So I was reading a community section on MSN money about what people's financial goals are for the next year. I wanted to start tossing around ideas for what I hope to accomplish.

I want to build a decent emergency fund. I can have a tendency to be a worry wart and I'm a bit concerned for my job, even though my honey thinks I'm just being paranoid. I'm in the staffing industry and my company isn't really hiring right now. So if you aren't hiring, and you have a bunch of recruiters who are sitting around, who is the first to get cut???..... (on a side note, I've been on vacation for a while for the holidays, but have plans to make myself useful once I get back in the office). Suze Orman says you should have 8 months in an emergency fund. So I've been building a spreadsheet to figure out the average of what I need per month including monthly, bi-monthy, quarterly bills. I set up formulas to calculate not only monthly, but overall annual costs as well. It was pretty shocking. When I showed my honey, he was pretty shocked. We had never looked at our money like that. I also calculated what we earn per year after taxes and suddenly we found ourselves asking where did the rest of the money go. Little depressing, but liberating as well. If I am following Suze, and goal myself for 6 months - I need to build another 16k. That is a lot of money. A more realistic number to shoot for is probably 8k, but hey - dream big.

I would love to pay off my honey's student loan. Looking rationally, I should pay off the HEL first as it has the highest interest rate of our debt, but the student loan is much smaller and I need the gratification of paying something off in order to keep going. Best financial strategy? Probably not. But debt paid off is debt paid off.

I would like to help my honey understand better that money doesn't grow on trees and we have to plan for some rough times as I don't feel 100% confident in my job. We went to Disneyland with our kids in Dec and talked about going in the spring for a parent getaway. He wants to go the end of January, but I'm not totally done paying off the last vacation. I'm hesitant to charge more, but he keeps saying, "well, we talked about it". I would like him to understand that what we talk about and the reality of our finances don't always mesh perfectly and sometimes we have to pass on things. Anyways, we want to plan another family trip in Nov 2009.

Last thing I would like to try to do in 2009 - simplify. Run more on the treadmill, get rid of more stuff out of the garage and house that we don't need. Lose the excess weight both off my body and out of my house. I want to be quick and nimble and it's hard to do that with a bunch of stuff dragging you down.

Phew - this entry lasted longer that I thought it would. Hope everyone has goals for the next year. Now we can take our new found financial planning powers and use them for awesome.

I've been reading other people's blogs for well over a year, but finally decided to get the courage to start one of my own.

I am very interested in personal finance, but don't find a lot of people I can just go on and on about it with, so figured, I can atleast write it out of my system on a regular basis.

We aren't broke, and make the bills and are saving some money, but I always feel broke. I like reading other's blogs cause then I don't feel like a freak looking for ways to get off the consumer treadmill.

This is going to be a long process for me to fill in all the blanks on my profile, so conider this entry my first baby step.