Annual goals for 2013

Once a year my husband and I sit down (after much convincing and prodding on my end... and lots of promises to be brief) to draft our annual goals and work together on figuring out what we want to be doing this year...  and how we are going to get there.

This way we both get a say in what's going on... and we have a financial plan that only has to be reviewed once a month for about 10 minutes at "our family budget meeting"... which is just about all SCB can handle when it comes to talking about money.  

So what are these lofty goals? Well in our monthly budget post, we hinted that this will be the year of the mortgage and man are we hoping so! SCB will hopefully get a job this year and when that happens it will be all about paying off our mortgage as fast as possible to finally take a shot at refinancing our mortgage. 

Our annual goals are going to be a little bit different this year. We made a list of priorities and are going to work our way down and stick to it! The first 2 goal are so important that we built them into our budget to make sure they don't fall through the cracks:

• Make one extra Mortgage payment this year: $650.64
• Put at least 15% of our income into retirement & at least $5,000 into a Roth IRA.

The next goals are going to hopefully be met as we are able to live within our means, find ways of getting extra money coming in, and hopefully blasted away when SCB can get a job.

• Replace the money we borrowed from savings for the 2012 Car Repairs: $571.83
• Put money aside to cover the annual bills we just paid or shortly will:
• $81 SCB's Car Registration
• $108 SCG's Car Registration
• $60 Car SMOG Check 
• Save $300 to upgrade our computer that's been having issues lately.
• Save $100 to fix a few things on Wanda "our 22 year old clunker"
• Save $500 to go camping with the family in southern Utah this summer
• Save ?????? to finally fix and finish the second half of SCB's dental... because i'm a bad wife and totally forgot about this last year for some reason...
• Save $1,000.00 for future car repairs and the start of a car replacement fund.
• Save $300 for a winter trip out to Utah to visit family.

After that, we will be throwing everything we have at our mortgage to try and get it under $93,600.00 (it's at $110,521.93) so we can refinance. 

But what would annual goals be without the fun no financial goals? So in 2013 I will:

1. Find something new to crochet-- sweater, pattern, anything.
2. Sew something from scratch or repurpose something I was going to toss out into something I'd wear.
3. Cook or try to cook 6 new things or recipes
4. Read 6 books
5. Loose 6 lbs
6. Change my last credit card to my married name
7. Grow a garden with my neighbor
8. Complete a half marathon in 3 hours and 30 minuets or less.