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2009 Goals

December 31st, 2008 at 05:57 am

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.

4 Responses to “2009 Goals”

  1. lizajane Says:
    1230703814

    It's interesting that you pointed out that hubby wants to keep the original plan for a trip, even though you said he was shocked earlier by the overall analysis of funds. It sounds like where you are hesitant to charge more, he's hesitant to get on board with the whole plan. Maybe you could agree somewhere in the middle with waiting until spring to go on the trip so you can get the December one paid off and ideally save cash for the spring trip so there is no more charging.

  2. fern Says:
    1230764524

    I'm shooting for 12 months worth of living expenses in my emergency fund, partly becus i'm single and it's just my income. And since i know i average about $3K a month, that means $36K, a lot of money.

    I never paid attention to having an emergency fund before when we were in a bull market cus i knew i could just cash out one of my mutual funds if i needed to. Now, that's the last thing i'd want to do since prices are so depressed.

  3. baselle Says:
    1230955906

    Its the workaholic in me, sad to say, but how does vacation in December and vacation in January translate into "plans to make myself useful once I get back in the office"? Be careful - invisible sometimes translates into expendable.

  4. tinibee Says:
    1232871492

    The January Disneyland trip has been downsized to dinner and a movie. Amazing how some layoffs at work can put things in perspective Smile

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