Tag: goals
There are 9 entries that are tagged goals. Now displaying reults 1 - 9.
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Credit Cards In The Cold, Weekly Roundup
Posted on January 10, 2008 by Him
The weather in Chicago has been pretty crazy. Last week, we went from temperatures in the single digits (with biting wind chills) to 60F+ days. Of course, I chose one of the super cold ass days to leave my credit card at a bar, necessitating a frosty trip back to get it.
Here's what I've found to interesting reads this week...
Jonathan at My Money Blog revamping his asset allocation. See how he's allocating his funds according to which account. His style of asset allocation and number of accounts closely resembles ours.
Clever Dude reveals how he monetizes his site. As you can tell we're not exactly ad-free either. We should put up a post detailing our strategies as well.
Million Dollar Journey is considering building a home gym. We have well-used memberships to the health club.
Making money as a blogger? You may want to check out these 46 tax deductions that bloggers often overlook. (via BeanCounter)
It's Your Money tells what he did with his website income in the year of 2007. His isn't quite the enviable position to be in, is it?
Are SMART goals really smart? Millionaire Nuemes loudly opposes the prevailing trend towards SMART based goal setting, and challenges you to make and accomplish some Real Goals.
The Honest Dollar writes a post in defense of personal finance bloggers who write mostly about retirement. Yes, the PFblogosphere is inundated with posts about retirement, frugality, and saving. Here's a little secret: we try and write about the fun stuff about finances. Read the archives if you don't believe us!
Our 2007 Goals Status, Part 6: Did We Reach Our Net Worth Goal?
Posted on January 04, 2008 by Him
This is the final part of our retrospective look at our 2007 goals. Here's part 1 (Roth IRAs), part 2 (Student Loans), part 3 (credit cards), part 4 (joint retirement portfolio), and part 5 (have more fun).
The answer to the question in the title: Hell Yeah.
See the chart below for a neat graphic on how our assets, liabilities, and net worth have progressed over the past two years. (If you're reading this in a feed reader or via email, it it seriously worth it to click to the actual post on our website to see the awesome bar/line graph. Seriously.)
...and without further ado, here is how the numbers look at the end of this year compared to the beginning...
| January 2007 | December 2007 | % Change | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| TOTAL NET WORTH | -$66,274.27 | -$32,059.99 | 51.6% | |
| TOTAL CHANGE FROM JAN 2006 | +$66,555.40 | |||
| TOTAL CHANGE IN 2007 (Goal of +$32,000) | +$34,215.27 | |||
| Assets | ||||
| Cash | $9,387.56 | $29,024.39 | 209% | |
| His SIMPLE IRA | $6,670.08 | $10,004.43 | 50% | |
| His Roth IRA | $6,470.53 | $6,090.93 | -5.9 | |
| His HSA | $557.76 | $172.07 | -69.1% | |
| Her 401K | $10,605.57 | $14,710.43 | 38.7% | |
| Her Roth IRA | $2,732.94 | $7,062.83 | 158% | |
| Automobile ? | $10,080.00 | $9,655.00 | -4.2% | |
| Household Items ? | $25,000.00 | $25,000.00 | 0.0% | |
| Accounts Receivable | NA | $1,370.16 | NA | |
| TOTAL ASSETS | $71,489.61 | $103,090.24 | 44.2% | |
| Liabilities | ||||
| Credit Cards (Rewards) | $4,276.06 | $5,973.43 | 39.7% | |
| Student Loans | $133,487.82 | $129,176.80 | -3.2% | |
| TOTAL LIABILITIES | $137,763.88 | $135,150.23 | -1.9% | |
We ended up the year over $2,000 over our net worth goal. Not too shabby!
This wraps up our goals for 2007. We kicked ass a little, if I do say so myself. In fact, Her and I agree that 2007 was one of the best years of our lives. We totally kicked 2007's ass. 2007, you're a little bitch.
This weekend we're going to finalize what we want to accomplish for 2008. We don't think we'll do as much ass kicking, but it better be prepared.
Our 2007 Goals Status, Part 5: Have More Fun With Our Money
Posted on December 28, 2007 by Him
This is part 5 of our retrospective look at our 2007 goals. Here's part 1 (Roth IRAs), part 2 (Student Loans), part 3 (credit cards), and part 4 (joint retirement portfolio).
Looking back at our goals, it seems like we've managed to (mostly) successfully achieve most of them. That doesn't mean we didn't have some fun along the way! Without further ado, here are some of the fun things we've posted about that we've done with our money:
- Bought drinks for all of our friends with our rewards card, but of course were reimbursed by said friends for their portion of the bill
- Made a wedding car decoration for $8
- Raised our individual allowances
- Went to da club with some friends
- Blew our our eardrums and made some money at some rock festivals
- Trained for and ran a half-marathon (is this really fun?!?)
- Entertained an obscene amount of guests over the summer
- Played in soccer leagues
- Attended some wine classes for wine glasses
- Bought some cheap costumes for Halloween and had a blast
- Went on our very first vacation and went way under budget
Looking back, this year was pretty incredible. We're definitely looking forward to 2008!
Status: Hell yeah!
Our 2007 Goals Status, Part 4: Develop The Joint Retirement Portfolio
Posted on December 26, 2007 by Him
This is part 4 of our retrospective look at our 2007 goals. Here's part 1 (Roth IRAs), part 2 (Student Loans), and part 3 (credit cards).
This year we sought out to develop the foundation for our joint retirement portfolio. This was quite a daunting task, and we had to break it up into a few pieces to make it manageable. Even though it has been over a year since the first time we've first decided to tackle this task, we feel that there is much to learn and do.
Here's a recap of what we've done this year to get closer to develop our joint retirement portfolio:
1. We determined how much money we'll need to save up for in order to retire.
2. We laid out what our portfolio looked like back in January 2007 and reviewed what was wrong with it.
5. Finally, we looked to see our progress and assessed what steps to take next.
Now, the plan is to learn more about investing in order to fine tune the numbers. We're going to reassess our allocation semi-annually and readjust the allocations if necessary.
Status: Mostly completed; needs tweaking.
Our 2007 Goals Status, Part 3: Pay Off Credit Card Debt By November 2007
Posted on December 10, 2007 by Him
This is part 3 of our retrospective look at our 2007 goals. Here's part 1 and part 2.
When we first started this blog, we had $18,054.88 in credit card debt. A year later, in January 2007, we reduced it to $11,560.40. It was our goal this year to eradicate all of our credit card debt by November 2007.
On June 18, 2007, a whole 5 months early, we sent in our last payment. Suck it, credit card interest.
The road to no more credit card debt was an interesting one. While Her had higher balances, I had atrocious interest rates. One of the first things I did was to reduce my retirement contributions to pay off the credit card debt. I eventually played the balance transfer game for the lowest interest rate until all of my credit card debt was at 2.99%.
When both Her and I had paid off all of our non-0% credit card debt, we signed up for rewards cards that we judiciously paid off every month, making sure not to pay any interest charges. We've used those cards to accrue rewards that will pay for much of our honeymoon. It's about time we took back from the credit card companies what they took from us. That last sentence made me sound like a vindictive barbarian. I digress.
Status: Completed.
Our 2007 Goals Status, Part 2: Increase Student Loan Payments
Posted on December 07, 2007 by Him
This is part 2 of our retrospection on our 2007 goals. See part 1 here.
The second goal that I'm going to discuss today is putting extra money towards student loans. Her's student loans come in two flavors: private and federal loans. The federal loans have interest rates that are <4% and have balances totaling ~$40,000. The minimum payment for these loans are automatically deducted from our account once a month.
The remaining ~$80,000 are private loans, with interest rates high enough to kill most vermin and maybe other small mammals.
Ouch, yo.
For 2007, we decided to attack this a little more aggressively. The minimum amount owed per month is ~$775 for this loan. Instead of paying this amount once per month, we paid $450 every two weeks. This ensures that we tack on an extra $900 on the student loans for the year since we'll be making the equivalent of an extra payment, plus another $150 per month we pay over the minimum. Our total extra student loan payment for this year is then ~$3,000. In our experience, paying every two weeks also limits the amount of interest that accrues so more of our payments go towards principal.
Looking back at this, the additional amount seems pretty measly, but then again a year ago we weren't anywhere near the financial place we are now. We're going to look to revise this goal for next year.
We also helped out this goal by transferring $11,000 of the private loan balance to a credit card with a lifetime interest rate of 1.9%. That alone saves us a ton in future interest costs.
Status: Completed
Our 2007 Goals Status, Part 1: Contribute 50% to Roth IRAs
Posted on December 05, 2007 by Him
About a year ago we made some financial goals for ourselves. Since 2007 is coming to a rapid close, I thought we'd look at those goals and see how we did, and how we made it happen. I'm going to tackle them out of order just because that's how I feel like writing about them.
The first goal I'm going to examine is contributing 50% of the maximum allowed amount to our Roth IRAs. As the 2007 Roth IRA maximum contribution amount is $4,000, that amount is also equal to 50% of total contributions for both of our accounts. When we first came up with this goal, Her's Roth IRA had a paltry $1,695.85 in it, so we decided to allocate all of our contributions to her Roth IRA account to bring it up to about where mine is.
Last year, Her moved her Roth IRA holdings from Merrill Lynch to Vanguard. At the beginning of the year, she requested automatic deductions twice a month to total $4,000. Since I am paid twice a month, we had it coincide with my paydays, so it was like an automatic payroll deduction in that we never even saw that money. Easy as pie. (Except that I've never baked one [but Her has]).
Status: Will be completed this month.
2007 Financial Goals: We're On Our Way!
Posted on January 04, 2007 by Her
With some difficulty, we've already made progress on our 2007 financial goals.
One goal is to fund one of our Roth IRA's 100% for 2007. Tonight we selected my Roth IRA (Him also has one), since I have very little in there now. We set up an automatic transfer to maximize the contribution. To max out my contribution I will put $333.33 into the account every month. We also could have split the funds and funded each account 50%, but by doing it this way we will maximize the benefit. By this time next year, I will have enough money in my Roth IRA to qualify for a reduced maintenance fee (annual savings: $10) and also meet the minimum investment required for most of the no-load, low-fee Vanguard funds ($3,000). This will allow us to start investing more efficiently. Next year we will re-evaluate to see how much to contribute, and to which of our accounts.
Another of our goals is to pay off our credit card debt this year. Inspired by a comment from reader Mandy, we have decided to pay off some of them even faster. We're going to pay off all our credit card debt that has an interest rate above 0% (about $6,600 of debt) as soon as we get the bills this month. This will ransack our savings account, but will save us about $350 in interest this year. And since the remainder of the credit card debt will be at 0% indefinitely, we can pay that off at our leisure.
By taking these two steps, we have already ensured that our net worth will increase by about $13,000 next year. I feel good about that.
Looking Ahead - Our Financial Goals for 2007
Posted on December 29, 2006 by Him
Yes, it's that time of the year again - goal setting time! While 2006 was an okay year for us financially, we're hoping to make 2007 even better. Here's what we plan to set out to accomplish:
1. Increase our combined net worth by $32,000.
2. Contribute 50% of the maximum to our Roth IRAs.
3. Pay off all of our credit card debt by November 2007.
4. Come up with a retirement action plan that includes correct asset allocation, periodic re-balancing, and a re-assessing how much we're socking away.
5. Continue to make a payment to the student loans every two weeks, for an amount of half monthly minimum payment plus at least $100. That will ensure an extra $3000 is paid towards that debt.
6. Have more fun with the money that we have left over!
Need some help with your goal-making? Consumerism Commentary has a great post on goals and what they should mean to you.
Have a happy and safe New Year's! We'll see you in 2007.
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