Annual Goal Revision & Update

I thought it was time as i'm getting back on track to review our annual goals and make some amendments now that we are pregnant. This way we can get a good look at what we want to do with our income instead of somehow letting it slip through our fingers.

The original 14 for 2014:

1. Max out a Roth IRA for SCB for 2013 
2. Respect the Dirty Dozen and buy Organic 
3. Keep our EF in tack and round it up to $12,500.00
4. Participate in the Dumbo Double Dash w/ SCB 
5. Max out my Roth IRA for 2014
6. Max out SCB Roth IRA for 2014
7. Try to live off my income and save/invest SCB's. 
8. Visit family in Nauvoo Illinois
9. Save $1,000 towards a new car
10. Remodel our bedroom and closet.
11. Try 3 new vegetables
12. Toss a little more money to the mortgage
13. Be an awesome bridesmaid
14. Be better about doing more "Mormon" things.

I crossed off the items we have finished or are still doing...

We did meet the deadline for the 2013 Roth IRA for SCB and transferred $5,500 into a brand new shiny retirement account for him.

In an effort to get healthy, we have been buying mostly organic items, but definitely those from the dirty dozen list. There may have been a month or so in my pregnancy were it wasn't 100% followed, but I say its been a good change for us.

Our emergency Fund is sitting at $12,500.00, which is 6 months of a bare bone budget scenario where we pay just our mortgage, groceries, gasoline, 1 cell phone, utility bills, and save for our annual insurance, dog savings, medical savings, and our car registration savings. If you factor in the additional $2k we have as "padding in our checking accounts" we have a realistic 6 month Emergency fund if we were to both lose our jobs at the same time. The only thing this doesn't factor in is health insurance... which now it needs to with the new legal requirements. If only one of us loses a job, our emergency fund will stretch much further since we would still have income coming in and access to some type of health insurance for our family, so I won't worry about that for the moment. The problem would be if we both lose our jobs because we would only have one option for health insurance... Covered California.

• The cheapest plan would be $507 a month based on our area prices, which means we would need to save an additional $3,000 to have a true 6 month emergency fund since I don't like to include the checking account padding in the figures... (looks like I have our first 2015 goal in mind.)

We had to cross off the dumbo double dare when it sold out... and we ended up eating over $300 in our 1/2 marathon tickets because of our little goober and the august heat that made doing the 1/2 marathon a bad decision for me and SCB.

We also removed both goals for 2014 Roth IRA's. Its more important to get things done now and to save up cash if we can for the EF and for the baby for 2014 before attempting these items again. We are still doing SCB's 401k 6% with a 3% match... and my Pension which is about 8% of my income.

I think we have done well with only committing to expenses that fit within my income (AKA living on my income and saving SCB's)... I'll admit that we had a few spendy months recently, but we are getting back on track and its a good thing too with the holidays coming around the corner.

Some of our goals this year did focus on spending. We went on a vacation to visit family, finished most of the bedroom and closet remodel, spent the money on being an awesome bridesmaid, and spent more than 1600 on automobile repairs this year. I'm proud to say we have $400 in car emergency fund now. It might not be the full $1,000.00 we want, but considering how much we had to spend, i'm calling that goal achieved.

We did try 3 new veggies this year.. Jicama, Kale and fresh green beans. Technically I've had fresh green beans at restaurants or at friends houses, but I'd never cooked and prepared them and I did this year so for me, that counts.

As for more "church/Mormon things" we have been to 4 different temples this year besides our home temple in Newport (Nauvoo, San Diego, Mount Timpanogous, Draper, etc). Did some work and family history for my ancestors, and have made a point to make daily prayer with each other a bigger priority. Always room for improvement, but I like what we have been up to.

I didn't mark off "send some extra to the mortgage" because while i add a few cents each month, i've only tossed around $14 to the mortgage in extra and I feel in order to do that goal justice, it needs to be a bit more significant.

So where does that leave us?
Kind of done, (other than sending a bit of cash to the mortgage which doesn't seem as important at the moment so i'll probably just ignore it for the year...)... which is why its good to check on your goals throughout the year. Sometimes they change... and sometimes you blow through them early by being diligent. Sure, we deleted 11,000 in saving that we wanted to do... but we realistically knew that would probably need to carry over into 2015 again.

Since we still have 2 and a half months left of 2014... and we want to make the most of them, here's kind of our game plan.

• In October, Goober's nest/nook will be ready for furniture and baby stuff. 
• In November, SCB will get the murphy bed frame for our bedroom... and we plan to do a large food storage order to stock up on some better and more diverse basics now that we will have a bigger family and we like the idea of having more basics around the house to help keep costs down throughout the year. 
• In December I plan to have our carpets professionally cleaned because we have had the carpet for over 5 years and its never been cleaned before and some spots and walk ways are really showing their age and some stains. 

But here's the kicker. We would also like to add $2k to the emergency fund by the end of the year. 

• We are going to take the Roth IRA money we normally save and put it towards the Emergency Fund: October, November, December = $825.00
• We have $300 sitting in the Roth savings account right now after pulling most of the money out for our IKEA run... $825 + $300 = $1,125.00
• I have an extra paycheck coming in this month. We are hoping to take $800 from it and apply it to this goal. 
• That means we only need $75 to make it there and we are hoping by being good with our budget that we will be able to come up with that cash by years end.

If we save more, awesome... but we aren't planning to since we don't know how much we will end up spending as we finish projects up and we hunt for some more second hand things for the nursery nook.