Goals for 2010 and 2011

Happy New Year!  I'm here, let's see if I can keep it up.  I wanted to take a look at my goals for 2010 and see how I did with them, as well as set out some more goals for 2011.

Here were my goals for 2010, along with how I did:

 

Financial Goals

 

Pay down $1,300 directly in credit card debt. Pay down $1,500 in other debt. Pay down $1,080 in regular credit card payments. Total: $3,880. Round up to $3,900. Even with paying down as much and as often as possible, I'm basically $3,000 deeper in credit card debt.  I paid down $1,375 in other debt.  I made almost all the regular credit card payments.
Open a TFSA and put $1,300 into it. I opened an account and put $1,200 into it.
Put a minimum of $520 into the Emergency Fund. I pretty much cleaned out my Emergency Fund when I went to the US for a wedding but there's $1,236.72 in it at the moment.
Put a minimum of $520 into my RRSP. I put $350 into my RRSP.
Keep putting money into my set aside accounts, rural credit union account, etc. I was inconsistent with this, though better than in any recent years.
Keep current on all my bills. Not always.
Come up with $3,000 for Dear Child’s dental surgery. Well, we paid for it although a good chunk of that is the increase on the credit card.
Pay off both Home Depot payment plans on time. Done!

 

Rural House Goals

 

Plan out and create a garden in the front of the house (south west side of driveway area). Nope.
Plant lavender border. Nope.
Go to house 2x per month in summer. Nope.

Finish new floor in master bedroom. Nope.

 

Physical Goals

 

Get weight down to 120. Nope, still sitting at 132, but some of that is now muscle.  Not all though....
Walk for at least a half hour per day (or use elliptical for same length of time). No way!

So, I won some and I lost some.  What are my goals for 2011?

Financial Goals

1. Pay off all our outstanding debt.  Not as insane as it sounds, as we are expecting a small inheritance shortly.
2. Put $1,300 into the TFSA this year.
3. Increase the Emergency Fund by at least $520.
4. Put a minimum of $520 into my RRSP.
5. Put the set-aside money into my accounts regularly.
6. Get current and stay current on all my bills.

Rural House Goals

1. Go to the house a minimum of once per month when the weather is decent.
2. Build the bedframes that have been there for a year now!
3. Step up the search for land once we have the money for a down payment.

Physical Goals

1. Go out to exercise at least once a week.
2. Exercise at home every day that I don't exercise elsewhere.

 Let's see how I do with these goals.  I think I learned some valuable lessons last year and have developed at least somewhat better habits.  I'm also taking better care of myself, which is really just as important as getting my financial life in order.

 

 

 

Thanks for the Support!

It's very nice to hear back from some of you, welcoming me back and encouraging me to stick with both the blogging and the work I need to do to.

Thanks for being there for me!

Things are very busy right now.  Work is crazy, the school year is winding down and every day seems to bring some departure from the norm (field trips, class parties, sports day, hot lunch, you name it), many people are dealing with the health issues of family members (at work, in our own family, friends) and I'm feeling stretched kind of thin.

I've straightened out some things that had fallen by the wayside, like my cell bill and will take care of the one remaining outstanding bill (the water) by next week at the latest.  I got the property taxes for my rural home and the garbage bill for it.  Both have gone up somewhat from last year, but not horrendously.  And, thanks to the fact that I've been setting aside money for those kinds of things most paydays (and keeping track of when I don't and then catching it up) I have enough money already in my rural credit union account to pay the bills when they're due at the beginning of July!  That's a big improvement from the past couple of years.

I also have been working on slowly paying down the massively increased amount that has gotten charged to my credit card over the past few months.  I have only one charge left to pay back from my Passover purchases but most of the rest are biggies.  There's about $750 owing for kitchen cabinets and flooring I charged at IKEA, the last couple of hundred owing on Dear Child's dental surgery, the $1,300 for my root canal, and about $125 for a new heavier duty weed whacker and replacement reel for the rural house.  Last year we bought the cheapest one we could find and that was a huge mistake.  The reel didn't feed properly (which meant it had to be taken apart and played with repeatedly Every. Single. Time we used it) and the whole thing broke under the usage it was getting.  We hope this one will last much longer.

My hubby is going today to finish his root canal and I already have an appointment booked for July to fill a cavity and discuss the crown I'm going to need on the tooth I had the root canal on.  Sigh.

Shevy, Reappearing

Interesting, no?  One minute I'm here, if a little busy with Life.  The next, nothing.  Two months plus of nothing.

And the answer is: I had a little crisis.  I don't quite know how to describe it.  Of confidence.  Of identity.  Of how I see myself.  Of how others see me.

What brought this on?  The silliest thing, something totally innocent.  Praise.

I've known pretty much forever that I'm not great with criticism.  Who knew a casual line of praise could totally undo me?  Well, certainly not my blogging friend who emailed me a short note that included the following line:

"you are so good at staying committed to your goals".

I read it and a voice from deep inside said, "You don't deserve that praise."  And I quietly fell apart.  Couldn't post.  Couldn't hide that truth.  Couldn't speak it aloud.  And, as time went by, things just got worse and worse.

I originally felt unworthy of praise because I'd just come through the whole financial devastation that is Passover.  I'd charged a lot of food, matzo, wine, you name it on the credit card for Passover.  I'd had to pay for Dog to go on his annual Pesach vacation.  And I was starting to fall a little behind on certain things, while trying to pay off Dear Child's dental surgery.  It seemed ludicrous to say that, because I was diverting $50 a pay period into my Tax Free Savings Account or $10 per week into my Baby Emergency Fund, I was staying committed to my goals.  There were so many places where I was bleeding money.

In the interim, things have just gotten worse and worse (as I said).  I bought the laminate flooring for Dear Child's room (and my Son-in-Law installed it!).  More money, but money well spent.  DC's room is finished except for baseboards.  I also bought four new upper cupboards, IKEA ones, about the week before Passover (because I wanted pantry shelves on which to put my food).  I spent about $500.  If they were in and being used, I probably would also consider it money well spent.  They're sitting in their boxes in my foyer.  Apparently, if (at some point) I put them together my Son-in-Law will demo the existing (mostly broken and unusable) cupboards and hang the new ones.

I started having terrible tooth pain and ended up with a major root canal that now needs to be finished off with a crown.  And my husband has just had pretty much the same thing.  Net result, big increase in the credit card balance.

Sigh.

Despite paying off as much as possible pretty much every payday we owe way more than we did in March or April.  I have a spreadsheet that tracks all the additional charges we've made to the card and when I've made each payment (in addition to the $90 per pay period that is our normal payment).

And I have continued to put money into both the Emergency Fund and the TFSA, as well as restarted deposits to my RRSP.  It just seems like such a drop in the bucket compared to the other.

So, that's my story.  I'm going to try to get back to writing here though, because (for all the embarrassment of having to admit all this) I find it valuable.

February Goal Review and March Goals

Yes, it is a new month and yesterday was payday.  Sounds like a good time to see how I did with my February goals and maybe set some new ones for March.

First of all, what were my goals for February?
1. Pay for Dear Child's birthday party.
2. Pay at least $229.75 to MasterCard
3. Stay current with all the other bills.
4. Get the treatment plan for DC's dental surgery and figure out how to pay for that.
5. Make arrangements for Dog's Passover vacation and pay at least $100 towards that.

Those sounded pretty reasonable.  How did I do?

1. Dear Child's party was held at the community centre with an hour in the gym and then food upstairs.  Given that my Eldest Daughter's baby was overdue at that point and we were doing renovations both upstairs and down at home, it was the only logical choice.  She didn't have a party the previous year and had been promised a nice one this year.  I charged the party on my MasterCard and paid for part of it in February.  I finished paying for it today.
2. I made a number of payments to MasterCard in February, as well as at the beginning of March.  I paid both the $229.75 and $90 (my regular payment) on 17 Feb, then paid $62.50 towards the cost of the party on  the 22nd or 23rd.  I paid another $90 yesterday and $400 today.
3. I am current on all the usual bills like internet, water, credit card, cell, set-asides into my credit union account, ING emergency fund, etc.  It feels good.
4. Dear Child had her surgery and I charged the first of 3 monthly payments for it to my MasterCard at the beginning of the week when the surgery took place.  The total bill was a little under $1,800 and each payment is between $500 and $600.  $200 of the $400 I paid today was towards the dental charge.  I'll have more to put towards it when my hubby gets paid again.  I want to pay each dental charge off before I charge the next one.
5. I wrote to reserve Dog's place today and will send a cheque for $100 once I hear back.

All in all, I did very well!  Now, what do I want to choose as goals for March (bearing in mind that Passover falls at the end of March this year and is both hectic and expensive).  Let's keep it very simple.

1. Stay current on my bills this month.
2. Pay at least half of the cost of Dog's vacation ahead of time.
3. Pay down the cost of the first dental charge before the end of March.

I could add more, but I know just how much of a challenge those will be.

In addition, I'm on track with my TFSA.  I've been putting in $50 each payday and it's currently sitting at $250.18.  I've also got an automatic transfer of $10/week to my ING Emergency Fund.  There's $251.56 in there as of today, close to half the $520 I listed as a goal for the year.  Yes, I realize it's not enough but the money in the TFSA can also be taken out for any reason at any time, so it can also function as a sort of emergency fund too.  I'll be happier when I have at least $1,000 put away between the two funds but right now I'm just trying to find some kind of balance and form regular habits.

Surgery Update

Just a very short post to say that my Dear Child had her surgery Thursday morning and came through it beautifully, Baruch Hashem [thank G-d].  She was nervous as this was her second surgery and she said she felt the anaesthesia line being inserted last time, but she was very brave.  I cuddled her and encouraged her to blow bubbles while they put the line in today (her hand had been pre-numbed by a topical) and she didn't seem to feel it this time.  Boy, they go out fast though.  One second she was giggling and telling the nurses about Dog and the next we were easing her down on the table as her eyes rolled back.

She's doing really well.  We gave her one dose of Advil when the freezing and painkillers they had given her wore off but she hasn't seemed to need any more.  I went out and spent more money than I should have on special soft foods for her (cottage cheese, ice cream, juice, soft fruits) but she can't eat regular food for a couple of days, just a very soft diet.  I'm going to make tuna quiche (one of her faves) for Shabbos lunch and we'll have fish fillets and mashed potatoes for Friday night.

I can't believe Purim starts when Shabbos ends!  At least today was an easy fast (the Fast of Esther gets pushed back to Thursday when Purim is Sunday because we don't fast on Shabbos unless Yom Kippur falls out then).  And Dear Child can say she fasted too!  Normally kids don't fast until the year they hit Bar or Bat Mitzvah but she had to fast from midnight on for the surgery.  Actually, she did have about a third of a glass of water through the afternoon, a sip or 2 at a time, but that's all.  She had a strawberry banana ice cream smoothie for dinner.  And she's looking forward to a visit from the tooth fairy tonight.  She got $5 each time previously when she lost a tooth and they extracted 4 teeth today (among other work).  Hubby asked her how much money she'd be getting and she said $20 right away!  Pretty good math skills for a 7 year old!

Poking My Nose Out for an Update

I feel like the poor old groundhog, scared to look out for fear of seeing my shadow.  My last post was 10 days ago and I talked about the necessity of creating a Pesach cleaning plan and making myself accountable.  Then I disappeared.

Well, life happens.  Specifically, new babies happen!  No, not mine.  My Eldest Daughter's.  But combine a new baby (and one whole night with no sleep while my daughter was in labour) together with 3 little girls who are off school, the Olympics, two kiddie birthday parties, various and sundry family members and close friends traipsing in and out to see the little guy and, well, you get the idea.

What, if anything has been done?

Well, my son-in-law and his dad did get the drywall down, fixed what needed to be fixed, and then put up the drywall again.  It still needs taping, mudding and sanding before much of anything can be done in Dear Child's room.  I did go through the big bin that had been stored but Dear Child was thrilled to see most of the items after 3 years, my hubby vetoed getting rid of certain other items and it's still 3/4 full.  Sigh.  Honestly, I think she could have lived without the baby doll, the baby Cabbage Patch and 2 big stuffed Care Bears at the very least!  I know some will say that I should have gone through the bin by myself or forced her to give away more, but I've been on the other end of it and I still recall how upset I was (back when I was about 11).

Other than that, I've done a lot of laundry and hung up more of DC's things (in my closet) and I started sorting out paperwork that's stacked on the trunk and table (in an area I'm not supposed to even be in yet).  I also started to make a detailed list in excel based on a spreadsheet I saw elsewhere.  I worked on it for about 2 hours and was very satisfied with it.  I just wanted to add another worksheet for Things To Buy, so I did that and tried to edit the tab of the worksheet to say "To Buy" and excel totally messed up on me at that point.  It tried to tell me there was something wrong with what I was calling it (there wasn't), and listed that it couldn't be more than so many characters, no special characters and couldn't be blank.  It wouldn't let me get out of the tab, wouldn't let me switch to another sheet, wouldn't let me save, wouldn't even let me close excel!  It took 2 tries using Task Manager to eventually force excel to close.  Needless to say, I lost the entire thing.  I was not a happy camper and went to bed that night in a huff!  The next day I recreated it from scratch and successfully saved it.  In fact, I improved on the format, but I still didn't like having to do all that work twice!  And, of course, that was a "planning the work" segment.  Still have to work the plan!

As for money, I've been paying my bills and trying to get the MasterCard back down to where it was before.  I did pay off the flooring I bought but then ended up having to charge DC's birthday party, which was held out of the house for what should be obvious reasons!  I've since paid down another $90.  That pretty much covered last month's interest charge ($91.43).  Then I paid part of the money for the party but have to wait another couple of weeks to finish paying that off.  And, today, I charged the first 1/3 of DC's dental surgery.  We're paying it in 3 payments, each a month apart.  I'm hoping that my hubby will get paid the commission on a couple of bigger jobs he's done recently by the end of March.  Then we can pay the surgery off and be done with it.  The good news is that it turned out to cost considerably less than originally anticipated, about $1,700 when we'd been led to expect that it would be about $3,000.

Right now I'm just trying to get through the week until Thursday, when the surgery takes place.  And take baby steps on my cleaning plan until then.

Passover Planning

Okay, this is what I was talking about the other night when I was suffering from caffeine-induced insomnia.  Passover starts the last week of March and it's already almost the middle of February.  My house could politely be described as a mess.  We clean for Passover so that we don't have any crumbs anywhere (because we have to get rid of all leavened products for the duration of the holiday).  Generally, people also do a lot of other cleaning and tidying at the same time because it helps you find the leavened stuff (called chametz in Hebrew).  Right now, I'm hard pressed to even find any horizontal surfaces in my home (including most of the floor) because everything from my daughter's room is all over everywhere.

I have bins of Barbies and stuffed animals, trays of art supplies, boxes of school projects and clothes, her globe, baskets of books, etc. etc. all over my living room.  Most of the bins look like they've thrown up their contents.  Then, I have her little table in the middle of my kitchen, the chairs in the living room, her comforter across the foot of my bed, her hanging clothes in my closet and her laundry on the floor by the foot of my bed. Oh yes, and her lamps on my dining room table.

My Dear Child's room is still empty and taped off.  My Son-in-Law got to the point of replacing the ceiling drywall but found that it didn't all meet up evenly and that he couldn't find a place to sink some of the necessary drywall screws.  His dad was in town for just a day or two, so didn't have time to work on it but the problem apparently also affects the kitchen floor upstairs.  They need to remove the new drywall, do something up above and then replace it.  Of course, after that the drywall will need taping, mudding and sanding (at least a couple of days, what with the mud needing to dry in between).  Then he's going to texture the ceiling (which I loathe, but he says he can't do an even enough job to look totally flat, so the texture is necessary) and repaint some of the upper parts of her wall that got damaged during the process to date.

Unfortunately, his dad won't be back until after Eldest Daughter has the baby (any day now, so he'll probably return within the next couple of weeks) and I can't put in the new floor until the ceiling is finished.  I don't want paint or drywall compound or drywall dust all over my new floor!  And the floor isn't a single evening project.  Did I mention that I can't put anything back in the bedroom until both ceiling and floor are finished?

The original plan I made for Passover had me finishing the floor and refilling her room by Jan 31st, spending the next 2 weeks on the living room, 2 weeks on the foyer and 3rd bedroom (including tiling the floor, moving furniture and assembling a wardrobe we've had for about 2 years already), 2 weeks in the master bedroom and, finally, 2 weeks in the kitchen (and adjacent bathroom) and also included doing tiling and replacing cabinets and counters!

Okay, it was ambitious.  Very ambitious.  I'm now at the point where I should be finishing the living room and I haven't started anything because of the whole situation with the bedroom!  I'm frustrated and that's part of what's holding me back.  Realistically, while I can't do many of the things I'm supposed to be doing (or should have already completed) there are small areas where I could do something.

For example, I could clean off the mantel and a couple of the bookshelves.  I could try to clear off the chaise longue (although I'm not sure where I can put DC's coats) and I could buy the wooden frame from IKEA that is meant to hold her bins.  I could assemble it, empty and clean the bins, then only put cleaned and checked toys back into the bins.  Then those toys would be off limits until Passover (the hard part).  I could also go through her big bin of toys that's been sitting in storage and is currently in our 3rd bedroom.  Most of those toys have been outgrown I think and maybe I could get rid of a bunch of them.  Then any toys I'm not willing or able to clean for Passover could go in the bin.  Those toys could be played with in the interim and then the bin could be sealed shut and sold for the duration of Passover.

On the reno front, I could rip out the carpet in DC's room and lay the DriCore (because it doesn't matter if it gets paint or dust on it).

So, here's a basic revised plan, week by week:
1. Starting Sunday, work on accessible areas in the living room and do the floor prep in DC's room.  Work on the bins and toys.
2. Work on the living room areas that are revealed when I move the toys.  Clean up the part of the foyer where we put the shoes & DC's backpack.  Once Hubby reorganizes the shed, move the boxes that belong there out of the foyer.  Rip out carpet in 3rd bedroom and move big items around in it.
3. Tile & grout the floor in the foyer and 3rd bedroom.  Move the furniture into their final places.  Build the single wardrobe.  Move my grandmother's trunk from beside the table into the 3rd bedroom.
4. Work on the master bedroom.  Do floor in DC's room (by this time the ceiling had better be fixed!) and move all her stuff back in.
5. Finish the master bedroom. Finish the living room. Start work on the kitchen, beginning with table area and corner by bathroom. Clean fridge.  Box up stuff to be sold for Passover (regular dishes, pots, etc.).
6. Continue work on the kitchen, whether I'm doing a reno or scrubbing out the existing lower cabinets.  Do reno the upper cabinets at least so we'll have a place to put the Passover food (since the pantry cupboard is the one that fell apart a few months ago). Clean stove.
7. Finish up the kitchen on Sunday the 28th and start cooking for the seders (Monday & Tuesday nights).

Just looking at all of that is pretty scary.  Remember, we're also going to have a new baby upstairs, I'm planning to go to the house for a couple of days during the 2nd week, Dear Child is off school until the end of the Olympics, she's having dental surgery on Feb. 25th and we'll be busy with Purim on the 28th (of Feb.).  Oh right, and I work!  But I don't have any better ideas.  If I don't at least try to work this plan I won't be ready at all and what will we do then?  Move out for the duration of Passover?

So, plan the work, work the plan.  Rinse and repeat.

Review Day & February Goals

It was Wednesday.  It was payday.  And my Hubby had transferred money to my account.  Guess what I did this morning before breakfast?  I paid bills, of course!

That made me think about my goals for the year.  How am I doing with those?  What should I work on this month?

Overall, I'm doing well with the money.  Both the Home Depot payment plans are history.  That's just over $1,500 worth of debt we've paid off between about November and now.  I have post-dated cheques for another debt we're chewing away at and I'm on track with that.  I've opened a TFSA and there's already $150 in it.  I have $10/week going into my ING Emergency Fund.  No, that's not a lot but it's going in there nice and regular.  The IKEA account is all paid off and can no longer be used because they changed companies that provide the credit card services.  As of today, I think I'm current on all my bills.  The one thing I still need to do for this pay period is to go to the credit union, take out $45 in cash and then deposit it into my other credit union via the ATM.  That's the set-aside money each payday for my electric bill, garbage, property taxes and fuel oil at our rural home.  Next winter, when it's time for a fuel oil delivery, I'll have the money all saved up.

On the other hand, I've been charging stuff for the city house on my MasterCard.  In fact, Capital One put a fraud hold on my card after the third time I used it in 2 days!  What did I buy?  I spent $20.11 at IKEA on 4 D cell batteries, 10 votive candle holders and a pair of sheer drapes (2 panels).  I bought $129.37 worth of DriCore (including a levelling kit) at one Home Depot and, the next day at a different Home Depot, I spent $229.75 on tiles for the foyer and 3rd bedroom, as well as concealing film for the bedroom windows, a closet pole that will fit Dear Child's closet at the rural house (it's an odd size) and a grouting sponge.  Bad?  Not really.  I had to buy the reno supplies before the end of January to be able to cash in on the home renovation tax credit.  And I needed the supplies to finish important projects that will make our part of the house a lot better looking.  Plus, I've paid down $149.48 of that already today.

The fraud thing was actually pretty funny.  I've barely used the card over the past year or more, so 3 transactions in 2 days was obviously suspicious!  I got that all straightened out with a quick phone call.

What are my goals for February?
1. Pay for Dear Child's birthday party.
2. Pay at least $229.75 to MasterCard
3. Stay current with all the other bills.
4. Get the treatment plan for DC's dental surgery and figure out how to pay for that.
5. Make arrangements for Dog's Passover vacation and pay at least $100 towards that.

Got any goals for February that you'd like to share?

Teeth, Continued

In my last post (was it really that long ago?) I talked about how Dear Child had been to the dentist and lost yet another tooth.  What I didn't mention was that the dentist said he wanted her to have an ortho consult before we booked her upcoming dental surgery!

Accordingly, on Tuesday morning DC and I went to see an orthodontist in her dentist's office (how convenient!) and $35 later the news was that we would extract fewer teeth than originally contemplated.  There's no question that she comes by all her dental issues very honestly.  I blame it all on my father!  He had terrible teeth when I was little.  They were very crooked and so badly abscessed that, when they were pulled, the dentist refused to take more than a few at a time for fear of the infection spreading through his bloodstream and killing him.

It wasn't that he didn't take care of them.  He just had poor teeth and the crowding made cleaning much more difficult.  He grew up through the Depression (in farm country) and orthodontics were just unheard of in that time and place.  Eventually they all came out, he was fitted with dentures and things were much better.

Unfortunately, I inherited the poor teeth and also had a huge mismatch between the size of my teeth and the size of my jaw.  I had a (totally useless) appliance as a child, ortho complete with extractions and headgear as a young teen and ortho with jaw surgery and further extractions as an adult!

DC's oldest brother also had the same pattern of decay, decay around fillings, crowns and loss of crowned teeth that DC is currently going through.  Luckily, his teeth were quite straight and we never did ortho for him but he's only 30 and has dentures already.  (The other 2 adult kids had a normal number of cavities that didn't continue to decay.  My grown daughter needed about $4,500 of ortho in her mid-teens, however.)

Basically, the plan for my youngest daughter is to remove the top 4 baby incisors and shave down the sides of the eyeteeth (canines) to allow as much room as possible for the 4 adult teeth waiting to erupt.  There will likely still be some crowding, which could be eliminated by pulling the eyeteeth as well.  However, that would increase the chance that she would develop an underbite (because the pressure of the upper lip on the erupting teeth would tend to push them back) and we're trying to avoid that.

She's lost both of what will be lower bicuspids on one side and the lower canine is starting to drift backwards slightly, opening up a little room on the bottom.  They plan to take one of the matching teeth on the other side to allow that canine to drift back slightly as well.  When the bottom ones come in, the ortho feels they'll be fine.  They will attach a space maintainer to the 6 year molar on the one side though, to limit the amount of movement.

Finally, they'll fill all four of her 6 year molars, the only permanent teeth she has fully in to date.  Part of the problem with having so much decay in baby teeth is that the permanent ones tend to come in with decay "factory-installed" or to begin to decay while they are only partly erupted (with the decay starting under the portion of gum still covering part of the tooth, where you can't reach with floss or a toothbrush).

The biggest decision is really the material to use.  Amalgam (which does contain small amounts of mercury) is the cheapest and hardest.  If the fillings are still small enough we can also do them in a white material that doesn't contain mercury but isn't fully covered under our dental plan.  I'm seriously considering spending an extra $400 or so to have the more esthetically pleasing fillings.  For one thing, I have a mouth full of mercury based amalgam fillings and I'd rather not have them myself, let alone inflict them on DC.  I'm not at all sure that they're safe over the long term.  But it is more money and the surgery itself is expensive.  I don't have a final amount yet but it will probably be on the close order of $3,000 plus the extra charge for the white fillings.

It's a lot of money and we're in debt already.  But it's a long-term investment in DC's mouth.  If we can reduce or eliminate the need for braces down the line that could easily save us a $5,000 orthodontic fee  (a net savings of $2,000).  Plus, having the fillings done under general anaesthetic eliminates the need for 4 separate office visits and numerous shots of freezing.  This is important when you consider that she's terrified of needles.  I might get her to the office okay for the first filling but the next 3 visits would be horrendous.

So, how are we going to pay for this?  We have a dental plan that covers a lot of the cost but we're responsible for the rest  (the $3,000 figure I used being our portion).  They will work out a payment plan but it's between $600 and $1,000 per month if I remember correctly from the last time.  Luckily my Hubby has had a couple of good commissions recently that will be paid to him over the next few months and that's where the money will come from.  It means we won't be going deeper in debt, which is a good thing.  On the other hand, it means we won't be able to use that money to pay down debt, which is not so good.

I was told that it usually takes about a month to get in for the surgery.  So I pointed out that DC will be out of school for the duration of the Olympics and asked if there was any possibility of getting her in then (as the end of the Olympics is about a month from now).  They're going to check and get back to me.  It would certainly be easier to do it when she's off school anyway, rather than have her off for 2 1/2 weeks, go back and then have to miss several days.

Money, Teeth and Computer Viruses

I'm plugging away, paying bills as I get money (whether from work or Hubby when he gets paid or wherever).  The problem is that sometimes it takes me a couple of days to get money from Point A to Point B.  When Hubby gets paid he transfers money to me for bills but that goes into my old bank account.  I take cash out from there, then have to physically go into the credit union when it's open to deposit it so I don't have a hold on the money.  Unfortunately, the credit union is on a major street that doesn't allow street parking 3 to 6 pm and where it's very busy the rest of the time.  So, it's challenging to get there and be able to find a place to park.

This past week I took some of the money out in cash and used telephone banking to make another payment from the old bank account to my MasterCard.  I finally got the cash into the credit union the other day and made some more payments today.  First of all, I had to take care of my internet bill, which I somehow forgot at the end of last month.  Then I put money towards Home Depot and (yet again) MasterCard.

So far with the MasterCard I've paid off all the stuff I charged in the Okanagan and then made two more payments of $90 each.  So I've reduced the balance to just a little below the amount on last month's statement (because the bedframes were just over $170).  However, the interest charge won't be added to the account for another day or so.  That will push me up by $90 odd but I'll hit it again next week with at least $90.  The net result will be that I won't have reduced my balance over the previous month but I'll have paid for everything I bought.

I've also had some other expenses this week.  Dear Child went back to the dentist and he pulled another tooth that wasn't supposed to come out yet.  It was the crowned tooth next to the one that already came out and its roots had also resorbed.  The tooth was so loose that it was just hanging by a thread.  A dab of topical freezing and the dentist was able to get it out with his fingers.  That set me back by about $50, including the xray.  And then I let my youngest son talk me into buying more RAM for my laptop.  I only had 1 MB, which is really low.  So $60 later I have 2.5 MB.  At the same time he cleaned up my computer, which had acquired a really annoying trojan that was masquerading as a virus checker.  I'm still not sure how I got it.  It just showed up as I was reading blogs a couple of nights ago and was popping up very realistic windows about how this, that and the other file was infected, and did I want to run my antivirus.  I really couldn't make a move without several popups appearing and I didn't want to do anything that involved logging in anywhere using any of my passwords.  Hooray for my techie son!  Well, both my techie sons, since the older one actually works in the IT field, but the younger son was the one that was available.

On top of all that, work has been insane and I've been trying to put in extra hours.

So, that's been my life this week.  How was yours?

Goals for 2010

Okay, so here are my financial goals for 2010, with a few goals for our rural house and my fitness thrown in.  There are a lot more goals here than last year but many of them should be relatively easy to carry out.  For instance, I already wrote and sent in all the post-dated cheques for that $1,500 of debt and the $1,080 in regular credit card payments will happen if I just pay $90 every 2 weeks.  In fact it will be more than that but I don't know exactly how much more.  Last month I paid just over $88 in interest, so there's about an extra $2 that I'm paying down, plus the interest I'm charged goes down every month as my balance declines.

 

Just before I start listing goals I wanted to share that I logged onto my credit card website the other day to see if my most recent payment had posted and if the statement was available.  It wasn't, but I got a shock when I looked at my available credit.  I guess starting to pay $90 every 2 weeks has had an effect.  My credit limit has just been increased by $3,000!  You keep hearing about the opposite happening these days.  People are complaining that their credit limit has been cut or that their interest rates have increased.  Well, not only has my credit limit increased, but I've noticed over the past several months that my interest rate actually declined at least twice!

 

Financial Goals

1. Pay down $1,300 directly in credit card debt. Pay down $1,500 in other debt. Pay down $1,080 in regular credit card payments. Total: $3,880. Round up to $3,900. 
2. Open a TFSA and put $1,300 into it.
3. Put a minimum of $520 into the Emergency Fund.
4. Put a minimum of $520 into my RRSP.
5. Keep putting money into my set aside accounts, rural credit union account, etc.
6. Keep current on all my bills.
7. Come up with $3,000 for Dear Child’s dental surgery.
8. Pay off both Home Depot payment plans on time.

 

Rural House Goals

1. Plan out and create a garden in the front of the house (south west side of driveway area). 
2. Plant lavender border. 
3. Go to house 2x per month in summer. 
4. Finish new floor in master bedroom.

 

Physical Goals

1.  Get weight down to 120.
2. Walk for at least a half hour per day (or use elliptical for same length of time).

 

Okay, so there are my goals.  How about yours?

 

Slow Progress

Well, I'm still plugging along slowly. I didn't post for Won't Wait Wednesday yesterday because I fell asleep. Woke up about 4 am and turned the computer off, then went back to sleep.

It was payday yesterday but all my money (and then some) is already earmarked for bills, etc. I did go grocery shopping but I made sure I ate dinner first! I spent just over $106 on food for the week, $20 on gas and about $23 on my prescriptions. Again, that $23 wasn't in the original budget for this pay period. Yet another thing to mess with my house of cards.

Today, I took money from my main account and moved it to my other credit union account and my old bank account for various things that are coming out, as well as lent Hubby $20 for a day. I'm supposed to get it back (along with another $80 he needed previously) tomorrow afternoon.

I won't be able to do too much more until after the 7th when I'll have another $400 to play with. And I do hope Green Shield hurries up with that cheque for $127 for the dental. I'll be paying a couple of bills with that.

The Tooth Fairy Hates Me

Yes, I really think the Tooth Fairy has it in for me. I went to the dentist yesterday to have my teeth cleaned. I had put it off twice due to scheduling conflicts and didn't want to put it off again even though I didn't have any money. After all, today is payday and I figured I'd give them a cheque dated for today and then I'd have to juggle somewhere else on the bills.

It usually costs me about $50 to $60 for a cleaning. This time, because I'd put it off, they had to do more scaling, etc. I pretty much had a heart attack when the girl at the front desk asked for $159! Uh, that's 3 times what I usually pay. Unfortunately, there was nothing to do but pay it. My hubby's extended medical/dental plan will reimburse us $127 of that, but it will take a couple of weeks to arrive. I'm already looking at about a $500 shortfall without that extra cost and extra time.

Plus, I went to the doctor for my H1N1 shot and to talk to her about how my asthma has suddenly flared up out of the blue. I've had 2 attacks in 2 days when I normally have 2 or 3 attacks per year! And, even then, it's usually something like cleaning for Pesach that triggers it with dust and strong cleaners and exertion. The first time I was just playing with Dear Child on the bed, trying to tickle her while she held my hand. The second was when I carried the baby into the house from the car because she was asleep. I do both those things all the time without a problem.

So, I ended up getting the seasonal shot instead (because they were only given 80 doses for people with underlying conditions and those were *gone* by the time I got there) and a prescription for Ventolin and a temporary cortico-steroid called Flovent. I couldn't fill them yesterday because I didn't have any money. Today I'll find out how much they'll set me back. Again, the extended covers a lot of the cost but there will be some outlay. At least they deduct the plan amount and I only pay the difference. The problem is that I wasn't planning on needing prescriptions when I made my list of bills that Must Be Paid. And I still have to find time to go back to the doctor when they get more of the H1N1 vaccine in. At least it's free. Well, except for the time I lose at work, of course.

But She's Coming to Our House Tonight

The tooth fairy, that is. Yeah, I know. Yesterday's post was titled "The Tooth Fairy is NOT our Friend". So, what happened?

I got a call in the middle of the morning from the school saying that Dear Child was fine but she'd lost a crown. As it happened, I was out of the office when I found out and I happened to be in the building where her dentist is located. I went and asked them if she should come in and they said "Yes!". I went back to work, finished some reports, picked up the 2 little girls from preschool, picked DC up from school and took them all to the dentist.

First of all, that's not my favourite thing to do. I just didn't have a choice. And they didn't run too rampant while DC was in the chair and I was talking to the dentist. He said that it had come out cleanly (all the roots having dissolved) and that it wasn't going to alter our plan. That was good news. My fear had been that he'd want to move the surgery up and I'd have to try to come up with $3,000 out of nowhere in a matter of weeks instead of months. The bad news was that I had to pay another $18.48 today that I really didn't have to spare.

I took DC back to school afterwards so she could have her hot lunch (a hot dog on a whole wheat bun, a bag of chips and a bottle of water). I went home for about an hour and a half with the girls and then had to go back to pick her up when school was over. I felt like I spent my entire day in the car (not to mention putting kids into carseats and taking them out).

I'm relieved that I don't have to come up with the money for the surgery any faster. I'm still concerned about how much I have to come up with in a short timeframe ($1,600 for Home Depot by early February and $3,000 for the surgery by about March). The other issue is that we're paying out a lot of money for her teeth and we've spent almost as much recently for the car. That money would have made a really big dent in our already pre-existing debt but it has to go on new stuff instead. That's really frustrating.

Anyway, back to the Tooth Fairy. DC went to sleep with her tooth (in the cute little "tooth box" necklace that her school hands out) under the pillow. She had been all over the place with suggestions for how much the Tooth Fairy should leave, ranging from 5 cents to $100!!! Hubby and I turned out our pockets and came up with a toonie and 2 loonies. I don't think $4 is too bad for a crowned tooth. After all, it's damaged.

The Tooth Fairy is NOT our Friend

Bright and early this morning I had to take Dear Child to the dentist. Today cost me very little, an hour of my time and about $18. Unfortunately, the real bill is coming soon.

As folks who've been reading for a while know, I have 4 kids. Three of them are adults, the youngest is nearly 7. Children 2 and 3 have your average teeth. A few cavities over the years, a little ortho for one of them, some wisdom teeth extracted, but nothing out of the ordinary. Child 1 and Child 2 on the other hand, are giant dental money pits. All four have been raised basically the same. I nursed each of them extensively, including at night. They started solids around 6 months, they've all eaten their fair share of junk. None of them was particularly OCD about sticking a toothbrush in their mouths after every meal when they were little but none of them ran screaming at the sight of a toothbrush either.

Child 1 (a boy), first developed little brown spots all over his baby teeth at about age 2. We'd go to the pediatric dentist, he'd fill them. Six months later, there would be decay around the fillings. We'd put in bigger ones. They'd decay again and there wouldn't be enough tooth left to fill, so we'd crown it. One of them decayed under the crown and formed a nasty abcess. That tooth had to be pulled and a space maintainer put in because he lost it about 6 years early.

This was 30 years ago and people mostly thought we were insane. "They're just baby teeth." "They're going to fall out anyway." "Why would you pay all that money for a toddler's teeth?" Those were examples of the kinds of questions and comments we got. He also ground his teeth so badly that he could be heard in the living room all the way from his bedroom upstairs. I bought a silicone sports mold for him that took care of that, although that was the one place I cheaped out. I could have paid a few hundred dollars for one "custom-made" by the dentist. Instead I shelled out about $20 for a sports one, stuck it in hot water then had Number 1 Son bite it. Voila, instant "custom-made" mouth guard. It worked like a charm.

He's had continual problems with his teeth as a teen and as a young adult. Over the past couple of years he's had most of them extracted and has a full upper and partial lower plate.

Dear Child (Child 4) also developed brown spots as a toddler and it progressed to "apple core" front teeth as we didn't have a dental plan intitially, although we were doing cleanings, etc. She went from a regular pediatric dentist to a specialist one once I sold my condo and we put about $5k worth of work into her mouth at that point. Ten silver crowns, 2 white ones under anaesthetic in a special facility. Now, her 6 year molars are mostly in and starting to show decay (at least one came with a "factory installed" cavity, which is not unheard of because the decay goes down from the existing teeth to the buds below the gumline). One of her silver crowns is sideways in her mouth because the roots are resorbing into her jaw and, of course, it's one she shouldn't lose until she's 12 so she's going to need a space maintainer there when it either falls out or is pulled.

We had a panoramic x-ray done 3 to 6 months ago and can see that the first 8 permanent incisors are moving into position although she hasn't lost any baby teeth yet (2 are slightly wiggly). We can also see that the new teeth are about half again as wide as the current ones. That's a problem. There isn't room for them. If they try to come into the space they'll have, they will all be crooked and the ortho will be getting involved pretty soon. (I, myself, had orthodontics twice. Once as a teen. Once as an adult. Plus had 4 bicuspids and 4 wisdom teeth extracted. Plus had jaw surgery. I know this road. It's neither fun nor cheap.)

So, what's the plan? Well, we're trying to wait another 3 months for the molars to come in a little more fully. Then the dentist says we need to do surgery again. Pull 8 to 12 of the front teeth so the new 8 front ones will have room to come in straight. Pull the one that's half out and put in a space maintainer that attaches to the molar (why it has to come in more). Then pray.

All in all, it will cost us about $3,000 because the cost of the facility and (I believe) the anaesthetic aren't covered and there's only partial coverage on some of the rest (50% to 80%). Ain't that fun? I know I'm just all warm and fuzzy about it right now.

First there's the little problem of all that money, which we don't have at the moment. Second, that's really major to take half her teeth out at once. Her speech is going to be impaired as well as her ability to eat solid food. I'm worried she'll have that caved-in look around the mouth typical of old grannies who don't wear their "teeth". And I know there will be a rough few weeks recovering while her gums are all soft and sore. But I also know that this is the best chance she's going to get for the teeth to come in straight. And, as the dentist pointed out, if we only did part of it we'd just have to go back and do more in 6 months or so. It would end up costing more in the end and she's already nervous about a second surgery, let alone a third one. Besides, it's best to minimize the number of times a person has to undergo a general anaesthetic.

So, it looks like this is what's in our future. We may have 6 months, but that's probably the maximum timeframe. I'm just glad individual picture day was this Monday! I can't imagine that she'll be smiling for a long time after all the extractions.