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2014 goals, more realistic

December 30th, 2013 at 11:11 pm

The last time I had a slow period at work, I tried to line up my financial goals for next year, and this is what I came up with:

- pay off student loans ($12,200)
- cashflow NT's remaining tuition ($6,470)
- renovate US condo bathroom ($5,000)
- renovate UK condo (cashflowing $5400)
- add to medical EF (at least $900)
- slowly build moving fund (maybe only $50)
- start to rebuild EF after I use it for rest of UK renos (hopefully $6000 of it will be restored over the next year)
So in total, $36,020 of progress in 2014.

Today I had another slow period, so I took a more detailed look at my 2014 outlook (which is easier to do now that I have an annual budget worksheet!) and tried to see if that was realistic.

Most of them look doable. In an ideal world, if I didn't have to dip into our surplus at all, I could *almost* take care of adding $900 to the medical EF, cashflowing tuition, renovating the US bathroom and paying off student loans. Basically I'm $493 short for the year.

That's nothing; a couple of credit card rewards could make up the difference. We may still be getting a couple grand in tax refunds; that hasn't been figured in. But of course, there are unplanned expenses that eat at the surplus, such as household needs that can't be covered by the grocery budget, and swim lessons/other extracurricular activities for the girls.

Still, there are other possible windfalls, such as if any of us gets a raise, or if I overcalculated the effect of flex spending withholding on our net pay. So I think we could achieve those goals if nothing too drastic comes along to hijack our surplus.

The $50 for the moving fund will come from savings interest, so that should be no problem.

I believe we'll be able to cashflow $5400 of the UK renovations, but only if we save up until May. Add in another lost month of rental income for biannual management fees, and we'll only have 6 months of rental income to rebuild the EF. At $579 per month, we'll only get to $3475, not $6000, by the end of the year.

I could put the $900 of savings that would have gone into the medical EF into our more general EF instead, and scratch that goal off the list.

So if I achieve everything else on the list, building the EF and medical EF will be my next priority. But for now I'm going to downsize those goals:

- pay off student loans ($12,196)
- cashflow NT's remaining tuition ($6,470)
- renovate US condo bathroom ($5,000)
- renovate UK condo (cashflowing $5400)
- slowly build moving fund (maybe only $50)
- start to rebuild EF after I use it for rest of UK renos (hopefully $4375 [$3475 UK rental + $900 US savings]) and medical EF (probably nothing in 2014)

Total goal: $33,491 of progress in 2014.

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