2009 Financial Goals: February Update

We're still adjusting to this new reduced income level but we did a pretty good job of saving what there is to save this month. Here are our goals and how we're doing.

1) Pay off my husband's car.
Completed in January. Yay!

2)Make monthly "car payments" into a car savings account each month.
We made our first "payment" into this account this month. It was only about 1/2 of what our goal is but our income should improve over the next couple of months.

3)Build our emergency fund up to six months of living expenses.
Ugh! We ended up having some unexpected medical expenses as well as repairs to the dryer come up this month so the money set aside for the emergency fund covered those expenses instead.

4) Continue our normal contributions to retirement savings.
Hubby is not eligible for his 401k yet and we are looking into not utilizing it after doing some research in this area. If we decide not to use it we will start regular contributions to his IRA.

5) Paying extra on our mortgage.
We rounded up and paid extra on our mortgage this month.

6)Save $1000 to cover all expenses for next Christmas.
We were able to save about 1/2 of our monthly goal.

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.
Not there yet.

We were pleased overall with our savings and glad that we had enough money to cover the unexpected expenses without dipping into savings. We have more medical bills coming up that we will have to pay so we're not sure how that will impact our future savings. However, the company insurance goes into effect in a week so we can drop our independent policy this month. This will free up an extra $150 a month. We also scaled back our cable package this month freeing up an extra $35.