GroceryAddict I can't say thank you enough for being on the front lines - you are truly appreciated! I'm glad to hear you've made so much progress and are still chipping away at your debt.

Stay safe and healthy! :)

WairereRose I just entered my numbers in the spreadsheet and realised that I didn't put the joint account debt in there! Woohoo - that means I'm moving ahead and am at 8.64% of my debt payoff (not even a quarter...)

There will be some changes to my income soon, a slight increase, and I'm hoping that I can shuffle some of that money towards debt. 

WairereRose Ugh - I just realised that in the spreadsheet for Feb I put my planned payments, not my actual payments - so yay, I'm at 17.05% which is waaaaaay closer to a quarter!

WairereRose I'm happy you're still with us in the challenge - I read this as a tri-level of good news! Your "actual payments" reminded me a lot of the feeling I get when I "find" money in my categories. ;)

Faness I will definitely be here, till I can graduate debt free. I still have WINZ debt, student loans, the debt to the joint account, and two mortgages, so it will likely be a while, especially since my budget doesn’t usually extend to lottery tickets...

Turquoise Vacuum That's the best feeling in the world! Congrats!!

Pink Song wahoo! Way to go!

Coral Mare on a completely separate topic, I am interested in the camper story. Is it a vacation item? Or are you living in it? Maybe you wrote about this somewhere else. Interested because the 10 year plan involves possibly spending time traveling North America in a camper (although after spending just one week with DH in self isolation, I don't know that I could stand him for that long, especially if you add driving "discussions" to the mix).

MXMOM  Initially the camper was an upgrade from a one-A/C camper to a two-A/C camper that we used for vacations.  A year ago, it was my "home away from home" while I completed a four week job training program in Oregon.  We sandwiched the class with a week of vacation to Oregon and another week of vacation on the way back home.  

In the spirit of giving a mouse a cookie, the newer (heavier) camper required a newer (heavier) pickup truck to tow it.  The camper is the current focus debt; the truck is also on the list.  Our upcoming trips are on hold until the pandemic subsides.  Until we retire, camping trips are limited to weekends.  Based on our love of shiny objects, retirement might look more like part-time work with longer weekends for camping.  Time will tell.

Coral Mare That's all really good news!! Congrats!!

Slate Blue Network Congrats!!!
We're looking at replacing a vehicle, too, and with the extra stimulus payment that is just hitting our accounts that boosts the amount of down payment we have, and the zero percent interest loans are looking pretty dang good!!

Purple Foal I'm a financial adviser, and obviously without doing proper client fact finding I can't give you a definite answer.  I'm also not licensed in your jurisdiction (RRSP is Canada isn't it?).  But now I've finished the disclaimers I can say in general that now is a good time to buy equities.  We may not have hit the bottom yet, that is really hard to pick.  But everything is at a 20-30% discount to what it was two months ago ... so if you are sure you don't need the money any time soon it doesn't matter if it falls a bit further in the short term, in the long term you will have paid a good price assuming you buy quality assets.  We're helping a lot of clients invest at the moment if they have cash to do so.  But the key is being sure you don't need that money back in case it does fall further.  You don't want an unexpected bill to come in the next couple of months and have to sell getting back only part of what you have today ... Yay for YNAB helping us with that one!

And yes, I'm a financial adviser and still in a group to help me pay down debt.  Just because you know what you should be doing doesn't make it easy!  I know the theory, but the tools to help it actually happen on a day to day basis are crucial.  This is my third crack at getting my budget sorted out, and I think this time I might really have done it for good.  Largely thanks to the discussions in this forum.  It's good to be reminded on a daily basis about the importance of saving for true expenses and building your emergency funds as well paying down the debt.  And sharing our trials and victories makes you feel part of something.  The training YNAB provides is amazing, but after a month the memory of the session fades, so it's great to be here reinforcing every day.  Thanks everyone for sharing your experiences.

Purple Foal aren’t you in education? Teacher?

Orange Sun Thank you for your suggestions. I want to be sensible but also stock up on sale prices. While living on a very tight budget since July 2019 & joining YNAB, I have learned a lot, cut a lot of expenses, and most specifically learned how to really budget on food. I was able to stock up my cellar & freezer when things were on sale, clearance, and by price matching. I bought more of course during the apocalyptic shopping before we were officially self-isolated. My food budget has been high for March & April (I just filled up the cart the two times I went out) but they were good wholesome purchases. I've learned to be frugal & to ration.

Kudos to you for admitting you're are a financial advisor and in debt. It's like my family doctor who preaches exercise & diet but looks 10 months pregnant. It's the action that counts. You're in good hands with YNAB and the forums are definitely the game changer to staying focused.

My investments are with TD (Canada) and both my TFSA & RRSP are set up as TD eSeries index funds: 40% Cdn bonds, 20% Cdn equity, 20% US equity, 20% Global equity. I also have $500 each in the Tangerine Growth & Balanced Growth investments to compare. I started a spreadsheet to track my investments growth, and since covid, have been also tracking the share price. I rebalanced my percentages when the equities went right down so that felt good. I'm currently investing only $100/month to my RRSP at $25 each category since my focus has been paying off my HELOC. My accountant suggested to invest in my TFSA instead since my tax bracket will be similar when I retire & I'll get hit with the taxes when I withdrawal my RRSPs. So from your advice, I will invest in my TFSAs now, within reason, and let them grow. Thanks :)

MXMOM Yes & thankfully a settlement has been reached. Now time to rebuild after bracing the storm. :)

Purple Foal I will totally admit I don't understand anything you said in that last paragraph apart from the asset classes!  It's truly irritating to me that my skills are not transferrable as I would love to live overseas sometime.  I guess I'll have to stick to that being a retirement goal 😊  I've only heard of RRSPs because I have one client who lives over there at the moment temporarily and has one.

Definitely good to track your asset classes towards your target and be disciplined about it.  Towards the end of last year we did that a lot for clients on the other side 'taking the cream' off the top of the outperforming assets and moving them more conservative.  Boy are they happy with me now!  And doing the opposite can be the hardest thing.  A lot of clients don't want to invest now because I can't promise them there isn't further down to go.  We're doing a lot similar to what you're planning (the technical term is Dollar Cost Averaging), splitting up what they want to invest into 6 chunks to invest over the next 6 months (or 3 months or 10 months, whatever they are comfortable with).  At least they are starting now rather than continuing to wait until after the recovery, and it's a more palatable ride if it does continue to go down and they are only partly exposed.

I actually do Salary Sacrifice $100pf to my super.  I know I could take this as pay and use it for debt repayment, but I'd get a lot less in hand after tax, and I know in 20 years time when I can access it I won't regret investing it now.  One of my goals for getting rid of my credit cards is to be able to increase that.  Between the investment return and the tax breaks it will really make a difference to my retirement.

Orange Sun No worries, it was just the acronyms. RRSP are like the Roth IRA I think. They are tax sheltered investments: invest now, get a bigger tax return now, but at the end I will pay tax on them. Basically locked investments that are tax referred. TFSA, or tax free savings account, are investments to a max of $6000 after tax dollars per year, but they can grow tax free & can take from them at any time. These are better later on since I won't be taxed on them when I use them in retirement. I think both are good. At least the RRSP you can't touch now. 

I agree with the Dollar cost averaging...just invest monthly & don't try to time the market. I read about the Couch Potato Investment strategy...just decide on your asset allocations, and then let them build. Rebalance once or twice a year when the % are 2% difference or more from what you set. So I had my equities set at 60%. When they each went well below 20% to 16%, I took money from my bonds & balanced them. Overall I was $$$$ of down, but the balance was the same. When it recovers, I will have made money by buying more stocks when they were on sale. 

I've read a lot about investments as with personal finance. Just want the most bang for you buck. Something I did hear on a podcast is that if you can't make more money, then educate yourself. So that is what I have been doing. I realized that my $$$$ in retirement was not doing me any favours in a high MER Mutual Fund, so I switched them to low MER index funds & can already see the money that was just sitting there growing. I haven't been contributing more, but by finding a better place to park my money, it has grown. Like you, I want to get rid of debt so that I can invest more. And by getting rid of debt, I am doing the best thing to save for the future. :)

Purple Foal I'm sure if I ever studied in other jurisdictions it would be easy to pick up.  The underlying assets are the same, it's just the tax that's different depending on local legislation.  The main tax beneficial structure in Australia is superannuation.  We get tax concessions to put the money in now (to a certain point) and it's tax free if we access it after age 60.  But it's really difficult to access it before then.  You have to be in some pretty serious dire straits.  So any money you put in now you need to be pretty sure you don't need until retirement.

I'm glad you found some podcasts that resonate with you.  What works for me both personally and professionally is to expose myself to the most amount of ideas and methods and then choose was works for me and I can deliver genuinely.  Means I'm more likely to stick with it too!

Silver Vacuum Congratulations on your new position and on making that extra jump in March to get ahead! I hope your new job is everything you're looking for and more! :)

Silver Vacuum Congrats! And well done for continuing to pay your loan. It will benefit you in the long run getting rid of the debt. Let's face it, the deferrals that they are offering are still benefitting the lenders, no matter how generous they may seem. :)

NamastScrooge Glad that you checked in! Keeping the cash on hand for now is true for many of us. Stay safe out there! 

Nicole thanks, same to you!

MXMOM I'm amazed at how many parallels there are between budgeting and losing weight.  I never would have thought it, but it's so true. And likewise- I feel the same way- like I can better give my patients weight loss advice, because I have lost weight.  No one wants to hear a tiny little personal trainer tell them to "just eat less and move more!" hahaha

MXMOM  Outside perspective, and camaraderie can really make a difference even—if you know what you "should" do! 

farfromtheusual Excellent! Those are exciting numbers! Keep going! :)

Purple Foal thanks!! I'm going to contact the bank this week and see how I can make the extra payment to the principle on my car loan. It makes me nervous to put that money towards the truck right now, but I think I'll do better if I do that than sit on it. I'd rather end the loan early (which is always good for the credit score!), and even if I do put the $50 to the truck, I still have $58 "extra" that would have gone towards the other debt, so it's still a win.

Peripherie GREAT JOB! And that is the reason YNAB recommends tackling the lowest balance debt first because that way it gives you extra cash flow to put towards your other priorities. Keep up the good work!

Peripherie I feel like the AOM metric can be a bit of a red herring. You said you'd get AOM to 60 days, and then focus on savings, but you know something? AOM IS savings! All it means is that you've had money sitting in your accounts for 60 days, waiting to do its job.

I have been using YNAB since around 2012, and do you know when I finally started getting my AOM to 30 days? Within the last year. Know why? Because I have been focusing on paying off my debt. Because I throw so much money per month at debt, it necessarily brings down my AOM. But I am not stressing about it, because I also have an emergency fund and several categories are green.

Debt affects your monthly cash flow and hangs over your mental health like a cloud. When that debt is gone, your money will age faster and it won't be such a struggle.

Just my very humble .02. Keep going, you are doing great! Don't let that AOM get you down.

Peripherie Congratulations on paying off your debt!

MicroSpice said it well, Peripherie - AOM IS savings. That just means that you have 30 days of money sitting in the bank - i.e. if you were to not get paid for 30 days, you would have enough money to cover the bills (and if we're really honest, if you found out you were't getting paid for 30 days you could probably make that money stretch longer if you had to... AOM is relative to spending habits). If you take a chunk of that, and apply it to something, then your AOM will go down.

We pay our car insurance every 6 months (thanks to YNAB planning and a windfall a few years ago), and so I set aside the amount I need to cover it every pay check, and then at the end of the 6 months a big chunk leaves the account all at once. So that drags the AOM down, but ultimately, everything is still covered exactly like it was before that payment was made.
One of the tricks I used to get my AOM up was to start putting aside half the bill in the beginning of the month when I got paid, and then the other half when I got paid the next time. By splitting the bills is spreads out what I owe over the course of the month, and helps to keep everything a little more level. Then, when you have a little extra, you can toss some more at it, which will help build up the AOM. So my mortgage category ALWAYS has a full payment in it, and at the first of the month, it has 2 payments worth of money sitting in it. We are 1 month ahead on the mortgage. I have done this with a number of bills, and so our AOM is over 30 days, and closer to 2 months most of the time.
Anyway, focusing on metrics is important, but not getting too caught up in them is also important. Just make a plan and stick with it, and when you fall off, climb back on and before you know it you'll be out of debt on and to bigger and better things!

Pink Song - Thank you! I followed that 'lowest balance first' plan to get rid of the credit cards. And it is nice to have them both good and gone. On a side positive benefit - my credit score is now somewhere between 792-798 (depending on what tool I use to check it)! 

MXMOM   MicroSpice - Thanks for the advice. 🙂 I guess I meant that I want to save up enough of a monthly buffer so that all of one month can but put aside and sent forward in the next month before I move funds to other kinds of savings categories.  Right now I'm consistently 1 paycheck ahead. Most/all of my money from the check I get on the 15th goes to the following month along with that I get on the 1st. I understand the drawbacks of AOM but I think aiming for 60 will help me limit impulse purchases as I want to keep that number rising (and help to build that monthly buffer).

Peripherie Congrats on your credit score! That's great!!

Peripherie what I have done to achieve is the following.  I have a category called Month Ahead. Currently we are about one paycheque ahead. I did this when I realized we were riding the credit card float because I was budgeting the whole month before the month began ala Dave Ramsey but that meant I was budgeting money I did not actually have yet. This is counter to YNAB philosophy. Since I am only one paycheque ahead, I budget per paycheque rather than the whole month at a time. I don't like budgeting in the actual future month in YNAB because of the issues that can cause (stealing from the future).

farfromtheusual From my understanding the AOM does not correlate to the number of days you can go without getting paid. It is the age of the oldest dollar in your bank account. So an AOM of 45 means I have money in my account(s) that I earned 45 days ago.  That is why the toolkit (which I don't use) uses days of buffering which I believe is more accurate on how many days ahead I could go without earning any more money.  Way too conceptual for me.  That is why I have chosen to go with the separate category which I can see very clearly how much money I have set aside for future expenses. My expenses (and income) are fairly consistent, so for me, a fixed number works great.

MXMOM Even if it is totaling the "oldest dollar" in the account, the theory still applies that is roughly how many days you can make it going forward. It means there's that much cash in the bank that you could use it moving forward.
Either way - I don't put much stock in the number. It's a nice number to have, but when you have larger pay outs that only happen ever so many months, then AOM bounces up and down anyway.

MXMOM Thanks for the feedback. 😄 That is what I have started doing as well - I made a 'Next Month' category and with the name I put the amount I would need to fully fund the next month. I am not at that $ yet but I can sock money away and see if I can slowly over time get to the point where I am funded a full month again.

Pink Android That is great! Especially since while the banks, student loans, & property taxes might be offering deferrals, and interest rates have dropped for savings & mortgages, credit cards are still charging their high interest fees!! 

Pink Android WAHOO!

MXMOM I'm divorced so it's just me & my future. So I should just concentrate on contributing to my TFSAs and let my RRSPs sit. I know it won't lower my tax bracket now, but will help me later on. I'm not contributing a lot though since I'm clearly focusing on paying off my HELOC in this forum. :)

MXMOM I'm glad someone knew what all those acronyms meant!

Actually that's one of the most interesting things about this forum for me as a finance professional.  I'm learning a lot about other countries legislative systems.

Orange Sun I listen to a lot of podcasts so I've learned a lot about the American IRA's, 401ks etc. Once you know the code translations, the theories are the same! lol :)

Green Cleric good for you for staying focused on what matters!

Green Cleric happy big 30th birthday!!!!!!!!

farfromtheusual thank you! definitely helps during times like these.

MXMOM thank you so much!!!!

Green Cleric And happy birthday!!!!

farfromtheusual Thank you!!! I've always loved birthdays, definitely a different vibe this year, ha.

Green Cleric it will be one to remember, for sure!! You'll win the most epic birthday story for sure!

farfromtheusual lol, yeah, that's a fact! 

Ivory Wildebeest I am struggling too.  I also have a secure job working from home, but it kinda means the weekends and work blend together.  I'm already going a bit crazy and my flatmate moves out next week.  I'm scared to be alone, but I'm also looking forward to being able to set my own routines and have more space.  It's a tough call.  These are really unprecedented times.