October 2008: Progress Update

Photo Credit: ivanx

The year is winding down already. Fall is her and I’m waiting for the leaves to change colors.

Let me first review my goals for this year. As readers have been noticing, they have been adjusted to fit our circumstances:

• Income: The goal is $60,000 for the year as a family.
• Spending: I’m going to continue cutting back on eating out to twice a week, including weekends.
• Investing: We’ll contribute to our retirement funds.
• Saving: We’ll have 3 months expenses in an emergency fund.
• Debt: I would like to pay off my car loan by December 31, 2008.

I’m proud of how it is going. Here’s how I’m doing now:

• Income: It’s wait and see with this one, it’ll be close. I’m optimistic, so I can’t wait for my year end review.
  
• Spending: I’m doing pretty good with this. I got my little change jar to take care of some costs. I do need to watch sometimes, though, as lately my friends keep wanting to eat out. It’s never a huge amount of money, but they all add up.
• Investing: My husband has his 401(k) contributions automated into some index funds. We also rolled over his previous employer’s 401(k) into a Roth IRA at Vanguard. As expected, our portfolios have declined due to market conditions, but it’s not scaring us away from contributing.
• Saving: Our joint savings with ING Direct is slowly growing and we’re not expected to touch it. We currently have almost 3 months worth of joint expenses in there.
• Debt: The car loan balance is now $1,398.05 (I just checked this morning). Ha! It will be defeated.

How are you working on your goals? How have you’ve you coped with unexpected changes?

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