Debt.

I really hate the amount of debt I'm in. And my boyfriend too. I'm not unhappy about how most of the debt was acquired. Mine is almost all school debt and a little bit of frivolous spending. The boys debt is not school debt - he paid that off years ago. It is vacation and having fun and living debt. Some people wouldn't think that a good thing. But I do.

But now we think it's the time to work hard on paying down the debt.

We'll call the boys debt "present debt." It is a number in the $60,000 - 70,000. So a lot.

My debt we can call future debt. My debt is school loans. I'm not paying interest or principal on them until I finish school. And who knows when that will be... (April - if I don't mess things up! And lets face it, I'll probably go to more school after this school). Future debt is an equally high number as present debt.

So present debt is being paid off really aggressively starting a few months ago. And I'm trying o figure out a budget so that we don't add more debt to present debt and try to pay off $40,000ish in a year.

So the amount we have to work with take home (minus my OSAP loan money and not including the boyfriends bonus) is approximately $70,000.

Which means we have to spend less than $30,000 on the rest of living for a year. Which is possible.

So I've been doing a quick budget and this is what it is looking like at the moment (This does not include tuition and other since they are paid for with the OSAP money)

Rent(with some utilities): 13080
Phone/Internet: 600
Cell: 650
Hydro: 650
Other: 1000 (this is line of credit interest and stuff like that)
Dog Expenses: 700
Metropass x 2: 3000
Entertainment: 3000
Food: 6700

$29,380.

I think the food and entertainment budgets are reasonable. But extras like coffee and the like will surely screw us up a bit. And so we have to start living within these budgets.
We don't have cable. We can cut hydro easily enough. I am gonna cut my cell phone cost to about half in January. I would cut the home phone but the boy is determined to keep it. We have a storage space that costs another $2000 a year, so we need to get rid of that as soon as possible. We don't need it.

This is a rough guideline. But this should just about do it.