2008 Goals/Checkpoint

I just realized I haven't taken a look at the big picture in a while.

Here is what I am doing lately with regard to finances:

Loans - about $750 a pay toward these
ING EF - about $100 a pay toward these
IRA - about $350 a pay toward these (includes company match)

Loans: Stretch goal is to pay down to $9000 by the end of 08, then $1500 a month for the first 6 months of 09. This would leave me debt free by 30, though it would feel more exciting to be debt free by 29 (March 09). Just think, the sooner I can pay off my loans, the sooner I will free up $1500 a month to put into savings!

ING: I hope to have about $4500 in ING by the end of Feb and $5000 by the end of March since I have gotten a little addicted to seeing that balance rise and putting some extra in there! But after that I will feed it at that $100 per pay rate. This would leave me with about $7000 at the end of the year, however, I am fully prepared to use $3000-4000 of that on a 1-2 week trip to Europe this summer, so it will be less. My ultra bare-bones monthly budget is about $1000, so it would still leave me a bunch of time should anything happen with my job.

IRA: These contributions added to my existing balance would put me at about $14000 at the end of the year, though who can really say how things will go with the behavior of the market lately?!

So this is how I hope things will look at the end of the year:

0 - Credit cards
0 - Car
9000 - Student loans

9000 - Total Debt

4000 - Emergency Fund
14000 - 401K

18000 - Total Savings

Which also means that I will achieve a positive net worth sometime in 2008 also! Exciting stuff!

January 08 Totals

0 - Credit cards
0 - Car
27244 - Student loans

27244 - Total Debt

3707 - Emergency Fund
5345 - 401K

9052 - Total Savings

The house two doors down for us went up for sale recently! And sold super fast, before I could even think about wanting to buy it. But it made me think about having more cash on hand for such an occasion, should another property that seems right come up for sale, and I reduced my loan payments this month to beef up my EF a bit. I am lucky to live in an area that wants young people to buy houses here so badly that apparently, as friends who have bought houses tell me, you can get a house with no money down, and even finance the closing costs. Not that I necessary want to do that, but I'll be continuing to add to my EF as aggressively as possible.

Right now my EF is in ING and it's a mix of their standard Orange Savings at 4.1% and short-term CDs at 4.7%. All told, it is earning about $14 a month or $170 a year. Not bad! Nothing I could live on, but it's getting somewhere!

And I still hope to get somewhere this year, somewhere far, far, away, across an ocean, so lots of that $$ will go away and I am trying to make sure that I have some left over too for, well, emergencies!