2017 Goals Check In

In January, I made three financial goals for this year: first was to get out of credit card debt, second was to end the year with $10000 in the bank, and third was to get one month ahead with our finances.

So far, I haven’t met any of these goals. :(

But, that doesn’t mean I haven’t made any progress because I have. First of all, I have created our baby emergency fun which will help to keep us from falling further into debt. We also have not added to our overall debt and have even actually paid down a little bit from where we were on the first of the year.  We’ve even added a small pittance to our savings.

The way I have structured my goals, it makes it really hard to reach goals 2 and 3 until I have completed goal 1. However, in many ways, goals 2 and 3 will also be reached simultaneously. $10000 is just about the amount of money we need to be a month ahead.

Each paycheck we receive I am transferring $50 into our savings account. It’s a small amount, but with that amount, we are slowly increasing our savings and slowly paying back our children’s accounts. We owe both of our kids’ money, however, they are at the bottom of the list to be paid back because their accounts aren’t accruing any interest against us. We get three paychecks a month. With each one, I deposit $50 into one of our three savings accounts: mine, The Boy’s and The Girl’s. These slow deposits are helping us reach our goal 2.

Of course, we are working towards goal 1, too, but that is slow going. We send all our extra money at the end of the month to the credit card. Sometimes the extra money is a lot. For example, this month, it will be over $500. Some months, we have just a few dollars extra to throw towards our debt. I still have a super stretch goal of being debt free by our anniversary in May, but I don’t know if it’s feasible. We’ll have to wait and see.

When I picked my goals this year, I really tried to choose goals that would be reachable and work at the same time. I also didn’t want to have so many goals that by trying to reach them all, I wouldn’t reach any of them. While it remains to be seen if I was successful or not, I definitely think I am on the right track. If I am lucky enough to reach any or all of these goals, I can always reevaluate and add or change my goals as necessary in the future; but one step at a time.