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Our Financial Resolutions: Mid-year Update

In December 2015, the Ratehub.ca team shared their 2016 financial resolutions with you. To keep everyone on their toes, I decided to follow up with everyone in the middle of the year to find out how they’re doing. Here’s what I found:

Many of us have already met our goals or are on track to do so. Alyssa’s set up an automated savings plan and purchased a used SUV with her husband; Idriss has saved a few extra dollars a month to accelerate payments on his car loan, Jordan’s on pace to make his Home Buyers’ Plan repayment for the year and has opened an RESP for his son (he and his wife will be using 100% of the Canada Child Benefit payments towards their son’s education); Kaman’s upgraded to a travel rewards credit card and plans on using the points she earns on her next trip; and I’ve managed to save at least 15% of my gross income so far and reduce the $7,500 in debt I wanted to pay off by more than half.

But things aren’t going according to plan for some members of the team.

Chrissy had hoped to pay off her student loan by the end of the year but it looks like it might not be until early 2017; Julia’s still making biweekly contributions to her RRSP and started saving in a high-interest savings account but she’s not tracking how much she spends on food each month; Kerri-Lynn is still planning her wedding and hasn’t had time to take on consulting projects to earn some extra income but hopes to do so after the big day so she can kick-start her savings again; Kurtis (who’s now at Zoocasa) hasn’t ramped up his RRSP contributions and is saving about 40% of his after-tax income, which is shy of his 50% goal; and Nicole has set a budget and stuck to it and almost saved enough for her European adventure but trips and weddings have delayed some of her savings goals.

We also had a few new people join our team since we published our resolutions last year. Here’s what they plan to do:

Charlotte (marketing intern): “Contribute at least $200 per month to my TFSA, continue to avoid credit card debt, and take on more responsibility for student expenses (contribute to tuition).”

Kevin (community manager): “I used to put 20% of my monthly net income into savings (emergency fund/TFSA), but stopped. I want to start doing that again and put away 20% of my income towards emergency/savings.”

Sara (marketing intern): “I hope to cut back on the more carefree purchases I tend to make at restaurants and stores, and save enough to travel around Europe while I’m studying abroad next year. I also want to build up and diversify my portfolio to include stocks from a greater variety of industry sectors, while also learning more about those sectors.”

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Flickr: photosteve101