How To Effectively Deal With Personal Financial Turmoil : June 2019 Budget Update

YOUR SAVINGS MAY NOT COVER THE BIGGEST CASH CRISIS OF YOUR LIFE

Financial worries can cause increased stress which can cause a huge impact on mental health and blanket personal financial turmoil.

Being broke doesn’t mean that you are in debt but when you have debt and you’re broke that is cause for alarm.

In the midst of hard times which anyone at any point in their lives can fall prey to there is help available for those in need.

Unfortunately, the financial assistance that people need isn’t always the solution they want especially if bankruptcy is the table of discussion.

In the midst of the money fog help can seem like a distant or non-existent entity but improving your situation takes time.

When it comes to your money you need to challenge it which means taking control of what you’ve lost.

Stop stressing about the numbers and focus on ways to improve your personal financial crisis by taking practical steps first.

What Is Personal Financial Turmoil?

Financial turmoil is a situation where one cannot pay their bills on time or at all because the money is not available to do so.

In other words, it’s a financial disaster that is out of control that you need help with.

Even though you may think you are prepared for  events that cause financia turmoil just remember that you don’t know what lies ahead.

That means that just because you have $2000 in your Emergency Savings Account doesn’t mean you are free from financial turmoil.

• How would you handle a $5000 major renovation needed for your home in an emergency?
• What would you do if you needed to hire a lawyer?
• Where would you get money if you lost your job, became ill or were injured?

Perhaps your spouse comes clean with thousands of dollars of debt he/she was hiding from you.

Either way, it’s not easy preparing for any type of money problems but there are steps you can take to avoid or reduce them.

Living on the edge and going with the flow is great but not with your money.

Causes of Personal Financial Turmoil

What I find interesting about financial turmoil situations is that everyone is different but similar.

We all feel the money crunch differently which means certain situations signal alarm bells and others do not.

You may think to have a credit card with a balance of $1000 as a major money problem in your life where someone else wishes that’s all they owed.

Ideally, we all have our breaking point when it comes to owing money based on how much money we earn or availability of liquid assets and savings.

By this I mean removing money from your Tax Free Savings Account, savings or RRSP to pay back debt.

Related: Should I Use My RRSP’s to pay back debt?

Recently I had a reader contact me about major financial turmoil he was going through with his fiance.

I don’t think he was so much looking for advice rather just someone to talk to about his situation.

Financial depression is a real thing and can significantly impact your life and talking to someone who will listen is relieving.

Debt Can Own You IF You Let It

He owns a home with equity but his ex-wife who still listed on the title of the mortgage as they are not legally divorced yet.

She is long gone and lives on her own and has been paid a portion of money so he could keep the house.

Since he feels obligated to help her financially since he earns more money he has been paying for some of her bills at the house.

In the midst of it all, he’s racked up debt to the tune of near $7000 on two credit cards and cannot pay them back.

The bank has put a lien on the house and now both him and his ex is in a huge personal financial crisis.

Ideally, he would want to get her name off the mortgage but must now jump through hoops to do so because of the lien.

This is obviously in her best interest.

His finance has a credit card with over $5000 worth of debt and she is no longer employed due to job loss.

They do not live together so she collects welfare for herself and children to pay for the necessities of life.

Neither of them uses a monthly budget which is one of the reasons they are in this mess, among other things.

Figuring Out Financial Turmoil

Photo Source:House with Keys/Tierra Mallorca and website www.tierra-mallorca.com via Unsplash

What can they do to pay off their debts, get married and live happily ever after?

Well, they are now in the position where they need access to the equity in the house because they have no other liquid assets or savings to use.

This is not uncommon where homeowners tap into their home equity to renovate or pay down debt but it comes with a long-term cost.

Most people don’t worry about the long-term when it’s the present they are struggling with finances.

It’s far easier to accept having to pay more in the long run than to lose everything in the short-term.

There is a pension involved in his situation however there is no access since he is not of retirement age.

This means he has to first remove his ex from the house title and mortgage which she is fine with, remortgage or tap into the equity through a mortgage company or bank, pay the debts in full and divorce his wife so he can marry his fiance.

Oh, and make sure that they budget their money with a spending plan in place in the proceess.

Sounds like a financial headache and it is but it’s not impossible to do as long as you talk to the right people to help you.

There are pieces of their puzzle that I don’t know or won’t know but this is an example of how financial turmoil can take over your life.

How To Avoid Personal Financial Turmoil

I wish I had answers for all of you but each of you need to consider the implications when signing your name for loans or credit of any description especially with someone else.

Consider all of the situations that could arise in the event of a relationship breakdown due to debt or other reasons and how it would impact your financial life and health.

If you don’t feel comfortable putting yourself into a financial situation without a plan for the good and bad then don’t do it.

Don’t let your heart take over your money and I’m not saying that to scare anyone but just understand what you may face down the road.

Staying out of debt is easy when you spend less than you earn and stay away from using money that is not yours.

There are debts such as student loans that must be paid back and won’t be considered for debt relief until after 7 years of being out of school.

Section 178 (1) of the Bankruptcy & Insolvency Act in Canada specifically excludes government guaranteed student loans if you have been a full or part-time student any time in the past seven years.

To put it simply, if you have been out of school for more than seven years your student loan debt will be eliminated if:

• you declare personal bankruptcy or

• if you make a debt proposal to your creditors through a consumer proposal. –  Source: Hoyes.com Debt Relief Experts

1. Prepare for Financial Turmoil By Saving Money For Emergencies
2. Eliminate Consumer Debt by reducing your spending
3. Budget your Finances

How To Overcome Financial Turmoil

Action for satisfaction is what you need to focus on when you want our debt that can significantly impact your daily life.

These are some of the solutions that you should implicate before financial turmoil occurs and what you can do in the event you are stuck and need help with your debt.

Related: What my life is like with terrible credit

• Debt Consolidation or Balance Transfer Option
• Bank Loan
• Reduce Living Expenses
• Extra Income
• Avoid Lending Money
• Cash Only Budget
• Run Away From Payday Loans
• Track, Limit or Avoid Added Credit Card Expenses
• Liquid Savings Maximization
• Budgeting or Spending Plan
• Ask For Lowered Expenses, Rates or Deals
• Consumer Proposal and Counselling
• Bankruptcy

Lastly, don’t hesitate to write a hardship letter to whoever you owe money to because letting them know your position is better than avoiding them.

You may even find that they work with you to help you to pay your debts off by lowering rates, consolidation or extended time frames.

Don’t let the impact of financial turmoil ruin your life when you have options available to control your financial situation.

Discussion: What actions did you turn to fight your financial turmoil and did they work?

Income Report June 2019

Where did the money go in June?

One word- Renovations!

I’m in the middle of renovating our upper level bathroom and although I’m doing my best to save money a bathroom is expensive.

I tore the walls right down to the studs and the floor was ripped right up as I found openings to ouside underneath.

Neat right? Well it’s going to look amaazing when I’m done with it and thankfully we saved the money for renovations in our savings account.

Other expenses came from gas since we did some travelling out of the city and gas prices shot up. No surprise there right?

Mrs. CBB had another crown fitted this month so that expenses was put on the credit card where my employer will pay 50%.

We’ve also boosted or investment savings by opening a non-registered investment account and changed our life insurance policy which I will discuss in a later post.

Our grocery expenses were a tiny bit over this month but I want to talk about intermittent fasting which my wife started doing and how that will impact our food budget.

Not too exciting of a month but it’s summer and I’m getting stuff done!

Mr.CBB

Budget percentages June 2019

Our savings of 39.96% includes investments as well as any savings for this month based on the net income of $8504.61.

We put money away in our projected expenses for things that need to be paid for in the coming months.

All of the categories took 100% of our income which shows that we accounted for all of the income in the month of June.

Our Monthly Budget Expenses

Below is a breakdown of our expenses which helps us to understand where all of our money goes.

Since May 2014 we’ve been mortgage-free so much of our money will be directed at savings, investments, and renovations.

I appreciate that you enjoy this budget update each month but I do hope you view this as an educational tool rather than comparing your own financial numbers as our situations are all unique.

Spending less than we earn and budgeting our money has been the easiest way for us to pay down debt and save money.

It may be different for you.

1. Chequing– This is the bank account where all of our debt gets paid from.
2. Emergency Savings Account– This is a high-interest savings account.
3. Regular Savings Account– This is a savings account that holds our projected expenses.
4. Monthly Budgeted Total: $5873.93
5. Monthly Net Income Total: $8504.61
6. (Check out our Ultimate Grocery Guide to see where our grocery money goes)
7. Projected Expenses: These are expenses we know we will pay for throughout the year = $324.98
8. Total Expenses Actually Paid Out: $7300.41
9. Total Expenses Actually Paid Out: Calculated is $8504.61 (total net monthly income) – $324.98 (projected expenses) –$879.22 (savings to emergency fund) = $7300.41
   
10. Actual Cash Savings going into Emergency Savings: Calculated is $8504.61 (total monthly net income) – $7300.41 (actual expenses paid out for the month) – $324.98 (projected expenses) = $879.22

Our Monthly Budget Results

Time for the juicy category numbers and to see how we made out with our monthly budget.

Below you will see two tables, one is our monthly budget and the other is our actual budget for the month of June 2019.

This budget represents 2 adults and a toddler plus retirement investments.

Budget colour chart: If highlighted in blue that means it is a projected expense.     

Note: We’ve decided to keep our grocery budget at $410.

Monthly Budgeted Amounts

Actual Budget Amounts

Note: I just spotted a mistake in our budget that I will amend on our end.  This is a good reason to review your budget. If you look at the electricity and water and Entertainment numbers they are both the same.

My guess is one of them is incorrect.

Our FREE 10 Step Mini Budgeting Series

Do you want to learn to budget as we do?

Please take the time to read through our budgeting series plus read Budgeting in the New Year.

I hope the information will help stop you from making common budgeting mistakes.

Our Ultimate Budgeting Guide from A to Z has everything you need to know about budgeting in one blog post.

1. How We Designed Our Budget Step 1– Gathering All the information
2. How We Designed Our Budget Step 2– Budget Categories
3. How We Designed Our Budget Step 3– Tracking Receipts
4. How We Designed Our Budget Step 4- Note-taking
5. How We Designed Our Budget Step 5– 5S Organization
6. How We Designed Our Budget Step 6– Who Does What and When?
7. How We Designed Our Budget Step 7– Balancing Our Budget
8. How We Designed Our Budget Step 8– Knowing our Coupon Savings
9. How We Designed Our Budget Step 9– Reading Our Bills
10. How We Designed Our Budget Step 10– Projected Expenses

CBB Budget Updates Month By Month

Just in case you missed our budget updates and want to do a quick search I’ve compiled them all on one handy page: monthly budgets.

2019 Budget Challenge- 4 Monthly Budget Reports

When I was looking for people to join the CBB 2019 Budget Challenge back in December I had over 20 people interested in joining.

June 2019 Budget Challenge Update:

We are down to 4 people participating in the Budget Challenge 2019 from 20.

As our budget challengers ventures along you may see their budget reports increase in data which I expect especially because it’s a learning experience for everyone.

The more you do a task the better you get at it and the more you learn about what you are doing.

The budget reports below will remain anonymous unless the writer chooses to use their name and each one will be unique.

They get to choose how they report their budget back to us.

Here we GO!!!

Budget #1

June is the time for some more annual items…we get the gardeners in to set up and weed the garden, plant all our annuals for the season, put down weed and moss killer in the grass and trim back all of our bushes and evergreens while they are here.

They also haul away all the cuttings to the dump for us. Boy, the price has sun gone up though… it’s now $1,053.00 in the spring and will be about the same again in the fall when they close down the garden for winter. Ouch!

This year the gardeners came the weekend of June 9^th so I have until October to save up again for the fall clean-up.

Our FUTURE PAYMENTS ACCOUNT handles our landscaping costs.

I save all year long so that I don’t have to do it myself…I hate gardening and really, really hate bugs, bees/wasps and worms!

I’m such a wuss! Fortunately, hubby enjoys the flowers and is diligent about hand watering them all twice a week.

I added the cutting back of our cedar hedge to about half the current height to our fall gardening plans and that will eliminate the need for the gardeners to be working on ladders when they trim and shape it in future.

They were thrilled! My neighbours may not love the reduction in their privacy but it’s located on the west side of our house…it’s not like we hang out there. Once a week, hubby cuts the grass…that’s it.

However, my backyard neighbours went a little crazy a few years ago when I took down a Christmas tree, planted by the previous owners, in the corner of my lot that had grown tall enough to jeopardized their roof in a bad wind storm.

They quickly planted bamboo to improve the privacy they felt they needed.

We don’t sit in the back yard either so I’m not sure why they had such a hairy fit.

I also spoke to the gardeners regarding my plans to add a rhubarb plant and a couple of cascading tomato plants to the spring plantings next year.

I have a spot in mind for the tomatoes but we’ll see if they are happy there or not.

Appointments abound this month

• My annual cardiologist appointment (good to go for another year!)
• My annual Mammogram (what a miserable appointment it was this year but at least the results were Normal)
• A therapeutic massage (which hurts like the dickens because of my fibromyalgia)
• A chiropractic adjustment (sore after that appointment too)
• Quarterly blood tests
• An appointment with our GP for prescription renewals
• We have haircuts thrown into the mix before our hairdresser goes off on a wee bit of a vacation.  

I had a dental appointment as well and that didn’t go well as I have an infection in the bone below my back molar on the bottom right-hand side that I need to treat twice a day with an antibiotic rinse.

Sigh, if it’s not one thing…it’s another.

This is just the start of my FREE summer entertainment.

This month we had “a walk and picnic” at Mundy Park In Port Coquitlam, Mill Lake in Abbotsford, Buntzen Lake in Port Coquitlam, on the Vedder River Trail in Chilliwack, on the Pitt Meadows section of the TransCanada Trail, another at Matsqui Trail Regional Park, Colony Farm Regional Park, the Maple Ridge Water Park, Kanaka Creek Regional Park and the Boulevard Park in the US.

Next month I expect to add lots of free outdoor music, plays and movies with the odd summer festival and farmer’s market thrown in.

This month I had to break down and buy a couple of books of permanent stamps.

I can usually hold the purchase off to every 2^nd year and this month I was totally out of stamps.

Wowzer, $18.90 for 20 stamps. FUTURE PAYMENTS ACCOUNT to the rescue again! LOL

Shaking my head…I remember when that much money would have bought close to 100 stamps! Gosh, I am dating myself! LOL

Did you hear stamps are going up again in Jan 2020? I guess I’ll re-stock up again in December.

It’s property tax time around here.

Payment is not due until July 2^nd but I like to get it paid in full as soon as we receive it.

Even after taking off the homeowner’s grant, we still had to pay $4,688.28.

That sure stings! I am going to be so glad next year to be able to also claim the “senior’s grant” as well as the standard “homeowner’s grant”! Every little bit helps.

I won’t adjust the monthly future payments savings that we set aside monthly to reflect the reduction created by the additional grant…because every year the taxes go up.

I figure it will only be 2-4 years at the most before we are back to needing the exact same level of savings, if not more.

On top of that, it never hurts to have a surplus in the Future Payments Account…you just never know what might crop up.

While we were doing a US day trip, I discussed with hubby that this year we should actually hold off on any far-flung travels but promised him that I would ensure that we have enough vacation dates during the year to get our Platinum status again with Marriott for 2019.

This will be our 2^nd of 10 years required to earn LIFETIME PLATINUM STATUS.

The last time we were Platinum was in 2014 before I got sick.

We are currently Lifetime Gold status, which isn’t bad, but Platinum has some nicer perks.

Next year I turn 65, so I thought it might be better to save our expensive travel plans to celebrate then.

Now, where shall we go?

I’ll have to think about a dream location for us.

Consequently, I won’t do the big top up on the vacation funds in August the funds will be saved for hubby’s RRSP contribution in 2020 just as they usually are.

I feel much better about saving for his retirement enjoyment rather than pissing it away on a trip…see my inner curmudgeon coming thru?

Don’t get me wrong, I love to travel BUT I don’t believe in live for today and forget about the future.

I travel when I can afford to travel and we travel far more than some folks simply because I cover all our airfare and hotels/villas with points. If I had to pay cash for it all the frequency, duration and level of travel would be far lower. 

During the recession when life was going to hell in a handbasket for many folks in the US, I was busy positioning us for a lifetime of superior travel by purchasing four Westin timeshares at deep, deep discounts…when they could barely give them away let alone sell them.

Those ownerships give us an annual points allotment that can be used worldwide at villas, hotels, on 500 airlines with no black-out dates, for services like massages or golf club rentals at the properties, gift card purchases & even on many cruises.

We also enjoy nice discounts on car rentals as well. We achieved a 4-Star Status with Vistana Signature Vacations earning us numerous perks and freebies.

Although I cut the month in California from the plans, I added a ferry day trip over to Nanaimo to see my girlfriend.

It’s an expensive day trip but it has been a couple of years since we had a little get-together. 

We are all getting older & I have already lost one of my closest friends, so I don’t want to put off what I can do today.

I’m looking forward to it!

I also added a driving weekend getaway to our year but the hotel includes breakfast, & I pay for our stays with points, so it’s a cheap trip – a loaf of bread, a jar of peanut butter, a bag of romaine and a bottle of dressing plus the gas to get there and back…done!

Peanut butter sandwiches for our lunchtime picnics at parks and beaches and we can make some nice salads with garlic bread in the room for our suppers. I’ll bring a kettle to make teas and instant soups in the room too.

We won’t need as much money for our 2019 vacationing as I had originally thought so the travel budget has been downsized to $3,000.00 for 2019.

We remain on track with our budgeting for June and have finished off the month with $2,354.20 in our vacation accounts towards the NEW $3,000 budget that we are trying to achieve before year-end.

We’re almost to our goal!

Once we hit our goal, we’ll immediately start saving for our 2020 vacation needs.

Budget #2

Budget #3

Current Status: 106% to budget

Wow half the year is over already! It just seems like yesterday I was still working and pregnant.

Now I have two kids! It’s a strange feeling sometimes, however not too much has changed (except sleep schedule) but I know it will be very different once my baby starts sitting up, crawling and eating regular food.

Speaking of food, we went way over our food budget again this month, it drives me crazy.

We’re not extravagant in our food purchases, we always buy store brand when we can, and we don’t eat out at expensive restaurants.

I guess for our life style I’ll need to increase the food budget a bit which I’ve done for July.

I don’t want to increase it without adjusting something else in our life, unfortunately I don’t have room in our permanent bills except for child care which will be gone in August.

Fails:

Food was a big one this month, we had eaten out twice this month since I had some family over.

Good thing they bought some baby stuff for us otherwise we’d be way over our budget this month.

I bought an Amazon Prime membership (misc category) for this year, to get the 20% discount on diapers and baby stuff on subscription.

Having Amazon video helps too when I’m bored at home and free shipping is great.

Wins:

Again we saved a little bit on childcare with the government subsidy.

We also saved quite a bit on Gas for our cars since I’m not going to work every day.

The gas prices here in BC fluctuate quite a bit and it’s hard to tell how we’ll come out at the end of the month.

I’m glad they started an inquest into the gas prices here, and I’m pretty sure we’re being gouged. I hope they come up with something!

June was a crazy busy month, we bought new windows and a new garage door.

Quite big purchases that we’d been putting off for too long, unfortunately, we put them on our HELOC which will be hard to pay down quickly but I’m hoping for some savings in our utilities to put towards these.

We’re also getting the gov rebate on the windows that will help.

Doing these upgrades was super stressful with also a little baby in the house, but I’m grateful for my family that came to help.

Until next month, take care!

Budget #4