2014 Report – Another Year Over

Happy New Year!

2014 is over and, as always, I am thankful to get the opportunity to see the start of another year.

Today, I bring you the end of month report for December 2014 as well as a debt progress summary.

In December, I had zero money coming in and the Canadian dollar fell even further against the US dollar. At the same time, some of my expenses went up instead of down. For instance, I spent a bit more on dining out because of the holiday dinners and meetups with friends.

DINING EXPENSES

OCTOBER	NOVEMBER	DECEMBER
$172	$133	$201

I also spent about $240 on gifts.

Thankfully, my family is not big on Christmas gifts. However, a family member had a significant birthday, there are kids in my household and I also bought little holiday gifts for a few friends so that’s why the figure is $240. AND I also spent $1000 more on health (dental) expenses than I had been averaging the past few months.

Another thing to give thanks for is that my holiday spending was limited to eating out and gifts. I had no entertainment expense! The cold weather is not conducive to my going out. Yesterday, for instance, the weather was feeling like a positively depressing -30C/-22F. When winter hits in Canada I know I can look forward to spending much less on entertainment!

ENTERTAINMENT EXPENSES (TRAVEL, DRINKING/PARTYING, RECREATION)

SEP	OCT	NOV	DEC
$0	$30	$13	$0

Also, since I had no incoming cash flow, I did not give my Mum money for the family this month. A bit of the dining expenses up above though was towards a couple family takeout/delivery meals (pizza and takeout).

Here is where things stood at the end of December:

NAME	JULY 31, 2013	DECEMBER 31, 2014
Mastercard	$6,123 CAD	$0 CAD
Visa	$8,653 CAD	$38 CAD
B-school loan	$96,800 USD ($109,142 CAD)	$79,667 USD ($89,936 CAD)
Ontario Student Assistance Program (OSAP) loan	$20,931 CAD	$18,260 CAD
Student Line of Credit (LOC)	$9,678 CAD	$0
TOTAL	$154,527 CAD	$108,196 CAD

November’s balance was $110,767. So that means that in December I paid off $2571, just meeting my minimum threshold of $2500 per month in debt reduction. A minor miracle considering I had no income!

At the end of December 2013, I was $139,881 in debt. So that means that in 2014 I paid off $31,685 or an average of $2640 per month. On a salary that ended up being quite a long ways below the six figures it would have hit had I been earning proper income the last 4 months of the year.

Overall, I have paid off $46,331 in 17 months! And that doesn’t include most of the interest payments!

I am currently on track to meet my goal of eliminating my debt in a total of 5 years and that is great! I may not be quite where I want to be right now financially, my savings are currently being depleted and my future is still quite uncertain. But I’ve begun to accept uncertainty as my permanent status in life anyways. And, more importantly, I am super thankful that I got good income for as long as I did and that I was able to pay off as much as I did! Many people’s entire gross income is the total I paid off this past year and many of those people work a helluva lot harder or at least expend a lot more physical energy working in their jobs than I ever will. So I AM thankful!

My financial wish for 2015 is that I, and any readers in a similar boat, will attain our debt reduction goals this year!