The Good Life on a Budget

• Posted by JvW on January 19th, 2009 filed in Uncategorized

I know this is a little late, but hey, just the other day I was still writing 2008 on some notes. Better late than never!

Many many things happened in the first few months of 2008 that derailed our 2008 goals and caused a little restructuring. We have still made great progress, but 2008 turned out to be more of a rebuilding year than the championship season. We are set up for quite the 2009! Now,our stats & how we stacked up against our goals:

1. Wipe out credit card debt. We paid off $13,286.99 in credit card debt and became credit card debt free! We also paid $13,511.72 in principal to our other debts.
2. Build our Emergency Fund. The goal was to have $5000 in the bank set aside for a rainy day. Big fat failure on this front. We have not even gone so far as to set up an e-fund. This goal is being pushed into 2009.
3. Open a 401(k) with my company. I opened up my 401(k) in July and have contributed $1,615.87 myself and $807.94 has been contributed by my company.  Even though my 401(k) value has dropped 4.5% already in 2009, I am still up the $807.94 my company sent to the account.
4. Open Roth IRAs for my husband and me. Nope.
5. Start paying down our second mortgage. This one got a little adjusted, since we’re now planning on moving sooner as my husband switched jobs. We didn’t get this far down the line anyway, but instead of being pushed into 2009 we will now focus on saving a down payment.

So given all the circumstances, I am happy with 2008. The next year is going to be very interesting!