Goals Expanded

Okay, after much thought and reflection, I have decided to update my goals. As I learn more about this blog stuff, I will create a side panel showing goals and progress. Unfortunately, I do not know, as of yet, how to do that. Anywho, here are my “short-term” and “long-term” goals and current financial positions…

Cash:
Emergency Fund Savings: 1000 dollars
Allocated Savings (annual bills): 1000 dollars
Checking Accounts: Approx. 1000 dollars
Total available Monies: 3000 dollars

403b Retirement Savings: 13000 dollars

Total of All Debt: 11510.22 dollars

My short term goals are as follows:
Pay off debt, using approx. 1700 dollars a month. This should pay all of my debts off, 2 autos and 1 ccard, by the 10-10-2005. I feel that this is totally doable. I have “take-home” of about 4000 dollars a month, so 1700 dollars should be relatively easy to come up with. The wife and I were never on a budget before, so even though we had enough for bills and minimums, our money just kinda slipped through the old fingers. Now we have a MUCH better handle on things. 1700 is actually a conservative estimate. We do have 2 kids under 6, so I always like to leave enough in the checking and savings to cover medical needs and various other “kid” things.

Short Term “Savings” Goals:
We now have 3 autos…

• Paid for 10 year old pick-up truck
• 2001 Honda for me
• 2000 Mini-van for the family

I would love if we could just drive these autos for the next 5-6 years, then purchase late-model used vehicles to replace them. I would need about 20,000 dollars TOTAL to replace these cars with newer, late-model versions, in say 2009 or 2010. We paid 7600 for our 2000 van this past summer and it is in great, great shape. So, here are our short term “savings” goals:

Fully-Funded Emergency Fund: 10,000 dollars
Fully-Funded Auto Replacement Fund: 20, 000 dollars

So, using the above amount of 1700, now not needed for debt payments, but used for savings, we could save this amount in roughly…30000/1700 = 18 months. Please note that I have not calculated gaining any money via interest rate hikes, etc. I am talking about how much money I could save if I just stuck the money under my mattress…So in 2 years from now, I could be debt-free, with 30000 dollars in the bank, and be ready to make some serious, serious retirement account contributions. More later…
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