2006 has been a busy year for me. I was married on December 23, 2005 (I will count this as 2006), we went on our honeymoon to Italy in March, I had job issues, we had a very difficult time finding a house to buy, and just last week I switched jobs.
Now I think things will settle down a little so I can plan some financial goals for the new year.
1. Pump more money into our retirement accounts. We want to max out our Roth IRAs as well as increase our contributions to our 401ks (my new 401k has much better options than my current one).
2. Create an emergency fund of at least 6 months of expenses in case of a job loss, injury or some other major financial incident.
3. Wipe clean all my student loan and credit card debt. Neither amount is high, but I have been paying my student loan for almost 10 years so it will be nice to close that account permanently. My wife and I have put a little money on a 0% purchase credit card for furniture, but we should easily be able to pay that off in the next several months.
4. Save enough to do home improvements. Our house we purchased is 40 years old. It is in great condition, but like all houses it has a lot of small projects that need to be done as well as one big one–rehabbing the kitchen (it is the original). We want to be able to complete this without borrowing money.
5. Start a roof fund. When we bought the house we were told the roof was 6 years old; it is actually 12 years old and probably only has about 5 years left. Therefore, we need to start saving now for that eventuality.
6. Start investing outside of our retirement accounts. We hope to have enough to begin investing our non-retirement money in 2007. Unfortunately we have not been able to do that because we were saving for a down payment for a house for a long while.
These are some lofty goals. We might not reach them all in 2007, but we sure plan on trying our best.
I hope we all can reach our 2007 financial goals. Good luck to you and have a great 2007!
Take a look at others’ goals on Consumerism Commentary.
Check out pfblog’s financial goals for 2007.
Check out 2million’s net worth.
Moneysmartz has some tools to help you with your financial goals.
Personal Finance Advice has this to say about 2007.
[...] General Finance: My 2007 Financial Goals [...]
Sounds like you’ve had a year much like ours. I’m looking forward to finalizing our 2007 goals and enjoy reading the many plans posted at this time of year. Best of luck with the upcoming year.
[...] Debt reduction and a new home purchase (and associated costs) are on the horizon and specific tasks are needed to build a successful plan of action. [...]