Shoot, I think I'm getting sick. Both girls have colds/fevers (AA the toddler is much worse than SL the infant) and NT is probably getting sick too. AS has the whole week off, but her dream of alone time has been snatched from her, since AA has to stay home from daycare until 24 hours after the fever subsides. We had a pretty good Xmas Eve and Day (even though AA threw up at breakfast on Christmas morning). But the past two days have been tough. None of us is at our best, physically or mentally.
So I wanted to get my goals post up, in case I get sicker.
I've decided instead of just annual goals, I'm going to post all my big-picture financial goals and just work as hard as I can at them. My plan of attack may change from time to time, maybe even my exact goals will change; four years is a long time and who knows what will happen? But this is my focus right now, so it seems like the right way to proceed. (I'll still do monthly debt-repayment goals, since that's practically a tradition now.)
I've been posting sporadically about what I thought would be my big goals: EF to $20K, medical fund to $5K, student loans paid off and NT's college fully paid, $80K in a new home/moving fund.
But when I refigured my finances, I also reassessed a couple of factors and priorities.
First, although the UK condo was valued at 130,000 pounds in our net worth calculations, I realized that when we were figuring out how much we needed to save to move to England or buy a house here in Minneapolis, we had it valued at 120,000. So with my new, more accurate 125,000 estimate, we can actually anticipate more profit when we eventually sell the UK flat. Which means we shouldn't need to save up $80K, more like $65K!
Also, I decided we don't need $20K of dedicated EF funds. Since we're going to have $5K in a medical fund, it will total $20K. Plus, I could always raid the house/moving fund if a really expensive emergency came up.
This means we have a fully funded EF. I moved all but $15K into the medical fund, so we now have nearly $1275 in that. Which means less money needed to get that fully funded.
So all told, the big goals look a lot more obtainable. At one point, our budget was about $600 per month short of attaining all of them in 4 years. But now, it's only a bit over $400 short. With AS's freelancing, and if we're careful with how we use windfalls for the next couple years, we might actually be able to do this!
The new goals have been updated on my sidebar.
My 2013-2016 goals
December 28th, 2012 at 06:02 am
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On the upside, though, it's really nice that you are much closer to your big-picture goals than you realized. Go you!
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Hope you feel better!