The 2008 Goals & Budget

When I started this blog in September, I didn't define any goals other than the basic and giant - PAY OFF ALL THE CONSUMER DEBT ALREADY! Now that 2007 is over and I can see the progress we've made already, it's time to think about 2008. After reading Need To Be Debt Free I saw that several commenters there had suggested JW create an annual budget to see when "unexpected" expenses might pop up. I'm pretty new to budgeting still, only starting in June, so I had never thought to make an annual budget. After seeing JW's example, I decided to try my hand at one. Here is a first cut:




Please comment on it to tell me where's it lacking, nicely please. Remember, this is my first time doing this. Here are some things you should know: 1 - our 401k contributions are taken out of our checks therefore the total income line you see is what we actually bring home 2 - our property taxes and homeowners insurance is escrowed 3 - I owe Jamison $155 and am paying back his basic savings account $15/month that is why the discrepancy in the kids' savings 4 - our house is only 2 years old so we don't anticipate much/any home repairs and if some come up we will pay them out of the emergency savings or out of our "other" category if we can. You should also know that all other charges (haircuts, entertainment, etc.) comes out of the "other" category each month. The exciting part is seeing which months we can really go at our debt. Of course those are the 3 paycheck months. And any survey payments, ad revenue, craigslist sales and monthly budget surplus will be snowflaked to debt as well. Also, this budget doesn't take into account any income tax refund (which I expect but not sure how much yet) or annual salary raises (which I also expect but am not sure how much). After I put together this annual budget, I started playing around with our debts to see how low I could get them with this kind of debt payment schedule. That was pretty exciting! And it also helped me create some 2008 goals. So, without further adieu, here are my 2008 financial goals:

1 - Pay off the credit cards by the end of September 2008

2 - Reduce our HELOC loan to under $11k by year end

3 - Reduce our student loans to under $3k by year end

If we were able to do this, our total debt should be under $14k by year end! That would be awesome! And we would have half our debt paid off at that point, except for our mortgage of course. It's a long road ahead still, but just look at all the progress to be made in 2008!