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!