2009 Financial Goals

My husband and I took a bit of time recently to discuss our financial goals for this year. This is our first year in our 14 1/2 years of marriage that we started a year with some real financial goals in mind. As I mentioned in a previous post, our new budget is pretty tight. Things will begin to improve in a couple of months when my husband completes his training and is eligible to start earning bonuses. We will also get a bit of relief when the company insurance goes into effect and we can drop our independent health insurance policy. Those two things will make it much easier to save. But we've got to make it through a couple of more months to get there. Saving will be hard the next couple of months but we're going to do our best.

Here are our goals for 2009:

1) Pay off my husband's car. We owe just under $3500 on it. Since my husband is working again, we're going to take part of the severance money he received to eliminate this debt. We will take care of this within the week. With this done, our only debt left will be our mortgage. Yay!

2)Make monthly "car payments" into a car savings account each month. We plan to put $250 a month into a special savings account earmarked for our next car purchase. We want to be able to pay cash for the next car we buy. We already have this account set up but up until this point haven't been able to contribute much to it. With the old car payment gone, this will be much more doable.

3)Build our emergency fund up to six months of living expenses. Honestly, this is going to be a bit of a stretch to accomplish this year. After paying off the car and a few other unexpected expenses that have come up recently we're going to be back at about 3 months of living expenses in our emergency fund. With the income reduction, it's going to be harder to come by this much money for this fund alone but we're going to do our best to accomplish this one.

4) Continue our normal contributions to retirement savings. We're on a pretty good path in this area.

5) Paying extra on our mortgage. I'm going to begin doing this again next month. It will just be a small amount for now.

6)Save $1000 to cover all expenses for next Christmas. As I mentioned in my Preparing for Next Christmas post, I hope to be able to reduce this budget next year.

7)Finally, by the end of the year, we plan to evaluate our savings plan and find a way to begin saving for college expenses.

As you see, we still have some goals to work towards. I have been looking into ways I can contribute to our income while still being able to stay home as a way of making saving money easier for us. We had hoped that we could increase the grocery budget once my husband went back to work but have decided to leave it where it is. We haven't had to make any real sacrifices the last few months with a $60 a week budget and it has forced me to become a better shopper. We need every penny available for savings now so it just made sense to leave this where it is. We will also continue to be very careful with our clothing, entertainment, gift, etc. budgets to make more available for savings.

So what are your financial goals for 2009? Write them down and share them here or with someone else for accountability.