Our 2008 Financial Goals (and win yourself an IPOD!)

This is my 11th hour entry into a giveaway held at Cash Money Life for an IPOD Nano. To enter you must blog about your 2008 Financial Resolution using the SMART format. I know, why did I wait until the last minute? Partly because I was procrastinating, and mostly because I knew it wouldn’t be easy. We have a lot of things on the schedule for next year, including selling our very first house and a 2,000+ mile move across the country. If you happen to like working under pressure and are still awake to read this you can go ahead and enter here. You have until 11:59 pm EST on December 4th, 2007.

Working For Financial Freedom’s 2008 Financial Goals

Jan-April - Pay off Debt
Feb-April - Sell house and move
April - Nov. 15th - Fund Emergency Fund with 3 months worth of expenses
Nov. 15th - Up retirement savings to 15%
Nov. 15th-Dec. 31 - Have some fun as a family!

Pay off debt by April 1st, 2008-
It looks like we will sell our Mustang after Christmas. I estimate we’ll start the new year with approximately $27,500 in debt left to pay off. We will use a combination of my husband’s income, bonuses and the sale of our mustang ($14k) to reach our goal of having it paid off by April 1st; which is one year after we started paying off our debt. Any extra income I earn will only move our “Debt-Free” date up earlier.

Sell House & Move to California -
We will get a lump sum check for relocation from my husband’s company and will use that to cover moving expenses. But we will still have some small expenses that we will incur in order to sell the house. Such as:

• Have carpets professionally cleaned

• Sod, topsoil, plants and flowers for backyard (to finish our landscaping project)

• Touch-up paint on walls (will do ourselves)

These expenses will be budgeted and paid for in cash.

Fully fund our emergency fund-
While technically our emergency fund will be fully funded as soon as we sell the house, I would like to set aside that money for the purchase of a new house in the future. (We will rent when we first move to California in order to have time to save up more money, wait for the housing market to decline some more, and search out a good neighborhood). We are going to save up 3 months worth of expenses.

How will we meet this goal?

We will be debt-free at this point and have a larger shovel. We will use the money we were previously paying on our cars and credit ($1,311 a month) and combine that with my husband’s income and bonuses. Any income I can earn on the side will help us achieve this goal sooner.

Start Date: April 1st
End Date: November 15th, 2008

And for the rest of the year?

As soon as our emergency fund is fully funded we will up our retirement savings so that the amount deducted from the paycheck changes from 4% to 15%.

After that, which will be a little less than a year from now we will have some things we would like to purchase that have been put off. A new TV for my hubby (if you saw the purple spots on the one TV that we do own you would understand!) and a Nikon D40x DSLR for me Basically, we will still budget and save for retirement of course, but instead of scrimping and sending every last penny towards debt or an emergency fund we will use a little bit of the extra money and have some fun as a family for the rest of the year.

I hate to call this a financial “resolution” which is why I’m calling it our 2008 Financial Goals. Resolutions never seem to come to fruition. These goals are something I have been planning and working on for months. I’ve crunched the numbers, estimated our higher living expenses in California, came up with just about every worst case scenario I could think of, and this is what I think is doable; while still allowing for some fun for us and the kids.