My BH and I were both paid on Friday, which means I have been able to transfer the amount I budgetted to pay off CC debt to our CC. 1200 EUR in total for this month ( roughly 350 of which was reflected in January's net worth update as that money was saved from January's budget and the rest shows on Feb's net worth report). This payment has meant we have surpassed 2 important (mini) goals that I had set for us.

1) Our total debt is now below 10,000 EUR

2) Our net worth is higher now that it has been since I started calculating it.

Both of these mini goals are not very spectacular in the grand scheme of things, but it makes me happy because I feel like we are definately moving in the right direction. It also makes me have hope that soon we would have a positive net worth.

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On another note, I found out today that the gas/electric company had already been by to read our meters. One of our neighbours must have let the meter person in to read our meters. I expect to hear from the company in mid-Feb, when they will send me the final bill for 2007-2008. I am hoping for some good news and that our monthly bills go down *fingers crossed*.

This year was the first year BH and I had to pay for gas and electricity, as in our previous apartment those costs were calculated as part of the rent. When we gave our initial readings through to the company, they carried out some calculations to estimate our annual usage and then based the monthly bills on those calculations. I know that we have used about half of the gas that they predicted (this is the most expensive part) and 3 times the amount of electricity (ouch, we definately need to re-assess this.), so I am really not sure which way the bills will go. It be nice to get some money back and have our monthly bills reduced, but I'm not sure. I'll just have to wait and see, at least I know now that the wait will not be for much longer.

BH was told today at work that he should expect a modest bonus in this month's pay package......but that was not the best thing about this news. The best thing was that as soon as he had mentioned how much he might expect, he added that it would all go to paying down our CC!!! That made me feel so good as I really feel we're starting to work from the same page.

We should both be paid this week (we both earn monthly salaries), and 5 days of vacation exchanged for pay from last year should be included in my pay check. So we should be waving goodbye to a sizeable chunk of our CC debt this month *fingers crossed*.

For the last year and a half I have been recording all our monthly bills at the beginning of each month in order to ensure that we put aside enough money to pay them. This year I am aiming to try and reduce our monthly bills. I have decided to list them on my blog for records sake and so that I may review any progress I make with them over this coming year.

Rent: 977.45 EUR
Gas and Electric: 148.08 EUR
Health insurance: 203.00 EUR
Telephone: 15.00 EUR
My cellphone: 19.50 EUR
BH's cellphone: 22.50 EUR
Personal property insurance: 13.00 EUR
Groceries: 200 EUR
Student loan payment: 63.11 EUR
Internet: 30 EUR
Train card for BH: 163.00 EUR
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Total monthly bills: 1854.64 EUR
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Rent should go up as of July 2008 due to an annual increment in line with inflation ( last year the rent went up an additional 13 EURs). As we pay an extremely good rent for our appartment, especially considering the area where we live, I do not see this changing much until we decide to buy.

Gas and electricity will start including water this year as well, however the water part will only be paid once a year and should be about 200 EUR. ( I will need to set up a monthly savings fund for this one). The gas and electricity bill I expect to go down by about 40 - 50 EURS this year, once we send in our actual meter readings for last year(finger's crossed).

Health insurance is going down in 2008 to 196.00 EUR per month. This includes both me and my BH. I have not adjusted the bill yet, as it is automatically deducted from my pay check every month and I will only know for certain how much it is then.

This year both of our cell phone contracts are finished. I want to keep my current phone, which I brought under the contract, and just start using pre-paid cards, as I barely use the phone except in emergencies. However, my BH does use his phone ALOT to call his family back home, so I expect we will either re-new his contract of if we find a better one deal, go for that.

I intend to upgrade my internet and I have not done this in 3 years!!! My BH recently found out that we could upgrade our account free of charge to a faster connection, but pay less per month. 23 EURs instead of 30 EURs. So once I have some time this week I am going in to upgrade our contract as it is in my name.

Well that's all the things I have thought of so far. Let's see how we're doing in a couple of months with these babies!

As I have emphasized in my previous posts, I am determined to pay off our CC debt by March. However, like most couples my BH and I have differing points of view when it comes down to how we spend or save our money.

When we first started living together, we could hardly ever discuss financial issues, as it would always end up in us fighting over mis-communications. Once we realised that BH was very nervous about discussing finances, as he had experienced various problems with them in the past and because of trust issues that existed between us, we were then able to build up a healthier manner of communicating about finance. We keep our finances in seperates accounts, however, I basically do all the bugeting and ensure that the right bills are paid at the right time etc. Any money that we do not need for bills is then up for discussion between the both of us.

Now, he likes to have nice things ( nice things = expensive, big brand name products), whereas I have always been a functional person who occasionally will splurge on nice things if there is the money for it. However, as we have been very strapped for money since we've been living together I have increasingly more brutal with my commitment to purchasing only functional items and reducing our monthly bills. However, I have been unable to say no to his wants and as I mentioned earlier, his wants can be quiet extravagant.

So finally, after months of talking to him about frugality, net worth, saving, investing and my financial goals, I have slowly started winning him over to the idea that we should be doing more with our money than spending it on immediate wants. However, there is still alot of work to be done, in the meantime I am trying to siphon the extra I can off of the top of our budget in order to achieve my financial goals for us.

This month, I have found that we have some money left over after all our bills, not as much as I was hoping as we have brought several items which were not budgeted for. As I have kept this extra money in my account, and he never looks at my account, he does not know. Infact I have lead him to believe that we are strapped for cash and even managed to say no to one of his wants this week, without caving and telling him about the money.

This puts me in the moral dilemma, as I would love to keep this extra money to pay off the CC, however I do not like to lie to my BH, nor deny him his wants if we can afford it.

I am absolutely determined to pay off our credit card debt as soon as possible and to maintain a zero balance on a month to month basis( in other words use the CC for purchases but pay it off in full each month). I have discussed this with my better half (BH) and we have agreed that we both want to be in a situation where we are ahead of our purchases, rather than constantly running behind them trying to catch them up, and never quite getting there.

I did a rough calculation of how much playing this silly game cost us last year and I am still reeling from the result. We carried a balance on our CC through out the entire year, which peaked at about 5,500 EUR and never fell below 1,800 EUR. Our CC has an interest rate of 17.5%. So we paid about 600 EUR in CC interest alone last year!!!!!

To put this amount in perspective, BH and I live in a one bedroom appartment and we pay about 688 EUR a month rent, so almost an entire's months rent for nothing. We have a scrubby second hand couch and I would love to buy new couches, which if I got a very cheap new 2 seater and 3 seater set, I would be looking at about 650-700 EUR. Instead we paid 600 EUR to Mr. Visa for nothing.

Oh, I do beg your pardon, the 600 EURs was not paid for nothing, it brought us the comfort of not having to be patient as we got some things we wanted quicker because we could buy them on credit, BUT it has delayed the purchase of my couches! It has cost us the peace of mind we would have if we had an extra month's rent sitting in the bank, plus interest!

So this year, I refuse to be impatient. Ths year I am going to pay off Mr. Visa and when I can afford it, we are going to get my couches and build our savings and laugh in the face of Mr. Visa and the oxymoron which is CREDIT card DEBT.

Although I have coming to this site religiously and hungrily gulping down all your posts, I have been avoiding posting as I have been ashamed.

In my original posts I was pretty certain that I would have managed to pay off my credit card by now, however due to life happening I was not able to do so and I did not want to mention it to all you people who are doing so well. It just puts me so much to shame. But as it is a new year and I am truely optimistic about this coming year I thought I'd start a fresh and write down the things I have been planning in my head for months.

My goals for 2008 are:

- Pay off my credit card once and for all (currently at 2109.14 EUR @ 17.5% --ouch!). I have a payment plan in place which should have this debt paid off by March'08, but I keep aiming for February. However. I know that this is a very optimistic goal and we are very unlikely to reach it.

- Add another 4800 EUR to our pensions and max out any additional contributions. In Holland pensions are set up differently to the states and we do have a much lower cap on how much we can contribute.

- Save at least 3000 EUR for long term savings.

- Add at least 2000 EUR to the current EF which is currently at 1000 EUR

- Keeping paying down my student loan with minimum payments as the rate is very lower (just above 3%). 8716 EUR currently and although this will keep me in debt for the next 14 years, I believe I will start paying it off quicker later, once I have managed to pay off my credit card and save up a bit for investing.

- Our net worth is currently at -5,650 EUR. My goals concerning this this year is to aim to increase it by at least 10,000 EUR.
My two step plan to do this is by decreasing our debt and increasing our savings. This co-incides with all the goals mentioned above and when calculated out would look like this:

Current Total Debt: 10,825 EUR
Minus
Credit card: 2109.14 EUR
Amount of paid off student loan excluding interest paid: 480 EUR
EOY Total Debt: 8235.86 EUR

Current Total Assets: 5,175 EUR
Minus
Pensions: 4800 EUR
Long term savings: 3000 EUR
EF: 2000 EUR
EOY Total Assets: 14,975 EUR

Assets - debt = net worth
Current: 5,175 EUR - 10,825 EUR = - 5,650 EUR
EOY: 14,975 EUR - 8235.86 EUR = 6,739.14 EUR

Diff. in net worth = 12,389.14 EUR

I believe with our current budget and annual income that this goal is attainable. We just both need to try and control our impulse spending. We managed to do this over Xmas. I think this last Xmas it the frugalist I've ever had, and we both enjoyed it tremendously. So we'll see how this goes. I still need to work out the fine details, but I do have some plans in mind to help reach this goal, which I'll detail in a later entry.

Well good luck to everyone in reaching your goals in 2008!