2009 Financial Goals: Update & Half Year Checkup

My one financial goal for August was to go over our 2009 financial goals with my husband to reevaluate how we are doing and to change goals if necessary. I'll be doing a September goals post as soon as I have time to think about them!

I have to say that I'm pleasantly surprised at how many of our goals that have been accomplished. Especially with us being in the real estate section of the economy. I'm incredibly thankful for God's grace and proud of my husband's hard work, persistence and ingenuity. He is the kind of guy that doesn't take 'no' for an answer, isn't afraid of failing and always finds a way around roadblocks.


1. Pay off personal credit card debt. Done!!!

2. Pay off $5000 in IRS debt. Our original plan was to tackle this as soon as we bought a new car, but with the economy and after evaluating our self-employed situation, we have decided to continue with the payment plan in favor of building cash reserves and assets. Our balance is down to $4000, so we are making a little progress!

3. Pay for larger SUV in cash. Done! We bought a new to us SUV in April, and I have to say, I love not having a car payment.

4. Save up 3 month's worth of monthly bills. Done!

5. Pay cash for kid-free mini-vacation in April. Done! We were able to go to Hawaii for a week to celebrate our 10 year anniversary a little early.

6. Business goal: pay off about $6500 owed to one credit card. See below..

7. Business goal: pay off $3000 balance on other credit card. As for #6 & 7, we have also decided to put these goals on hold. Our new goal is to pay off any new charges and keep the balance the same so that we are not getting more in debt. As I mentioned above, my husband feels strongly about having a larger cash savings right now and is working hard to put all extra income there. As hard as it is for me to change goals in the middle (I tend to be a very goal oriented person), I've come to trust my husbands instincts when it comes to these things.

8. Business goal: add property taxes to rental property mortgage payments in order to keep current. I would say this is about 50% done.


So that's my update. If you made a list of financial goals, I would love to hear how you are doing. I find it so encouraging to hear how others are doing with their goals, and just knowing that we are not the only ones on this journey.

Erika

July Budget Overview & August Goals

Wow, another month down and I'm only 2 weeks away from my due date with baby #3! If you missed last month's goals, you can go here to review them

July Overview
Goal #1 - I paid all but one mortgage on time. I was totally annoyed that I forgot the one, but I guess that's life...

Goal #2 - I didn't actually meet this one last month, but plan on putting the money into savings this month once one of my husband's houses closes. It will get done!

Goal #3 - We moved Journey into her new room a couple weeks ago, and she loves it. I have a few pictures to hang, but other than that it is done!

Goal #4 - Done! Laundry room and ceiling are painted.

Goal #5 - Done! I met with our accountant (finally!) and got them all the info that they need.

Goal #6 - This one actually changed as we got into the month. I realized that taking on painting our entry way was just way too ambitious for me at this point. We have put the new chandelier and paint on the back burner indefinitely.

As far as the cash envelopes, I did much better this month. Actually, I was totally shocked that I was able to keep the groceries within budget even with us hosting two BBQ's. Our budget was $250 and I spent $245.52 with a 60% savings.

I did decide to keep the alcohol out of the grocery budget, and make a separate one for that. We were also able to stay within the eating out budget and have $50 left over in the household area. Sweet!


August Goals
Hmmm, I think I'm keeping it simple since we will be having a baby this month. The one thing I did want to do is go over our 2009 Financial Goals with my husband, see how we are doing with them, and reevaluate if necessary.

I'm filling our cash envelopes with $250 for groceries (although giving myself slack here!), $250 for eating out and $300 for household.


Erika

June Budget Review & July Goals

If you missed last month's goals, you can check them out here.

June Overview:
Goal #1 - Met! I paid the mortgages on time again :)

Goal #2 - Met! I was able to put my pay checks into savings for a backup once I'm on maternity leave.

Goal #3 - Umm, I'll have to admit this was only sort of met. I did call them (at the very end of the month!), but they were on vacation and I had to leave a message. Cheating, huh?

Goal #4 - We are slowly working at this one. My husband is in the real estate industry and as you all know, things are pretty unstable. But I have to say this, God is good and has always provided for our needs.

Goal #5 - I didn't really do this one. I do have a few bills on auto pay that are the same every month, but I decided that I'm nervous to put the ones that vary on auto pay until I have enough in savings to back me up in case we have cash flow issues with our business. I did sign up for paperless billing so that I'm emailed every time a new bill is due. Baby steps...


I'm not sure what the problem was, but I had such a hard time staying in budget last month. Acutally, I was over in every area! I went over by $21.81 in groceries, $20 in eating out and I'm not even sure how much in the household area! A couple hundred for sure.

The biggest thing was that I totally under-estimated how much it was going to cost to fix up a new room for Journey. We started with a basic room that I repainted (ceiling and walls), put new chair rail trim up, a new light fixture, curtains, blinds, decorations, etc. You get the picture.
(But it's super cute, and the only room that is actually decorated all the way since I had help with the design from my brother's girlfriend....maybe I'll post a pic when it's all done...)

July Goals

1. Pay all mortgages on time


2. Put $1000 into savings


3. Finish Journey's room and get her moved into it


4. Paint laundry room


5. Get accountant all tax info


6. Purchase ceiling & wall paint for the entryway

So for July/August, you can see that I have some more home improvement projects I want to do (I blame pregnancy, ha ha!) I've been wanting to paint the ceiling in our entry way for a long time, and my husband was just mentioning to me that he wants to replace our chandelier. The ceiling is 20+ feet tall there so it only makes sense to do both at the same time.

I'm thinking that this may be done more in August than July. My husband is a super die-hard ocean fisherman in the summer, but I've told him that after his Tuna Tournament at the beginning of August, he can't do any more fishing until after the baby is born. I had a total of 5 hours of labor with Journey, and I don't want to stress about him not making it for this babies birth!

I've filled our cash envelopes with $250 for groceries, $250 for eating out, and $300 for household. Hopefully, I can do better this month!


Erika

May Budget Overview & June Financial Goals

If you missed out on last months goals, you can go here to check them out.

To be honest, I haven't felt like we have been making much progress goal-wise in the last couple months. I guess life is like that sometimes, but it's especially frustrating to me when we were making good progress in the past and I have to admit defeat at the end of the month here!

The good news is that through getting rid of one of our car payments, paying off all personal credit card debt and creating a budget for ourselves using the cash envelope system, we have reduced our monthly bills by about $1500 a month.


May Overview
1. Met! Paid all mortgages on time again.

2. Didn't pay off all business credit card charges, but we did take a big chunk out of them.

3. Didn't meet this one. Second month in a row that we didn't put money into savings, and yes, I hate admitting that we weren't able to meet this goal again!

4. Didn't meet this one either. Taxes are the thorn in my side....

5. Met! I actually spent a lot of time in the office getting things caught up and organized. Now, if only I can keep it up. :)


As far as the cash envelopes, thanks to Safeway's Living Well promotion, I did really well with the grocery budget. I gave myself $250 for the month and ended up only spending $205, and averaged a 77% savings between Albertsons and Safeway!

We went over our eating out budget of $250 by $25 and also went over in the $350 Household budget category. Considering how many birthdays and other events that were happening last month, I'm not too surprised that we didn't make that one. We came close, and I'm happy with that.


June Goals

1. Pay all mortgages on time.

2. Put $1000 into savings. I know this is ambitious considering the last two months, but I will be quitting work at the end of July for my maternity leave and we need to be used to living without my income again.

3. Contact accountant about 2008 taxes. Baby countdown is on (~10 weeks!) and it needs to be done...

4. Keep working on paying off business credit card debt. I wish I could give this a number, but the way things have been going, income is just too unpredictable right now.

5. Make up list of monthly personal bills with due dates and put as many bills on autopay as possible. I spend so much of my time and energy on the business finances that our personal bills take the back seat. My ultimate goal is to stop wasting money on late fees - even little ones. So this will be the first step towards that.


Also, I filled the cash envelopes with $250 for groceries, $250 for dining out and $300 for household.

Erika

April Financial Goals Review & May Goals

April ended up being a pretty tight month for us money-wise. Being self-employed can be unpredictable at times, especially right now. So we were not able to meet all our goals.
You can go here if you missed last months set of goals.

April Overview:
Okay, for the good news first - we bought a new to us SUV that is big enough for our expanding family, and paid cash for it! I was pretty sad to see our other car go because I loved it, but I really like the new one too and am so happy that we will never have to make payments on it :)

Goal #1 - Unfortunately, we put no money into savings. It was a tight month for us and we had more financial obligations than normal with a couple family birthday's, a birthday party for my son, baby and wedding showers plus a vacation! We just got back yesterday so I haven't totaled up what we spent, but it was less than $1000 for a week in Hawaii including air fare and hotel. If any of you have been there, you know that's pretty good. It's expensive there!

Goal #2 - Met! I paid all the mortgages on time. I think that's the first time I've done that since I've been tracking my financial goals. Yay!

Goal #3 - Met! I had the accountant file an extension on our taxes.

Goal #4 - Didn't meet this one either. Some, but not all business charges were paid this month. I'm hoping I can catch that up this month.


As for the envelopes, we stayed within our budget this month, but I'm not sure on the totals because all the extra money we had left over we took with us on vacation.


May Goals
This month I have 5 family members with birthdays, Mother's Day and my brother is getting married so it's looking to be another month heavy on the expenses.

I also need to get working on Journey's new room (entails paint, blinds, dresser and decorations). Luckily, since I'm having another girl, I don't need to do much to Journey's current room (will be the new babies), just a new bumper pad.

1. Pay all mortgages on time

2. Catch up on the business credit card charges I didn't pay last month and pay off all current charges.

3. Put $500 into savings

4. Contact accountant about taxes (I keep telling myself it has to be done by August!)

5. Catch up on work that needs to be done in the office

So there they are. I'm keeping them simple and hopefully doable. I'll be filling the cash envelopes with $250 for groceries, $350 for household (including gifts) and $250 for dining out.

Erika

March Budget Review & April Goals

If you missed March's goals, you can go here to check them out.

March Overview
We made some pretty big progress last month that I'm pretty excited about. We paid off our car and all personal credit card debt (goal #1)! We also put $500 into savings (goal #4). Our car continues to be for sale, and we are just trying to be patient and praying that a buyer will come along. It's so hard to sell a car in this economy! I also set up a checking account for my husband so that he won't spend on the credit card if he happens to need something (goal from February).

I set up all our mortgages on our banking bill pay system (goal #6). That helped me a lot with organization, and I was only past the 15 day grace period with one mortgage (goal #2). Can you tell this is a monthly struggle for me? Man, I hate this part of my life, but if I didn't do it, no one would...so I struggle through each month.
And again, I failed to do anything with taxes (goal #3), although I did make a lot of progress with getting our office more organized and accounts up to date. One more goal accomplished (#5) was to pay off all current business credit card charges plus an extra $500 to the balance.

As far as my cash system, I spent $248.98 on groceries, but was a little over on the household envelope. But, in my defense, I have had almost all my pots and pans fail on me over the past month! Weird. They were the stainless steel kind with the copper bottoms. For some reason all the copper started separating from the pans at the same time. So that's not a cheap thing to replace.


April Goals

Honestly, I'm cutting myself some slack this month on the goals. We have more expenses this month due to a couple baby/bridal showers, my son's birthday and birthday party and our Hawaii trip. Plus, I want a new purse and there is no "budget" area for that :)

1. Put $500 into savings.

2. Pay all mortgages on time.

3. Have accountant file extension on taxes

4. Pay off all current business charges on credit card

I will be filling our cash envelopes with $225 for groceries and $250 for dining out. I'm not going to do a household budget this month because I'm not sure how much to estimate for all the extra expenses. Probably not the best way to do things, but I need a month to breath a little and not worry so much about budgeting.

Erika

Met One Huge Financial Goal Today!

I paid my car off today! Whoop, Whoop! If you have been following with us on our monthly financial goals posts, you know that we have had the money in savings for about two months to pay our car off, but my husband wanted to wait on parting with all that cash. Well, today was the day! I'm so excited to be rid of that payment ($410/mo.), and more importantly, meeting our goal!

Erika

February Budget Review & March Goals

Wow, February sure went fast! You can read over my goals for February here.

So here's the overview:
Goal #1 - I paid all but 2 mortgages on time. Didn't quite make the goal, but I got close. When you have 12+ to pay, it can be hard to keep on top of it. I used to have them all on auto pay, but with the economy the way it is, I had to take them off because we didn't always have enough at the 1st of each month.

Goal #2 - I did pay $1000 to the MasterCard. Only $1500 left to pay it off all personal debt! Goal #3 - I didn't start working on the taxes. I really hate this task every year. It stresses me out. Maybe next month?

Goal #4 - we have decided to send Aspen to a local public school at least for now so we don't need to save for tuition right now. And drum roll please.......

Goal#5 - was the best goal of all, planning a mini-vacation! We called our mileage cards and to our shock, found out that we have enough points to go to Hawaii, not only that, we had enough left over to pay for our entire hotel stay! So far we are going to Hawaii for 5 nights, 6 days for $60 booking fee. Sweet!

I spent $262.05 on groceries, $12.05 over my $250 budget with an average savings of 60%. We stayed within our $250 eating out budget, but just barely, and spent $60 over on household items (we had to buy a new DVD player unexpectedly). I never got around to opening a separate checking account for my husband to have access to by debit card, so he did end up spending a little on credit cards for some fishing gear and a guy's night out. Not terrible, but I hope to open the account next month for him. I also received a rebate check for $25.42 from ebates.com that I put into savings. Not bad for Christmas shopping I would have done anyway!

March Goals

1. Send $1500 to Citi MasterCard - That will pay it off the balance of personal charges on the card, and we will be free from personal credit card debt! Our business still owes money to two credit cards so that will be the next challenge for us to tackle.

2. Pay all mortgages on time. See #6

3. Get tax and account info to our accountant. I really (really, really) hate this task and put it off every year. Maybe if it's in one of my goals, it will actually get done :)

4. Put $500 into savings for new-to-us car.

5. Pay off all current business charges on credit cards and send an extra $500 to the card with the lowest balance.

6. Enter mortgages and other monthly payments into online banking system to simplify the bill payment system. I'm hoping that if I do that, it will help me to pay the bills on time and not forget some of them. Since I now work the one day I used to do all the finances for the business, I have had trouble fitting that into everything else that is going on. I have been forgetting which bills I paid when, writing checks but then forgetting to send them out, forgetting to write down who's paid rent, there's weeks and weeks of unopened mail, and on and on it goes. You should see our office. It looks like a bomb has exploded in there! My next goal should be to organize the office, but I don't want to completely set myself up for failure. Baby steps, shall we?


I will be filling our cash envelops with $250 for groceries, $250 for eating out (this will be tight because I already have a girl's night plus two birthday parties on the calendar for the month), and $200 for household items.

Erika

2009 Financial Goals (Late!)

I realized that although I make monthly financial goals, I never made a list of goals for the year. I'm new to this whole budgeting and goals thing, but I think it's important for us to make a list of yearly goals so that we have more of a concrete plan of where to direct our monthly goals. These are random and not in any particular order.


1. Pay off personal credit card debt. Started out the year at $5000 balance, and as of right now, we are down to $1500. We are on track to have it paid of by the end of March!

2. Pay off $5000 in IRS debt. We are on a monthly plan, but would like to eliminate this as soon as we get a new-to-us car.

3. Pay for larger SUV in cash. Hopefully by August when the new baby comes! We had the money saved up for this, but have recently decided that we want a different one than what we had been planning on. It's a little more so I think we need to save another $4000. Oh, and sell our current car!

4. Save up 3 month's worth of monthly bills. As of right now we have one month saved.

5. Pay cash for kid-free mini-vacation in April. We are hoping to book & pay for this by the end of February.

5. Business goal: pay off about $6500 owed to one credit card

6. Business goal: pay off $3000 balance on other credit card

7. Business goal: add property taxes to rental property mortgage payments in order to keep current.


These are ambitious goals for us, but I think that is the point. To stretch ourselves and see how far we can go (with the grace of God) towards accomplishing them.

Erika