Slaying the Debt Kangaroos

Those of you that know me, know that I am pretty type A when it comes to getting shit done. Especially if what needs to get done involves numbers, deadlines, and planning. I love making excel spreadsheets, and what's more, I love updating and maintaining them. So of course, when confronted with debt I took my badass Excel skills and made myself a spreadsheet. In fact, I made two. One to track my repayment progress, and another to track my expenses. After all, I had gone from no debt to lots of debt with very little idea of where the dollars actually went (beyond basic tuition and rent) so I figured learning a bit more about my spending habits was probably not a bad idea. I also realized that having debt was kind of like raising rabbits. The longer you left it, the bigger (and more overwhelming) it becomes to manage.

Me: "That is a lot of fluffy muthafracking debt bunnies..."

Fortunately for you (and in case your exponential bunny math skills are rusty) there are lots of online calculators which can help you figure out how big your debt can grow over time. In Canada, National Student Loan has this nifty little repayment calculator which allows you to compare how much interest you pay over time depending on your chosen repayment time frame. For example, if I paid my debt off in 5 years, compared to the 10 years the national loan program and my bank gives me to repay my debt, I would pay about $25,000 EXTRA in interest taking my overall debt to $110,500, which as we learned in the last post would weigh the same as a full grown cow, 8 kangaroos, or 305 chihuahuas.

 

That's depressing. Nobody wants that many chihuahuas around no matter how much you love those weird little rat dogs. Did you click that link? You should. Then you should come back here and LIKE this blog because that tween somehow got almost 8000 fans and I'm a little jelly. Anyway, like I was saying, the only thing worse than debt is more debt. So in case you needed a little extra motivation to bypass that PSL this fall, just re-read this post. Now I'm not going to tell you obvious things like: Get a job that pays real money! Because that's stupid and useless, and possibly beyond your control at this point in your life. But, here are a couple of things that can help you get started and stay on target:

1. TRACK YOUR EXPENSES. This is ridiculously eye-opening. You spend way more money than you think on coffee/takeout/drinking/chips/etsy than you know. For me, it was taxis. I always figured that because I biked through the summer, I somehow earned the right to "take the odd taxi to work or if I was running late". A few months of tracking later and I realized I averaged $75 on taxis per month. Regardless of the season. That's almost $1000 on something that really I didn't need to use since I was paying for a monthly transit pass anyway and live in a ridiculously transit filled part of the city. I just needed to get up 5min earlier in the morning, or spend 5 min less on facebook to avoid the "time crunch" which led to taxi hailing. I have been tracking my expenses now for 3.5years. It took a bit of getting used to, but now its something I do every night so that even small things like buying a chocolate bar from the candy machine don't get missed. I've learned a ton about my spending habits and now find myself being much more aware of my blindspots and in much better control of my wallet.

2. MAKE AUTOMATED WEEKLY OR BI-WEEKLY PAYMENTS. Rather than pay $500/month, split it up into four payments of $125. No extra dollars leaving your pockets, but thanks to how interest accumulation works, this nifty little trick allows you to save tons of interest in the long run. The automated payment trick is also awesome because you can't accidentally overspend if don't have it in your account!

3. ROUND UP. This is my most neurotic quality and possibly also the easiest thing to do on this list. Whenever possible, round up to a whole number when making debt repayments. Repayment calculator says your bi-weekly payment is $241.16? Pay $250 instead. You will almost certainly not notice the extra "payment" but you will definitely chip away at the debt faster.

4. MAKE EXTRA PAYMENTS. Don't fixate on the amount. $5, $10, $500. Whatever you have cash wise in your wallet at the end of the week, or that you get as a gift, or as a tax-return, or find on the street... dump it in. Each dollar counts. Trust me.

5. LINK YOUR REWARDS WITH ACTIVITIES, NOT THINGS. Definitely the hardest part of making debt a priority. I love eating out, having drinks on the patio, splurging on gourmet treats for PrincessSmellyButt. But I also hate being in debt because debt prevents me from doing other awesome things like saving for awesome vacations, feeling financially stable, retiring at 50 (HA! NOPE.). So I got to know my city's free activities and festivals, and became really good at only leaving the house with only my ID, a small per-determined amount of cash, and nothing else. No credit or debit cards = no random splurge purchases.

This is by no means an exhaustive list, but they are things that I learned as I began my debt repayment journey. And they were things that were easy to do, which then increased my buy-in, and eventually led to me getting so excited about tracking my debt repayments that I would make additional payments just so I could track how much more interest I saved. Nerd I was, but with some good fortune (i.e. landing a job that paid above min. wage), and discipline, I am happy to say that I have been debt-free now for over a year. And nothing beats that feeling.

Yup. I felt that. Fully one of those "air-fiving life in the face" kind of moments.

In case you're thinking, "But RamenGirl! I'm not Chinese/Jewish/Brown/Otherracialgroupspositively stereotypedasbeinggoodatmath. I'm not good at math and spreadsheets and budgeting!", don't worry. I didn't always have this skill. In fact, when I was in high school, our career guidance counsellor made us do this career comparability test and the first career the test recommended for me was "rabbi". Now, you may not know me so this might seem like a perfectly reasonable suggestion...except that I'm Chinese, female, and other than having a strong appreciation for Fiddler on the Roof, have little knowledge of Jewish customs and laws. I doubt that Tevye would have come to me to solve any of his family problems. But the thing is...debt sucks, and spreadsheets and budgeting help with that. So google some excel "how to's" on youtube and give it a shot. If I can do it, you can too too! (cue motivational finale). BAM. 

The Weight of Debt.

So four years ago, almost to the day, I realized that this... was me:

 

How much was in that bag exactly? $65, 601. In student loan debt. That's right. I owed various government and banking agencies SIXTY-FIVE THOUSAND SIX HUNDRED AND ONE DOLLARS. Now, I live in Canada, where instead of dollar bills, we have this fun little metal coin called a "loonie". Now one loonie weighs approximately 6.27grams, which means that if I were to measure out my debt in loonies, I would end up with a sack of coins weighing a little over 400KGs. In case you are a visual learner, that would look something like this:

That's right. I googled that shit. And yes, there is INDEED a website where you can convert any random weight into any random animal or household item. You now have Friday night plans. You're welcome.

Anyway, at the time of this profound realization, I was days away from finishing my second degree, unemployed, working three days a week in a non-paying student placement, and supporting half of what had suddenly become possibly Toronto's most expensive dog*. 

See, a few days before, PrincessSmellyButt, my high-maintenance yuppie puppy, got hit by a car. It was a beautiful spring day and we had gone on a long adventure to a new park in the city. After a couple of hours of hiking, we sat down for a light picnic and made the mistake of letting her off-leash in what we thought was a fairly enclosed area. Enter a couple of urban deer, and our enthusiastic puppy became a very fast, very deaf, deer-chasing machine. I'm sure in her head, she was a superhero doing the world some great justice, but really whole scene looked more like this:

"I GO SO FAST MOM!
 I PLAYING WITH GIANT SQUIRREL FRIEND!

FUCK. NO.

Long story short, PrincessSmellyButt followed the deer all the way through the park to where it opened onto a busy road and was promptly hit by a taxi. Through the assistance of a terribly sensible and proactive lesbian couple, we ended up at an emergency vet office where, after much crying, were told that our dog had incredibly suffered no internal bleeding and no significant injuries, save a broken jaw and a few loose teeth. A veterinary dentist was consulted, the surgery booked, and a few days later, we left the emergency pet hospital with our newly-mended puppy and a whopping $4000 vet bill. I'm not sure if I cried more when we checked her into the vet or when we paid that bill to check her out . Now don't get me wrong, I'm not saying we got ripped off; that dog had more specialists and received better medical care at that facility than I have ever received as a patient at a human hospital. But, since poor students don't have $4000 just lying around, I tapped into the last existing pot of money I had access to: my student line of credit.

So as a result of all that hoopla above, I needed to look seriously at my financial health, and more importantly, I had to come up with a plan to deal with all those kangaroos, er, I mean debt. 

To find out how RamenGirl kicked debt's butt, read my next blog post (up soon)!

(*) = impending tangent of indeterminate length. You've been warned.

The begining of a blog

Hello internet.

RamenGirl here.

You probably know me...or at least someone like me. Maybe a friend, a daughter, a neighbour, a colleague, heck, maybe even you yourself! I'm a Generation Y'er. One of 71 million offspring those busy Boomers had between 1978 and 1987. I grew up in the suburbs, in a house, watching My Little Pony (the original) and TNMT (again, original), playing with Tamagotchis and POGs, and adapting quickly as the technology world exploded around us. Pretty typical North American girl.

Fast forward a few decades, Y2K, Facebook, Instagram and you have me of today, a typical GenY urbanite. Complete with unfilled life ambitions, a pinterest account filled with home renovation ideas (but no house), some debt (though fortunately way less now than before), and of course, a high maintenance dog who eats better food than most people in our neighbourhood, myself included.

I'm trying to figure out how life went from this:

 

to this: 

In not a very long time.

Okay, confession. That first picture was not exactly typical of my life as a university student. In fact, that photo was stolen from the internet. Fourth image from the left when I googled "undergrad party".  I did go to a few parties like that...but despite being a former varsity athlete, I was never very good at that drink and party business. The second picture isn't of me either. It's also from the internet. Key words: "ambition" "goals" "woman" (albeit with some minor adjustments). I'm stealing from the internet because I belong to GenY. Also because I'm not very good at MSPaint. I'm no Allie Brosh, yo. I'm also not good at rapping (more on that later).

I am, however, very good at WANTING things. Big things. Milestone level, feelgood movie, bucket list kind of things. Things like DEVELOP A ROCKING CAREER!...OWN A HOME!...BREED A FAMILY!...TRAVEL ALL THE COUNTRIES! In fact, this blog is one of those things. WRITE AN AWESOME BLOG! Don't worry though, I'm not expecting to blow your mind away with my mouth words, or my insight, since, let's face it, I'm just you. A 20-something girl trying to figure out how to do all those things while not running crazy into debt (again) and having a social life that doesn't revolve exclusively around my dog. It's lonely sometimes in the real world and when you're tired of stalking old elementary school friends on Facebook, come visit me here for a bit. I promise it'll be worth your time.