Financial Goals for 2007
January 3, 2007
It’s a work in progress, it turns out. I’ve been working the numbers and trying to find a happy medium between my projected base salary without overtime and a realistic salary including overtime. The reason I’d rather not just use my base salary is because it’s extremely rare for me NOT to work overtime. And I frankly don’t make enough just with my base salary to meet all bills and savings goals.
My compromise is not to set savings goals SO high that I feel obligated to work 50 hours of overtime every two weeks but keep them high enough to account for the inevitable overtime. I think I can get away with about 30-35 hours and still make these goals.
Ideally, I’d like to save the following amounts and categories:
Mini e-fund for non-critical emergencies (asap): 5k = 416/month
Roth (12 mos): 4k = 333/month
House and/or Wedding (24 mos): 15K-20k = 625-833/month
Vacation/Travel (12 mos): 3k = 250/month
Car maintenance, starter fund for next vehicle (12 mos): 5k = 416
= 2040-2248/month
= 24,480-26,976/year
I think my new, most realistic, goals will be:
1. Mini e-fund: 3200 (01/07-04/07)
2. House fund: 6400 (05/07-12/07)
3. Roth: 4000 (1/07-12/07)
4. Car: 2640 (01/07-12/07)
= 1353/month
= 16,240/year
while budgeting 28,320 for bills and rent and increasing the pre-tax 403(b) contribution to 500/month. Any extra monies will go straight to the House fund. The increase in bill money is not an indication that I expect expenses to go up, but rather to give myself a teeny tiny cushion in that account so that I don’t feel like I’m always running on empty each month. This, and all continued efforts to keep regular expenses down, should prevent any borrowing from the e-fund, as well.
Still to come:
Opening my Roth IRA – Educate me, Vanguard! I’m having trouble picking a mutual fund.
Submit my increased contribution to the 403(b)
*Note: I’m rather disappointed to realize that I’m only projecting a 36% savings rate (not including the pretax retirement 403[b]) this year. Well, whatever I make over the allocations will go towards savings as well.
I can tell you put a lot of thought into determining your future goals. I haven’t seen anyone break out the numbers to see if they fit within the constraints of their income. Impressive…
Good luck in achieving each one!
Thanks Single Ma! I did agonize over the numbers for a long time. I read it after I was through with this, but I was doing what Flexo talked about in his post about setting goals: setting goals and stretch goals, so I’m not inadvertently lowballing myself.