I know we’re mid-way through the month here, but it somehow feels wrong to post it right away. Just like I hate going to the gym in January. Doesn’t matter if I’ve been going the entire previous year, I still feel like a poseur or a soon-to-be-drop-out.
Anyways, last year we did very well in our finances until about August, when it all feel apart–not in a rapidly spiraling decline, just in sloppiness. Burger King here, H&M trips there=no more paying off debt. But the FIRST half of last year we paid off three credit cards, kept relatively on budget, and got a full year of travel in, including flying three times and taking multiple road trips.
This year, however, we want to be very serious; we want to keep the end goal in sight, saying no to temporal things in light of the larger picture of what we want our lives to be like–both now and in the future. We want to stay on-budget, and keep paying off our debt slowly but surely, working our way to complete financial freedom.
Thus, our goals for 2009:
- Pay off three pieces of debt by the end of the year.
- Keep in our food budget…our hugest budget-black-hole last year.
And that’s it! Simple, easy to track, hopefully easy to work on.
When tempted to spend, I know I’ll keep reminding myself of our financial long term goals, telling myself that when we have kids, I want to stay home, and that’ll pretty much take no debt. That it’s SO much more fun to shop when I know there’s no loan that the money should go towards. That we’ll be able to free up money to do BETTER, bigger things with (hello, trip to the UK), and that we’ll be able to start putting even more towards retirement and rainy day savings. That we want to buy a single-family house, with land, here in New England. That we want my husband to get his PhD.
But that will all take starting NOW, and keeping a sober-minded awareness of all those pennies, nickels, and dimes. Which is obviously what we hope to do; I’m hoping to post a monthly-or-so financial update tracking our progress, or at least some ray of light for the next month!
