partgypsy1 wrote:
Amazing progress, especially in this economy. I wonder if it would help for me to list goals like that.
For me I only have 2 goals, (continue to invest 10% of salary in retirement, save 10% of after-tax money in savings account).
I notice you list dollar amounts. Any pros or cons to this? Does it make it feel more concrete to list numbers? And do you review and revise numbers each year depending on some target or salary? I guess I'm asking how do you come up with the number amounts.
Also, having multiple money goals, how to you decide to allocate extra money to those goals? Are they listed by priority?
Thanks PG1. I run our savings goals the same way we ran our debt snowball. At the beginning of the year, Mr. Sam sets up a handy Excel spread sheet that gives us a bar chart/pie chart, in colors. Each time I update the spread sheet the bar charts change giving me positive feedback. We set up our annual savings goals as the same time that we set up our annual spending plan. We also push ourselves to save more than we think we can.
The numbers translate to our goals, we want to max out our 401ks and IRAs so the dollar amounts translate to what we can legally put aside under the tax code.
We do prioritize our savings, but we have different ways of doing it. Our retirement savings is the most important to us right now, so we put all our extra money towards our IRAs during early part of the year. But with our 401k, since those monies are deducted from our pay checks we contribute in equal amounts each pay check with the goal of maxing it out by the end of the year (and I keep track using my handy chart and in the last quarter double check our numbers to make sure we are on target to max out). Mr. Sam just upped his 401k contribution because he was a little bit under in an effort to max it out by year end. The other goals are prioritized as well. This year we prioritized the emergency fund after taking some cash out of it last year. The e/r fund is also set up as an auto transfer. The mortgage principal prepay is next on the list and finally last on our list is the house project fund. And as you can tell, we fund the more important goals better than the less important. I don't think we will complete our savings goal for the house fund, I think we will be a few thousand short on that goal and on our overall goal.
I see from your blog that you have not yet finalized your 2012 goals and spending plan. What's up?