Tuesday, March 28, 2006

Financial Goals for 2006

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Net worth
  • Increase net worth by $100,000.00.
Savings
  • Save to meet net worth increase requirements (in addition to investment returns)
  • Restore operating cash reserve to $25,000.00 by December 2006
  • Increase operating cash reserve to $50,000.00 by end of March 2007
  • Start funding another 529 plan
  • Make retirement contributions for Mom, Dad and Children
  • Fully fund Mom & Dad's 401k
Spending
  • Move into and furnish new house (basic furnishings) ($5,000 - $15,000)
  • Professional education at local university ($8,000)
  • Repay past debt ($8,600)
  • Big family vacation ($3,000 - $9,000)
Strategic & Other
  • See more family
  • Job change to increase income
  • Create financial blog, obtain > 1000 visitors
  • Learn to golf
  • Dance Lessons
  • Replace variable insurance policies with term policies & invest cash value in ETFs
  • Develop a solid ETF strategy and actually rebalance at least annually
  • Finalize and notarize estate plan
  • We may have a family member with a health matter that could cost between $15,000 and $45,000. This would come directly out of our savings - it would be a heavy hit, but we have enough saved up.
Over the next few days I will publish our 2005 end of year financial statement and networth and then monthly updates through the end of March.

Over the next few weeks I will post our progress on our 2006 financial goals and continue to do so on a quarterly basis.

Please share your comments on these goals. Perhaps they're not very reasonable? Maybe too hard too achieve? Maybe something is missing. Let us know your thoughts.

Have a great Wednesday,
Making Our Way

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wow, 100K increase in net worth in a year? Is that doable? You'll either have to put a lot away and/or hope for some significant returns on your investments.

calgirlfinance said...

$100K increase in net worth seems like a lot, but depends on how much your salary is. If you guys are pulling in $250K/year, it's very do-able if you life the right lifestyle.

makingourway said...

Justin and Calgirl, I had to downwardly revise the number to reflect an acceleration of expenses - specifically term insurance premiums that will be paid a year in advance (as result of replacing my variable policies).

Please see today's posting for my explanation of how I expect to make the increase.

Regards,

Making Our Way

2million said...

Learn to golf - I think that is a great goal - esp in the business world. When I was working for startups in grad school - I started playing a little. However after I started working for IBM I cooled off and didn't play at all.

However, I am starting to see the need to pick up the game again. My girlfriend's home just so happens to be on a golf course so I can walk right out on hole #5 and play a couple holes if I come over after work. It has really helped me get back into it.

What to you mean by 1,000 visitors for your blog - is that per day?

makingourway said...

$2M,

Thanks for the encouragement!
Actually, I'm more nervous about learning to Golf than I am about increasing my networth by $100k!!

Calgirl, I've actually reduced my projection to about $86k, but I'm going to keep the $100k as a goal.

It's very likely that we'll have the family medical expense coming up. It will probably cost $40,000, once we add up all the details, plus some additional smaller expenses. I'm going to try to increase my income to offset the expense. If I can't, I'll need to help care for the family member, our net worth will drop proportionately. It's for a good thing - health is more important than money.

Back to golf. I'm going to join the club next week - $2M: hold me to it!!

I've taken lessons over the years, but never played enough to retain anything. I'm looking forward to putting in at least one game a week to build up some solid experience.

$2M, since we're both in NC, maybe we'll play together, one day.

Regarding 1,000 visitors. I'm just hoping to have had 1k unique visitors before your's end. I'm new at this and was actually amazed that a few people looked at my blog in March. Daily traffic seems to be picking up - Saturday is usually my slow day and about 50 people have been here so far, but that seems to be a big leap from last weekend. I'll need to keep my expectations low until I see what happens over the next few weeks.

I'm going to do some packing tonight to help reduce the moving costs (and chip away at that $40k).

Have a wonderful weekend,
Making Our Way