Markets continue to take a toll on my progress - again, despite putting another $1600 into my RRSP, my total portfolio value continues to drop. I refuse to change the automatic nature of my contributions, however. This year will be tough and given that I am not going to be working much extra over the next several months I doubt that I am going to be able to make significant progress until the summer when my schedule opens up again.
I took a $3,200 hit for my upcoming examinations and initial calculations estimate that my income tax bill will be around ~$10,500, so I'm just building my cash reserves to make certain that I don't have to dip into my line of credit just to pay my debts.
I've been tremendously frugal of late, though not intentionally. This has been helped somewhat by the fact that all I do these days other than work is study for exams. Not taking my examination fee into consideration, I spent ~$1,000 in each of January and February, and that includes all expenses. Yes, I managed to get by on $1,000 a month. Not having any debt helps a lot! |