Goals for 2010
I’m very happy with the way we managed our finances towards the second half of 2009. We curbed our spending and made sure we weren’t being reckless with our money and as a result, we managed to accumulate a good chunk in our emergency fund.
In 2010, we will be selling our house and moving to a new city. We booked our tickets to Seattle for January 14 so hopefully that will help us in making our decision on where to move to. With all these big changes, its a bit more difficult to have aggressive goals but I will still list some that I plan on aiming for this year.
1) Max out the Roth IRA for 2009. Since we still have until April 2010 to put money into our Roth IRA, I plan on maxing both our accounts out. The Roth IRA is one of the best retirement vehicles and I plan on taking full advantage of it while we still can.
2) Put away $50K into our down payment fund. 50K sounds like a lot to be able to put away, but we’re lucky that my husband still has 5 months of his severance left! We plan on putting away his entire severance and continue living our lives like we normally do (ok maybe with a little more spluring than usual). We want to buy a home soon and we all know how insanely expensive west coast home prices are. We probably don’t want to carry more than a 300K mortgage so that means we’d have to put down at least 200K.
3) Invest more in stocks. In 2009, we focused mostly on mutual funds and not enough on stocks. This year, I plan on evening it out and investing in both stocks and mutual funds and try to do dollar cost averaging. I also want to learn a little more about ETFs.
4) Spend less on food. This past year, we spent over $16K on dining out alone! It’s carelessness and gluttony at its best. I’m not proud of it. I hope to cut this in half for this year by cooking more at home and being more mindful and aware of what we’re ordering and what kind of restaurants we are going to. I’ve also wasted groceries on many occasions when we had food at home but we chose to dine out and ended up throwing out the food later on. My new goal is to eliminate excess and waste!
5) Give more. My husband and I have a foundation set up with Vanguard. The purpose of this foundation is to one day either set up a school for underprivileged kids or to offer scholarships to students who cannot afford college. I would like to contribute $10,000 to the foundation this year.
6) eBay. With the big move happening this year, this is a great opportunity for us to sell some of our furniture or clutter on eBay.
7) Prepare for a baby! Ideally, we’d like to start having kids soon and with each pregnancy/delivery costing around $20K we need to start preparing. I don’t want to actually set aside the money for a baby but I want to be aware of the costs and prepare accordingly by putting some money away and being smart with our spending habits.
It will be fun to look back on this entry and see how many of these goals were met. I hope we succeed in achieving our goals and I have great hopes for 2010!
On Thanksgiving Day, I ran my first half marathon. My time was not anything especial but I was proud of myself for just finishing. I don’t consider myself an athletic person and I think if I’m able to run a half marathon, anyone can do it.
I was sitting at Barnes & Noble today (and did not order a white chocolate mocha this time!) and an older woman came and sat at the table next to me. She waited about 10 minutes before a young couple with a very young baby showed up and asked if she was “Nancy”. After overhearing their conversations, I learned that Nancy was there for an interview to be the nanny of this baby. Both parents worked very long hours and now that the mom’s maternity leave is up, she’s due to go back to work and they need someone to care for the baby. As I was listening to the interview, the couple asked the potential nanny why she decided to change careers from accounting to childcare. The woman (who was somewhere in her 60s) explained she had been an accountant all her life and was recently laid off after having just bought a condo. She was old enough to just retire but all she had was social security and it just wasn’t enough for her to live on so she had to think about getting a job. They discussed a whole bunch of things this afternoon but I’ll end the story there because I just could not get over the fact that this poor woman who had been working all her life was not able to retire and that all she had were those measly social security payments.
So with my husband jobless this Thanksgiving, it’s very important to us that we enjoy Thanksgiving (it is after all my favorite holiday of the year) while not spending as much money. With all that food, Thanksgiving can be pretty pricey and we all know we need to be careful this year as with many other families who are in the same boat. Despite the circumstances, we still have a lot to be thankful for this year and skimping out on Thanksgiving just wouldn’t be right! Here are a list of ways to save this year.
I’m a big fan of online savings accounts. I hate dealing with BS and wasting time when it comes to banking…or just about anything. The beauty of online savings accounts is the ability to link them to your checking accounts, to open accounts in 5 mins of time and the very nice rates they offer. OK so maybe they’re not so nice during this time but compared with traditional banks, they are awesome. I usually keep just enough money in my traditional bank checking account to pay my bills. The rest (excluding investments) always goes off to my online savings account so I can get a nice return on the money I have. Without the brick and mortar expenses that are associated with traditional banks, online banks are able to offer you better rates, lower minimum balances and lower fees (in my experience there are pretty much no fees). Since I’m looking to get a higher yield from my savings account (I currently use ING Direct), I’ve been looking around to see what other banks are out there and what they offer. Here’s what I came up with: