In the past two weeks I have started a new job which increased my income, decreased my medical costs while adding in dental and vision, and set up an HSA for the deductible. That’s three of my temporary goals in one shot. I finished my second job since it was seasonal, and my old job is now becoming a night job which, hopefully, once things get settled, it will be just one night a week.

It was a hard decision - hard to make, hard to implement, and hard to let go. I basically have been working three weeks straight with this last week being all three jobs. I’m tired, but excited about the change.

Happily, I finally get to make concrete goals! Here are my 2012 Goals:

1) Complete a checking cushion of $500. This will help with small unexpected expenses and cash flow.

2) Complete a Puppy Fund of $750. This will help save up for her one year shots coming up, and any unexpected expenses that have a habit of popping up.

3) Payoff Student Loan B. I’ve renumbered the Student Loans from last year. The lettered ones are the direct loan ones that were broken out into subsidized/unsubsidized groups. Student Loan B only had $500 when I listed my dream goals in January. Now it’s down to $250. Since we’re still in grace/deferment, I’ve taken the amount we’d pay monthly, applied it to the outstanding interest, and the remainder to the principle. I’ll be excited to see this little one gone.

4) Payoff Student Loan C. There is $1750 left on it right now, and it’s the second smallest we have.

5) Complete the emergency fund. There is $1500 in it right now, but as I’ve said before, I’d like this to be $3000 where I’ll feel more comfortable. This is already set up on auto save and should be done by the end of the year.

6) I want to have a fully furnished HSA by the end of the year. In order to this, I set it up with my job to withdraw more than the deductible by the end of the year so I’ll have some extra for next year, even if I have to use the full deductible.

7) Save for a real live vacation where we travel somewhere that we haven’t been. This might be funded by the extra income we might find this year, and not by any auto savings. I’m not sure yet.

As usual, I have some dream world goals. We might get to parts of these, but probably not. They will be in my mind as the year goes by.

1) Payoff Student Loan D, $3100 left.
2) Payoff Student Loan 1, $3600 left.
3) Payoff Car Loan 1, $7200 left.
4) Payoff Student Loan A, $8525 left.
5) Complete Car Fund to $2000.
6) Complete Moving Fund to $1500.

Oh, and my February Goals are:
1) Get a handle on my new job.
2) Kill Student Loan B.
3) Pack lunches at least 15 days.

I haven’t written much (despite my love for setting goals (New Year’s requires new goals!)), because, oie, the last 4 or 5 weeks have been a little chaotic:

There was the second job (finally!).
Followed by the two weeks of sickness hell (I have blocked out the memory).
Followed by the week of exhaustion from recovery and year end work (not sure how I did it).
Followed by the week of chaos with changes at work and a major family holiday (thank goodness I wasn’t sick this week).
Followed by catchup in every aspect of life (still catching up).

Throw in some interesting possible changes (that I can’t go into yet) with a dash of everyone else getting sick and a sprinkle of taking over another person’s job temporarily, and…

*whew*

I have not been able to sit down and figure out my goals very clearly yet. And the interesting possible changes will throw the goals out the window and require a new set.

On a side note: I could use some good mojo the next few days to swing the changes in my favor. I really hope the changes will come through, but if they don’t, what’s meant to be, is meant to be.


I can tell you my vague 2012 goals though…

1) I’d like to increase our family income somehow. My second job has allowed us to purchase a few things we really need, but were pretending we didn’t, but it hasn’t really allowed us to save. They didn’t give me enough hours like they said they would.

2) I’d like to decrease the amount we pay for our health. I pay way too much monthly for a high deductible plan. Our medical right now is between a third and a half of my gross income. I need to find some way to decrease it.

3) I’d like to put some more into our EF. I found that I am more comfortable with $3000 in our EF than I am with only $1500.

4) I’d like to constantly put some money into our health deductible fund. Right now we’re putting in $75/month, which is a start, but not nearly enough.


Of course, I have other goals floating around in my head that I’d like to accomplish, but without any concrete way to tackle them, I think I’ll let them float temporarily.