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Home > Well, shucks.

Well, shucks.

December 29th, 2012 at 01:39 pm

As I was reading everyone's nice comments on my last blog, I suddenly thought wait -- a 5,000 pound increase in the home's valuation equals $15,000 less in what we have to save? Didn't sound right so I went and checked my spreadsheet. Sure enough, I made a big boo-boo. I really need to save $71,000, not $65,000.

So yeah, that's a big difference. We need to come up with $121,957 over the next four years, or $2541 a month. Meaning my current budget is $539 short. $125 more per month than I thought!

But all is not lost. I've been thinking about ways we could raise the money if we start getting far behind next year, and one option, once we've paid for our England vacation in May, would be to scale back our vacation fund. We typically do a fairly extravagant vacation twice a year (except years when one of the kids was born). We could cut that down to one big vacation, and find cheap/thrifty staycation options to use the rest of our paid time off. We currently save $850 each month for travel and vacation, so if we cut that back as needed, on months when we didn't come through with the additional money needed, that would keep us on track. We couldn't do that until June 2013, since all our travel budget allocations up until then are committed to paying for the May trip.

Also, if we focus on the student loans first, we could gradually add the $148 total that goes toward interest, toward our goals instead, as the interest portion decreases.

If the payroll tax cut or a comparable cut comes out of the fiscal cliff negotiations, we may have about $40 more in the budget.

I do have a performance review coming up in the new year, with the (very remote) possibility of a raise.

So, the budget is not a fixed thing, and as long as I put everything extra toward these goals, we should be able to reach them, or at least come close.

1 Responses to “Well, shucks.”

  1. creditcardfree Says:
    1356802786

    I did notice the error, but by the time I went to comment I forgot to mention it!! Glad you noticed and have a plan. I still stick with my comment that I have no doubt you will achieve your goals!

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