Financial Goals 2016: Saving for babby's first SA account

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Ask/Tell > Business, Finance, and Careers > Financial Goals 2016: Saving for babby's first SA account

Cicero: Dec 17, 2003; Jumpjet, melta, jumpjet. Repeat for ten minutes or until victory is assured.

Financial:

1. +60k net worth (~165k -> 225k)
2. Max out regular 401k contributions, after-tax 401k contributions (26k), IRAs for myself and wife for 2015 and 2016.
3. Go over spending consistently (right now this is scheduled for weekly, but even once a month I'd consider a success).
4. Tamp down on eating out by making it part of "personal spending" (this also involves an increase to the personal spending allocation, but we should still come out ahead savings-wise). This is the biggest waste of money we have right now, I think.
5. Get some points from credit card rewards from regular, not manufactured, spending.

Not strictly financial:

1. Have son reading very simple kids' books, and some menus/basic text in video games, by his fifth birthday (in October).
2. Develop something meaningful career-wise aside from my job, like an Android side project, or learning a new tech stack.
3. Get in better muscle shape.

# ¿ Dec 30, 2015 21:22

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# ¿ May 5, 2024 20:40

Cicero: Dec 17, 2003; Jumpjet, melta, jumpjet. Repeat for ten minutes or until victory is assured.

moana posted:

welp, look who's getting started early with her new year goals

Grats! Kids are the best! And the worst!

# ¿ Jan 2, 2016 21:27

Cicero: Dec 17, 2003; Jumpjet, melta, jumpjet. Repeat for ten minutes or until victory is assured.

Quarterly update.

Cicero posted:

Financial:

1. +60k net worth (~165k -> 225k)

Alright a hair over 200k, thanks to discovering a bunch of money in limbo in my Schwab account that personal capital wasn't counting.

quote:

2. Max out regular 401k contributions, after-tax 401k contributions (26k), IRAs for myself and wife for 2015 and 2016.

This turned out to be too aggressive of a goal. That would require...66k in contributions this year? And it looks like we're gonna be moving to Germany this year, so we need to save up some money in non-retirement savings/non-investment accounts for that. I at least plan to max out regular 401k contributions though, to get the full match for the year.

quote:

3. Go over spending consistently (right now this is scheduled for weekly, but even once a month I'd consider a success).

We've been somewhat consistent with this, doing it every few weeks, so mostly successful so far.

quote:

4. Tamp down on eating out by making it part of "personal spending" (this also involves an increase to the personal spending allocation, but we should still come out ahead savings-wise). This is the biggest waste of money we have right now, I think.

The wife really hates this and now it's gone. :geno:

quote:

5. Get some points from credit card rewards from regular, not manufactured, spending.

Yup, basically did this with an Alaska Airlines card, and now with a Chase Sapphire Preferred. Will probably get in one or two more Alaska Airlines cards in before we move since they're churnable.

quote:

Not strictly financial:

1. Have son reading very simple kids' books, and some menus/basic text in video games, by his fifth birthday (in October).

We've been working on reading (he loves the Big Dog Little Dog book) and he's definitely getting better. By his fifth birthday is an aggressive goal I think (especially since we've started to teach him some German), but I think we can get him reading some things by then.

quote:

2. Develop something meaningful career-wise aside from my job, like an Android side project, or learning a new tech stack.

lol nope, unless moving counts

quote:

3. Get in better muscle shape.

Have started working out some recently.

# ¿ Apr 2, 2016 01:41

Cicero: Dec 17, 2003; Jumpjet, melta, jumpjet. Repeat for ten minutes or until victory is assured.

quote:

1. +60k net worth (~165k -> 225k)
2. Max out regular 401k contributions, after-tax 401k contributions (26k), IRAs for myself and wife for 2015 and 2016.
3. Go over spending consistently (right now this is scheduled for weekly, but even once a month I'd consider a success).
4. Tamp down on eating out by making it part of "personal spending" (this also involves an increase to the personal spending allocation, but we should still come out ahead savings-wise). This is the biggest waste of money we have right now, I think.
5. Get some points from credit card rewards from regular, not manufactured, spending.

1. Hit that much earlier in the year and then mostly stalled, I think end of 2016 we were around 230-240 range? So success! Although I think a large portion of the bump was money sitting in a sort of subaccount in Schwab that I wasn't aware of until after I had set the goal.
2. Maxed our regular and after-tax 401k contributions. Ignored IRAs because we moved to Germany and I had to get that stuff done by September. Actually now that I think about it I could probably still dump money into backdoor roths for tax year 2016 huh? I'll look into it. Mostly success since the total 401k contribution limit dwarfs 2 IRAs.
3. lol no. Failure, maybe next year.
4. I think we tried this and then promptly gave up. Failure.
5. We did indeed get some points that we successfully used for flights, so success! Now that we live in Germany though it's going to be hard to play that game, although I can continue using what American CCs we have a lot of the time.

# ¿ Jan 13, 2017 13:02

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Ask/Tell > Business, Finance, and Careers > Financial Goals 2016: Saving for babby's first SA account