Goals for 2011

I had an entire post lined up for 2011, but seeing as i'm now engaged, those goals are going to have to be tweaked!!!

Looking back at this past year, I achieved all of my financial goals, and most of my personal ones. With a wedding on the way, I'm not too sure how much further along we will be able to get as 2011 will be a transition year financially as we settle in to our new lives together. =)

My Fiance will be 100% debt free by the time we stroll down our rose petal isle, and since the only debt we have is the mortgage on the condo, this should help us start our marriage off on the right foot. =)

So here are the plans:

Pay off the Wedding and Reception, and Honeymoon with Cash
We have a very generous gift from my mother of $5,000 grand to use for the wedding and reception, but that won't be cash that we will be getting immediately... Most likely I will be pulling money out of the ef, and having it replaced in a few months.

Get the mortgage below $112,000.00
As long as we keep with the current plan of at least an extra payment a year, this should happen on target according to the spreadsheets.

Max out my Roth IRA
This will be the year I return to mutual funds by opening a Vanguard account.

Finish Buying back my old Retirement...
This is an automated goal, but my elected paycheck deductions will stop mid way through 2011.

Keep my Emergency fund intact
With the wedding, I doubt i'll be able to stock more money aside, and when Fiance moves out to California, he will need to find a job to replace the one he has in Utah. Yes, he has a job lined up to start early Spring in Utah, so when he goes back to Utah in January, he's just going to get a retail job or mutiple part time jobs because he will be taking a symester off school to work (So he can save relocation costs up, money for the honeymoon, and pay back the $2,000.00 he has borrowed from his family for some car repairs, 2 symesters worth of books, and some other smaller non avoidable things he couldn't cover with the minimal income he had coming in.)

The hardest goal on here will be keepting the ef intact. We will have around a month and a half of us just living on one income before the wedding when he moves out to California. After the honeymoon, my then Husband will be job hunting (or hopefully starting a job he was able to apply for and get before the honeymoon). Once we are married, Hubby will go on my health insurance, so we will no longer be able to cash out the additional benefits like I currently do... and we'll have to pay a bit out of pocket for dental and vision...

Instead of getting $176.00 added to my paychecks, we'll be paying an additional $57.00... but i will have finished buying my old retirement by the time the honeymoon is over, which will stop the $33.06 from coming out of paychecks like it does right now.

Combined that with Married tax brackets, (claiming one federal & zero for the state)
It's a loss of around $140.00 a month.

If we claim 2 federally its a loss of $100.00 a month.

If we claim 2 federally, and 2 locally, its a loss of $70.00 a month.

Thankfully I was a smart cookie when I bought my condo and its something we can afford. We should be able to cover all of our necessary bills with my income, and we are hoping to live frugally the first couple years of marriage and save virtually all of the money that my hubby to be will make. (with paying down the mortgae or throwing a bunch at the emergency fund.

I'll be working on a livable wedding budget with fiance in a few weeks when he's in California for the holidays.... in addition to a million things we need to decide for the wedding. Guess the holidays just got a whole lot busier...