It's taken a while to pull this together. Just as I suspected, whenever I thought we were almost there we'd get another piece of information that would throw things off kilter. Nothing bad--someone would give us money as a wedding gift for example, or we came in under budget on the wedding (blessed occurrance, that). But we're more or less final on this batch. Since we're deliberately taking the financial integration process slowly, we're breaking our goals down individually based on what's being funded out of whose paycheck, with the understanding that neither of us could achieve our goals without the assistance and support of the other.
Shiner's 2009 Goals
1) Max out 401(k). This is about a third of his salary, but we decided to be drastic about it because he has very little in retirement savings, and because the market is crap so this is as good a time as any to buy and hold index funds.
2) $5000 into a Roth IRA. He doesn't have one yet. The stretch goal is that he'll stash away more than the $5000 contribution limit by opening a 2008 Roth within the next couple of months and then funding a 2009 Roth on top of that.
3) Get his last remaining credit card down to $2750, from about $6000 now. The stretch goal is to pay it off completely. We decided he should prioritize retirement contributions over paying down his credit card debt because the debt is allegedly 0% for life. If Discover jerks him around and jacks up the rate, we'll re-prioritize but for now, it's less pressing than retirement.
My 2009 Goals
1) Max out my 401(k) by the end of July. Sometime this summer I'll be leaving my job for one with no 401(k), so I'm foreshortening my contributions. It'll be the last time I can contribute until late 2011, and I may never come back to such a high paying job as I have now.
2) Max out a Roth IRA.
3) Pay off the home equity loan. I'm in the home stretch--$5500 to go.
4) Save two months living expenses in a joint savings account. We're treating this as completely separate from the savings I built up before we were married.
5) Save $1500 for home maintenance. Though after a busted furnace, water heater, and utility sink in the last two years I'm not quite sure what else could break apart from what's covered by insurance. But I don't care to tempt fate.
1.27.2009
2009 Financial Goals
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4 comments:
I don't know if you take requests or not, but would you be open to doing a series on designing a budget for different income levels?
On my site, I advocate finding money within your current budget to "pay yourself" If you made coffee at home rather than buying it at the local coffee shop, "pay yourself" that $4 straight in to your savings account. Read my article (linked here) to read the rest.
I'm currently saving up enough for two years living expenses. Its scary times for sure when you don't know if you'll be out of work for a full two years! Ughh.
Feminist Finance, I've been reading you for several months. I don't remember how I stumbled upon the site. Anyway, thanks so much for setting such a good example. Thanks also to Shiner for agreeing to let you blog about his financial affairs. I think if it had just been you, I would have thought, "Well, her salary is clearly so much higher than mine...it's not realistic for me to make the same kinds of saving and budgeting goals." But knowing that Shiner managed to squeeze that much debt-repayment money out of a salary that's likely a lot closer to mine made it harder for me to put off getting my financial act together.
Thanks to you both, I'm in the process of finally maxing out my IRA for the first time, and I'm making a plan for saving a several-months-of-expenses cushion.
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