Financial Goals 2017: Budget Harder

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Ask/Tell > Business, Finance, and Careers > Financial Goals 2017: Budget Harder

AndrewP: Apr 21, 2010

Let's take a look at my goals from last year :

AndrewP posted:

- Set up a budget and stick to it. nah

- Pay off wife's car. Loan is done in September but might see what we can do to get this wrapped up faster. yeah, paid it off but not early

- Have a $6k emergency fund. I mean we reliably have at least 6k in the bank, so yeah sure

- Set up a Roth IRA. Should have done this sooner. nope

- Smaller thing, but I want to FINALLY combine checking accounts for me and my wife. Been putting this off because I need to change my direct deposit and all of my autopays, but this will make things so much easier. nope

- Lifestyle change - eat out less, get into the habit of cooking every night. SO MUCH of our money goes into eating out, because we live in a city and can walk to a ton of great restaurants. Bad habit, gotta kick it. we got Blue Apron so probably did this a bit but we still eat out plenty

Okay, so I pretty much sucked this past year in terms of these goals.

New goals:

- IRAs! I am GOING TO SET THEM UP THIS YEAR GODDAMMIT and max them out.

- move everything to one joint checking account. I'm actively working on this now so this is almost done finally. we've been married for over 4 years and we still have a separate checking accounts which is as stupid in practice as it is in theory

- Pay off my car. It's like 1300 bucks and the interest rate is tiny but it'd be nice to just be done with it. Probably get this done after the IRA is set up.

- Pay off most/all of my student loans. like $7800 total and the payments are very manageable but I'd like to be done with them.

- go out to eat less :haw:

AndrewP fucked around with this message at 05:59 on Feb 2, 2017

# ¿ Feb 2, 2017 05:56

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# ¿ May 5, 2024 02:59

AndrewP: Apr 21, 2010

moana posted:

This takes like what, an hour? Get it done this weekend and max it for last year before you file your taxes. DO IT DO IT DO IT NOW

Huh, I didn't realize I could still do this for last year. Probably can't max it out right now but I can put a good chunk in. Thanks for the tip.

# ¿ Feb 3, 2017 14:38

AndrewP: Apr 21, 2010

AndrewP posted:

Let's take a look at my goals from last year :

Okay, so I pretty much sucked this past year in terms of these goals.

New goals:

- IRAs! I am GOING TO SET THEM UP THIS YEAR GODDAMMIT and max them out.

- move everything to one joint checking account. I'm actively working on this now so this is almost done finally. we've been married for over 4 years and we still have a separate checking accounts which is as stupid in practice as it is in theory

- Pay off my car. It's like 1300 bucks and the interest rate is tiny but it'd be nice to just be done with it. Probably get this done after the IRA is set up.

- Pay off most/all of my student loans. like $7800 total and the payments are very manageable but I'd like to be done with them.

- go out to eat less

I'm gonna update these because maybe I'll actually, like, do them

- IRA: Setting my wife up with a 2050 Target Date Vanguard Roth IRA. Going to put $2500 in it for 2016 and then have an auto-payment of ~$450 a month to max it out from then on.

- Set up an auto-payment of $500 a month to my TSP. Along with what I already contribute + matching this should be close to maxing it out

- Fix my tax withholding - usually we owe on federal and get a state refund that balances it out. This year the taxes on last year's refund means we net owe like $650. This blows. I need to withhold more.

- ~~joint checking account~~

- Extra $500 a month toward student loans to kill them this year

- Probably just pay my car off on schedule in like 4 months. It has such a paltry interest rate anyway.

- Limit eating out to $300 a month. and bring my lunch to work most days.

- Call Comcast and ATT to try to get a lower monthly bill. Somehow I'm paying like $200 per month for each and that seems insane. Actually I think I'm just cancelling cable altogether.

- Sign up for the Chase Sapphire Reserve card so I can get 100,000 bonus points to help offset the cost of one of our trips this year.

# ¿ Feb 5, 2017 19:09

AndrewP: Apr 21, 2010

pig slut lisa posted:

Can still apply in branch through March 12, unless I missed some news

what I'm banking on

e: heh

# ¿ Feb 7, 2017 00:29

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Ask/Tell > Business, Finance, and Careers > Financial Goals 2017: Budget Harder