Post your financial goals for 2018

[corn18]

For us, it's simple:

$1M in savings. We're at $800k right now.

We are at $1,056,148 in savings. I think we might hit $1M in retirement savings which was a stretch goal.

[disneysteve]

We are at $1,056,148 in savings.

Funny but our number is almost exactly the same.

Yours is going to quickly outpace ours though.

[Singuy]

800k in total savings with retirement added in. Was hoping to hit a mil but I screwed up one of my stocks

[Gailete]

You still have 4 months left! Think positive!

[Jluke]

Resist the temptation to pay extra on the new mortgage.

Then the usual Roth (max it) and 401k (15k) goals.

On track to eliminate one car payment in 2018 - $450/month i won’t have to spend

Failed: Paid extra on the mortgage (no surprise) each month so far.

Roth was maxed in January and on track for 18,500 contribution in 401k this year even with new mortgage.

Car was also paid off in January.

475k between 401k and Roth.

[disneysteve]

I haven't set any formal goals.

That said, as long as the market cooperates, I hope to join you with a $1M portfolio. We're around $970,000 at the moment.

I want to pay down our HELOC. It is currently about 14K and we will probably draw another 7K next month for tuition. After that, I'm hoping we can pay at least $1,000/month on it if not more.

It's always interesting to look back.

We hit and continue to move past the $1 million mark in our portfolio. We're up around $1,075,000 as of the last time I checked.

We did not need to draw any more from our HELOC for tuition last year and we were able to completely pay off the HELOC recently.

So both goals accomplished and it's only August.

[james.hendrickson]

We are at $1,056,148 in savings. I think we might hit $1M in retirement savings which was a stretch goal.

Great job guys!

[Singuy]

I'm actually extremely happy with the solo business 401k I've set up for the wife. It's pretty amazing how you much you can choose to "match" when it's your own business..basically up to 35% of her salary!

So her solo 401k account went from 0 to over 80k in just 3 years

[comicguy]

Update time

New to the forum but have been doing some reading over the last 6 months or so. I figure if I put out my goals public then I will be more likely to maintain them.

Anyway, here are my financial Goals for 2018:

Eliminate last 900 dollars of student loans (tried to get this done in 2017 but just came up a bit short) Done back in Feb!

Increase DRIP stocks value to 5000
Current value 2100 Now at 4450

Increase 403b value to 75,000
Current value 60,000 currently 72844

Keep Emergency fund above 10,000 currently 14,000

Decrease eating out budget to: (1 morning and 1 evening per week + special occasions) Been pretty much holding to this with just a few exceptions

Continue saving 50/ week for vacation $50 weekly with no problems! some weeks was able to add some extra, currently 2250

Cut Discretionary Spending by 20% not so god here, was able to cut some bills down (cell phone, garbage) but now paying for son and soon to be DIL wedding fortunately they want an inexpensive wedding but still about 5,000 out of pocket

[scfr]

The big 3 are:
1. Contribute same percentages to tax-deferred retirement savings.
2. Maintain health insurance (losing employer-supplemented coverage Jan 1 with a decade to go until Medicare eligible)
3. Make decision about relocation

Lots of other small ones, but these 3 are the "biggies."

Numbers one and two achieved.
"Two out of three ain't bad" - Meatloaf

[MooseBucks]

Most importantly incur $0 in medical expenses
$100k in retirement accounts
Continue to pay all CCs in full monthly
Knock 6 extra payments off mortgage
Continue to fund children's 529 on target
End the year with more in taxable accounts then I started
Spend a bunch on vacations and making lifelong memories with my family

Well as I figured failed on the medical expenses but at least it wasn’t anything too major yet.

On target for 150k in retirement. (Not sure why I said 100k should have been 150k.

Still paying all cc in full.

Not going to knock 6 payments off as we are planning on moving and we’ve been putting most of what we’d been paying extra on mortgage into a separate account to have a significant down payment before we sell our place.

529s are on target still.

Taxable accounts increasing has yet to be determined.

Just got got back from vacation and have another planned for the EOY. Should be a great time.

[Scallywag]

We only have $35K in savings and $330K in two different ROTH IRAs (one of which was an old 401K rollover). We have $110K in a traditional IRA (also a 401K rollover), $55K in a current ROTH 401K and $50K in a traditional 401K.

In total : $385K in Roth accounts, $160K in pre-tax accounts and just $35K in savings.

Not much when compared to others here. My hope is to hit 1M in next 2 years. I am told that 1M doesn't go far these days so that really really worries me.

We don't own a home yet which is another fear i have. We don't want to be renters for life but we can't afford a house in California yet. I just hope and pray we're able to retire some day. At the moment, with these figures, it looks almost impossible

[Gailete]

" I just hope and pray we're able to retire some day. At the moment, with these figures, it looks almost impossible " You need to look at it as a glass half full than one that is half empty. If I am looking at your numbers correctly, you are doing great and are way ahead of the average American. My husband and I with our little bit of savings compared to yours are also ahead of the normal American. Most of them don't have a dollar towards retirement. I suspect many of them were more interested in cable TV and cellphones for the whole family than putting even $50/month into savings. But you have a great start and with smart moves and paying attention to what you are doing, you can still achieve your dreams.

[Scallywag]

Hi Gailete,

Thank you for responding.

Thing is, we're both in our mid 40s and have a child with autism who will probably need to be supported for life by us. After us, it would be a combination of his father's whole life insurance policy payout, SSDI, dividend or interest income etc. This is why we feel like we're going to have to work for a long long time so that our boy will always have a roof over his head and food on his table even if he never works a day in his life, bless his loving heart. This is also why I am anal about moving all my money into Roth accounts so that he never has to liquidate any assets to pay off taxes and can live on these investments for life.

I am actually jealous of people who can afford to be more concerned about cable and cell phone plans for the whole family !!

[Gailete]

I'm 62 and my autistic boy turned 35 this past week. Thankfully he through a lot of hard work is living on his own, has his own job, handles his own money, drives, and gets involved in everything he can as he hates being alone! He has changed so much from his younger self, that is for sure. I used to despair about him. When he was ten he finally, kind of learned to tie his shoes. He worked at a grocery store for years and managed the frozen foods department. One day an old lady came down his isle with her shoes untied. He got down and tied them for her. He just casually mentioned it one day and it was all I could do not to cry. I get tears in my eyes even now thinking of it. I thought at one time that I would also have him for life, tieing his shoes for him when he was 50, especially since his father who was also autistic (my diagnosis) and with mental health problems never saw that he had a problem and his dad's family didn't like me mentioning it as it was 'embarrassing'. I think now that they can see how far he has come, that what I did for him and with him was okay.

With my son, I learned that for just about everything, I had to go through the 'back door' to reach him. In other words what is normal and usual for raising a kid, isn't necessarily what will work with an autistic child. If you ever need to talk about things, PM me, I would be glad to help if possible.

[Gailete]

Hoping to get our rental property completely paid off in about 4-5 months at this point. We owe less than $1700 at this point.

Work on paying off credit card bills and paying extra on the mortgage.

I need to take the time to check into insurance premiums on the car and home to see if we can get some savings there.

See if I can find some other sources of income. I got a few leads on that.

Got the rental property paid off by April, upon which our renter started not paying the rent on any kind of schedule. Now we are the point of needing to evict him for non-payment and then glory-be hubby is willing to put the place up for sale! He physically just can't handle dealing with renters where paying their rent is the last thing on the list of things to spend money on instead of the first.

Except one month, so far I think I have paid an extra $51 on our house mortgage every month, so that is making some progress.

We have managed to get the insurance for the car, house and rental property down by around $2000/year.

I have as much as possible been paying off on the credit card bills. Most of this years expenses have been paid with cash, but 'back-paying' everything is rough.

Just checked my savings accounts at Capital One and the two, one a Roth IRA and one my stock portfolio, are now worth as of close of market today (and I do know that they can go up and down) $13,130. What you have to understand is that these were funded from profits from my online business for the most part. Sometimes only $35-45/month! We also have IRA's for both of us, not in this account, but doing well. I guess the Capital One accounts I'm proud of for even when things were tight, making sure something went in and for the most part making good picks. The one account is up 31% over the time it has been open, and the Roth account is mostly a mutual fund that is up 17.42% since the beginning. Over the course of time the actual dollar amounts have gone up well over $2K. Obviously not as great as some of those that are in the 7 figure club, but for those that are struggling and having a hard time making ends meet, a chance to see that others that are having a hard time with their finances, you can save and as you keep doing it steadily, those amounts grow.

One of the things that I have had an easier time doing this year is finding ways to save money and not so much making money. Part of the problem is my health that I get wiped out by the end of the day, when I normally would still be working at things.

[amastewa93]

Main financial goals in 2018: working on increasing my credit score, paying down my student loan debt, opening a retirement fund.

As always, I'll also be saving money (currently saving for a 20% down payment on a home).

My credit score has gone up about 20 points this year.

However, paying down debt and saving hasn't been going well. We were bumped down to one income in mid-June and it has been fairly trying financially. My other half should have a job in October but catching back up and getting our emergency savings back in place will be the main goal. Then we will start tackling debt again and opening retirement funds.

[breathemusic]

Ugh... all my goals are spending goals. LOL.

My partner and I want to re-do our stone patio and one of the flower beds to put in a garden. We have more smaller house projects that we'd like to knock out. I'm hoping to get proposed to, and then probably actually get married next year. And then we have a vacation membership (sorta like a timeshare but not exactly) that we'd like to pay off, in addition to actually booking a trip or 2 through it.

But really, the goal will be to do all these things and NOT deplete our savings. So just do it with the income that we generate throughout the year while continuing to contribute our usual to retirement.

Oh, and the biggest change of all being that my partner is trying to start up his own business and leave his current organization and convert them into one of his clients instead.

Goals are such fickle things. We haven't spent as much as I thought we would since we're taking FOREVER to get projects done.... but we've also had some major life changes happen. Partner had a goal of starting up his own business on the side and hopefully transitioning his work.... well then his CEO let his entire department go with no notice and outsourced the IT department after planning it for 9 months behind his back. Joke is on them though since he got a pretty nice severance package, and they had a basically non-existent transition plan and are struggling (not a shocker since my partner custom programmed several of their business solutions himself, and wasn't just some random dude fixing broken printers. I swear people make the most idiotic decisions around IT by thinking they know what IT people do and actually having no clue). ANYWAY.... so now partner is basically building his business full time, living off his severance, and we're hoping to have basically replaced his old income stream with new income stream by the time the severance runs out.... we'll see.

So at this point, my savings has basically stayed the same this year, but his has pretty much stopped until we get through this transition period.

[amastewa93]

ANYWAY.... so now partner is basically building his business full time, living off his severance, and we're hoping to have basically replaced his old income stream with new income stream by the time the severance runs out.... we'll see.

So at this point, my savings has basically stayed the same this year, but his has pretty much stopped until we get through this transition period.

Wishing you the best of luck with the business development. At least your savings are maintaining, even though his aren't. We hit quite a financial snag this year as well that has put a serious dent in our savings as well as put a stop to a number of our goals for the year, unfortunately. You've got the right attitude though - just keeping looking forward