It seems that I am busy with work, studying for my CGA designation, and life in general that I am not finding much time to blog. I will make an effort to find more time if I can. As to what happened this past week:

1. I had to buy a $20 gift for my secret Santa at work so I decided I would purchase a sweater or something like that from The Bay (Canadian department store). I was meaning to go anyway because I wanted to buy a shirt for myself and since I had a $50 gift card sitting in my wallet for the past three months, I decided to utilize it. It turns out I ended up spending $92! This is broken down as $49.99 for my shirt (good quality, though) and $29.99 for my secret Santa, plus the rest was sales tax. Result: Went over by $20 and turns out the office decided to cancel secret Santa the day AFTER I bought the gift so I just gave it to my father instead.

2. All was quiet on the investment side, although I got ~$7 dividend from a stock I recently sold out of.

3. As you can see, I have decided to set up visuals of certain things I would like to acquire and have decided to find money from somewhere to contribute towards these goals.

Other than that, it was a calm week (this does not include work-related stuff), although I have started becoming more anxious about making certain moves that will allow me to switch into a career that I have been wanting to pursue for a long time. (No clue why I never thought of this before!) That is all I can think of for now, let us see what the next week brings, although one hopes it is monetary gains (big ones, please!)

Payday was once more upon me on Friday and after making all the allocations, I still do not have much money left over. Nevertheless, I did accomplish to put $1 into my Laptop Fund. Yippee!

At least I have made some cuts in expenditures:

1) I have cancelled my $29 monthly online DVD rental subscription (I am probably not going to see the effect of this much since this was blindly being charged to my credit card and I was not paying it off)

2) I have slashed my cell phone plan from $220 to approximately $75 monthly. (I should see the effect of this because I do pay my cell phone bill from my take-home pay.)

I am at all times on the lookout for an improved job (with better pay, of course!) but nothing has turned up yet. The key, I find, is to conceivably have faith and patience and the rest will come on its own. I have been thinking that it would be nice to find extra earnings from somewhere and I came upon Helium, who pays for articles that you can write. The thing is I am seriously thinking that possibly I should try my hand at freelance writing articles. I have some topics in mind but I want to do it the way I used to write my research essays in university — with research and take my time. I think quality is more important than quantity (plus, it is not as if even one good article is going to compensate me $1000 a month — oh, how I wish!).

Due to the low market prices, I was able to pick up another 20 shares of Bank of America, thus reducing my average cost price per share another 2.5%. This may not be much but every little bit counts once the stock price starts rising again.

On another note, I have decided that I no longer want to use desktop PCs — laptops are the way for me but I intend to pay cash and thus have started my ‘Laptop Fund’. It’s not a big priority right now as it’s more of a want than a need so I can take my time.

I have been busy since Friday and have not had the time to give an update on my investment portfolio transactions.

On Thursday November 30th, I purchased an extra 22 shares of American Capital Strategies

On Monday, December 3rd, I purchased another 15 shares of Bank of America

Today, I picked up another 20 shares of American Capital Strategies.

With these three transactions, my average cost price per share has reduced, which is my whole objective (the fact that I will see larger dividend payments is a bonus!)

I finally decided to take a harder stance in regards to paying off my credit card debt. I did not realize it is was this towering! I mean, over $14,000?! Where did all this come from, I enquire myself. Off the top of my head, I can account for approx. $6700 coming from accounting course fees ($1200), car repairs ($500), and a partial balance transfer of a car loan ($5000) but the rest I presume I was just spending more than I earned.

Well, I would like to quietly (no need for shouting) inform the divine powers that are that I have it in mind to vigorously (cross my fingers) show aggression towards my debt. In addition, I would also like to have a more positive net worth, seeing as how negativity is just plain ole appalling.