extra $20,000 in your bank. If only we didn't have to worry about paying it back.

I put through payments for the outstanding balances on the Amex and on the Visa cards. There will probably be interest charges still showing up on next months bills.

I'm wondering about the American Express card. It's a Costco membership card we got when we joined Costco. It doesn't have a fee and does pay out something like a 2% or 2.5% cash bonus once a year. I don't think we need more than one credit card though. The Visa rate is 19.99% (can you tell that I missed a couple of payments?), but the Amex rate is 26.9%!

The big thing is that we really don't shop at Costco much. I bought our better computer there last year before Christmas and Mrs. Brian bought her last pair of glasses there this summer. I think that their prices on glasses are really good. and both our vision plans only cover the first $200 for vision care. However, I really don't like shopping for groceries there because it's so hard to get out without paying $200! You save so much that it kills you! So Costco does charge a membership fee, even if the Amex is free.

I think that I will cancel the Amex and the Costco membership when we pay off the outstanding interest on the card. Any thoughts from anyone reading this?

As well as making online payments on the two credit cards, I dropped by the TD bank and deposited a cheque for $17,000 to or TD chequing account. Apparently, it won't clear until the 25th! Ouch! When it does clear we'll pay of the old consolidation loan and throw the rest at the line of credit.

We both put requests through our workplaces to change our direct deposits over to the PCF accounts as well as changing the car insurance P.A.C. over. I have to get the info for each of our life insurance policies to change their P.A.C.'s as well.

While I was at the TD I closed out our Companion Savings account. It's sat empty for more years than I care to remember, always waiting for that saving program we were going to start. Last year I started putting $40 a pay in to save for something (can't remember what now), but we never got too far with it. We'd get $100 or $200 in there and would end up using it to pay bills with.

Finally, back in October I started using it for our Freedom Account. I heard about the concept on one of the person finance blogs I was reading. The concept is promoted by Mary Hunt who wrote Debt Proof Living. Essentially, you divide any annual expenses by 12 and deposit that much each month. We had Car Maintenance, CAA, Driver Licenses, Club Memberships, pre payment for vacation. Rental Insurance at the start and have since added Cat Expenses, Health, Deductables and "the Movie Project". When you need to pay for whatever, you've already saved the money for it. Therefore less stress and worry about paying for those bills you weren't expecting. That's a bit of an oxymoron, but you understand what I mean. There's probably some reoccurring bill I've forgotten, but I set up a miscellaneous category for those!

Anyhow, I cleared out the money and closed the account. When the teller asked why I wanted to close the account I told him; "I'm moving my account to President's Choice". He didn't really seem to care.

We Signed the Paperwork

We went in after work and signed the loan paperwork. Tomorrow we should have $20,000.00 to pay off the credit cards and the old consolidation loan. At 7.5% interest we are going to be hitting more principle with each payment.

Of course we're not any further out of debt, but the sides of the hole aren't as steep as they were before!

Loan Update

Well, this is just a quick note before I head out. I spoke to a CSR at PCF and I've been approved for a $20,000 loan @ 7.5%. They'll call as soon as the documents arrive at the store kiosk. (For folks from the states, President's Choice Financial only locations are in store kiosks in a large chain of Canadian grocery stores)


Yeah, $20,000 not $25,000. It's a bit of a pain but it still gets most of the job done.

I found something out today which surprised me, but I'll have to talk about that later.

Until then!

PCF Frustrations

I accept that an internet bank will most likely be a little more difficult to deal with. To save $156 a year I'm willing to deal with a little inconvenience. But sometimes....

So I called PCF back tonight like I was asked, to confirm the change on the loan to a variable rate. It turns out that we had to go through the whole loan application thing again. The CSR has everything in front of him from the first time, but we have to go over everything all over again.

It's all worth it for 7.5%, it's all worth it for 7.5 %.

So I have to call back tomorrow night, again. Or maybe Thursday...

Sigh.

Oh yeah, the super just dropped our rent deposit interest cheque through the door. Now do I snowball it on the Amex, or do I save it and apply it to the new loan (once we get it)?

PCF Loan Update

So I called President's Choice Financial tonight. We were approved pending us sending in our income verification. We'll be faxing that off tomorrow.

$25,000.00 at 9.5% fixed rate over 60 months. I checked about the rate, because Larmer said he expected a rate drop by the end of the month and that jibed with some of the other stuff I've heard . So I asked about variable rates and the CSR said that it shouldn't be a problem to change the loan to a variable rate. The variable rate is Prime + 1.5 % or 7.5% right now. Much better than the 11% I'm paying on the current consolidation loan and unbelievably better than the 25.99% on the Amex card.

We'll call back to confirm tomorrow night and then we'll have to go into a kiosk to sign the paperwork.

I can't wait to walk into the TD Canada Trust with the cheque book!

Welcome Back

I'd like to welcome everyone back, or welcome you to my blog if you haven't been here before. As this is post number 2, the second option seems to be much more likely.

Last month, I got a Christmas bonus at work of $300 and was quite excited. That combined with a Survivor pool at work that won me $50 meant that in December we were able to pay off the last $335 of the Wells Fargo furniture loan for the couch we bought back in April of 2007. The loan was 0% for the first year and then was going to go up to 28.9% if it wasn't all paid off in time. Of course, all the interest over the whole year would of been due.

My wife and I were really pleased to get that out of the way. Now, we are looking at the rest of our debts and deciding on what to snowball next. We have a consolidation loan with $13,000.00 at 11%, a line of credit at about $8,000.00, an American Express card with approximately $2,000.00 at 25.99%, a Visa card with $900.00 at 19.75%. On top of that we haven't saved up our $1,000.00 Emergency Fund yet.

We wanted to get that Wells Fargo debt gone before the $164.66+ of virtual interest became real interest. Now that it's out of the way, we are ready to tackle the E.F. and the other debts. Because we have a wide range of debts and interest rates we contacted President's Choice Financial to see about consolidating everything. If they agree it means that everything will be at either 8.5 or 8.75 %. That means knocking about three months off of our estimated payment schedule. That means saving $3,600.00 of interest. Holy crap, I'm just floored by that. If they ok us, we will be going in to T.D. Canada Trust to pay off the loan, the line of credit and the visa.

Now, if they want to keep our business they will have to give us a better rate of interest than PCF and I want no fees on our chequing account. I don't expect them to give that to us.

So Monday night I'll let people know if we got the loan.