2022 Goals - mid year check in

[simpsongal]

pandce.proboards.com/thread/630613/2022-mm-goals-intentions

We might have had an original checkin too.  How's it going?  Figured it was a good time to check in since the fed announced a 3/4 point interest rate hike today.

[simpsongal]

We're doing good - expenses were a little higher the first half of the year as I finished up some house projects and added some new expensive priorities (vacation & party).  We're really hoping to make big dents in our HELOC and save some money in the back half of the year.  Bolded text is the June update:

1. Pay down heloc from bathroom Reno. Not sure how much but it’s like $65k, so half would be awesome.  
Well it creeped up a bit more ($67K+?) for the office cabinets and something else, but we're finally paying it down.  It's at $59K and the interest rate hike is lighting a fire under us to pay it off quickly (variable rate loan).

2. Fund kids’ 529s $4k each.
DONE

3. Estate plan - make will or trust
nope....this might be a next year project

4. Set up advanced directives for mom. Figure out her estate and finances
nope....maybe in the fall?  I need to be w/her and have time, that hasn't happened yet.  I'm starting to figure out her rental house, we need to sell it.  That may come first, but medical directives and POA are important.

5. Rebuild savings
hehe, nope (but see other things getting funded....) 

6. Look into extending term of our life insurance
DONE for DH - with a better rate too.  I got rejected for stupid reasons.  I could try again, maybe next year.

7. Invest some money in landscaping now that the cicadas are gone. (trees that need time to grow).
Some - planted a few trees and new things.  Spent a long of time and some money on house stuff in preparation for the party.

I have some diy projects in mind for next year too. Hoping I can keep costs low to focus on debt repayment. Dd finishes preschool in the spring too - my last baby in daycare ($$$$).

New goals added  
8. Big surprise birthday bash for DH - DONE! ($2700)
9. Big family vacation w/nice rental home, flights, etc. ($6K) (August, mostly paid for)

[trissie18]

Update


1. Pay off all debt except mortgage and auto loans. This should be easily accomplished by fall and includes mainly 0% stuff that I just want gone to free up some monthly cash. This will be done in November 2022 with one debt being paid in full each month between now and then.


2. Contribute to non-retirement investments and 529's. We are on track to start allocating $1k/month in July towards these items. Not sure it will be $1k/month in 2022 as I am aggressively working on #1 but I have a call with our financial advisor tomorrow to discuss how much I can afford to allocate starting this month since everything is "on sale" in his words. We will be doing $1-1.2k starting in January 2023.


3. Build our two front porches that we put off from 2021 and slowly start finishing our mudroom now that we pretty much know what we want to do. Will pay cash for these. We purchased all of the supplies for the front porches a couple weeks ago and just waiting on my brother to schedule time in his calendar to build them this summer. The mudroom will probably be on hold until 2023.


4. Get our efund and our vacation fund to $X each. Thanks to a huge counteroffer DH accepted a couple weeks ago to remain with his current company we will have at least 1/3 if not 1/2 of our end goal in savings at the end of the year.


5. Hopefully close out DH's worker's comp case from 2020 and use the lump sum to purchase a whole house generator and help with the above goals. Still no movement.

[Susie]

I didn't have concrete goals, but we've made some progress, both in expected and unexpected areas.

I don't know when my next opportunity will be to buy another share in my firm, but I want to be ready to negotiate that when the time comes.  We've started that negotiation process, but I think it's going to take a while.  I'm earmarking money to be tentatively available for my capital contribution.

I'd like to increase what we're saving in the kids' 529s.  I did increase the monthly auto transfer amount for each kid.  It could still go up more, but progress.

We should start investing outside of retirement.  Haven't done much of this.

Bonus item:  H transferred agencies for a promotion.  It's not a ton more money, but we'll take it.

Bonus item:  We signed a contract to replace all the windows in our house, plus one patio door.  It is a $$$$ project, but we have the cash in hand for it.  We're doing 0% for one year just for the flexibility, but will be in a position to pay it off before any interest accrues.  The windows in our house are really inefficient and in poor condition, so it will be a nice improvement to have out of the way.

[goldengirlz]

I didn’t post any goals in the earlier thread but I had a loose goal of buying a new house and that’s been a huge failure.

And it’s looking less and less likely …

(I do think the housing market will start cooling down, but with stocks tanking and interest rates climbing — plus losing equity in our own home — I don’t see the numbers working in our favor. All the ways we’d finance that purchase, whatever combination of equity, stocks and/or debt, are basically a bust.)

[krystee]

We have done 2, 3 (but switching to add to emergency fund for the time being to start making an inroads on 1), 4 (thought we saved cash to cover it all, then major surprises came up. Using a 0% CC that we’ll pay off in six months), and 5 (we leave for Boston and Cape Cod with my mom next week, then a Disney cruise with H and the kids in February). We have not done 6. Again. I am going to have us do the guardianship papers through a free legal service my company offers this year, and then we’ll do a will update next year.

1. Save at least $5K more in our emergency fund.
2. Increase 401k by 1%.
3. Invest at least $300/month in non retirement investments.
4. Save for bathroom remodel.
5. Save for 40th birthday trip with my mom and a family trip.
6. Take care of updating our estate plans, which were last touched before we had kids.

[heygrey]

So far we are batting zero. 


I'd like to find a second income stream for myself.
At this point I dislike my primary job so much that I'd like to find an entirely new career that pays more. I feel very stuck and frustrated professionally, there isn't any brain space left to do something creative in the evenings, and I have very little free time with childcare where I could do a mundane job out of the house.

I'd like to pay off my student loans.
This is... not happening. Inflation is eating into our leftover income to the point where I'm not willing to send large chunks to my SL. We are saving as much as possible and may choose to pay them off in a lump sum later if we are feeling comfortable financially. 

Also need to finish up some will stuff.
We had a good start on this and totally fell off the wagon. My school year ends in 2 weeks and then I'll have more brain space to devote to getting this task done. 


ETA: We have accomplished some things! 
1) Increased some charitable contributions. This will benefit us at tax time so it's not completely altruistic, but it does put us more in line with how we want to share our money. 

2) Increased our monthly savings for retirement and college. Only $100 to each, but it will add up. 

3) Completed a full backyard makeover and stayed on budget ($1500)!! SO much sweat equity and it looks fantastic. I also challenged myself to sell things to offset the cost of chairs for our new fire pit area. I'm at $600/$800 which is way better than I expected! I'm planning to buy them them this weekend. 

4) I spent a weekend away with a friend as a belated 35th birthday for myself and we just celebrated H's 35th last weekend. Budgeted ~$1000 each and both had an absolutely fantastic time. We never go big for birthdays, but it felt really special after 2 years of doing almost nothing. 

[ellipses84]

1. Payoff SUV.
On track for August. See other post about credit scores for why I don’t pay it off early.

2. Small business bookkeeping and taxes…I still need to do more on this…and we are still waiting for 2020 and 2021 refunds so I need to contact the IRS again.

4. Medical stuff…taking care of our health and using the benefits…I’ve done the most critical appts, have another Friday and need to schedule more for the summer.

5. Help my mom navigate PSLF which she is eligible for but was previously denied.
THIS IS THE BEST UPDATE!!! I posted on another board but hadn’t posted on MM yet. $50k of my student loans in my mom’s name, that I’ve always paid myself, were FORGIVEN in May!!!!! And I got a $10K REFUND!!!! I’m still a little in shock.

🤞 Another $10k from Biden would wipe out the rest in my name. We paid off DH’s first because they had a higher interest rate and would have had more than 10 more years of paying mine (I’d basically paid the full loan amount over 18 years and the interest doubled how much I would have had to pay without forgiveness).

I want to do something nice for my mom. She had to deal with phone calls and paperwork for PSLF in 2017 and 2022. She flies Alaska Air to visit us and they are having a points bonus sale. I need to do the math to see how great of a deal it is, but I think I’m going to buy her a bunch of points with some of the refund rather than a gift card somewhere (she wouldn’t want me to send her money).

6. Re-evaluate retirement accounts and 529s. Done, but I’ll probably do it again this year. With my Student Loans paid off we can contribute more.

7. We have debt which includes students loans, a personal loan and a 0% credit card.
We’ve been aggressively paying on the loan and credit card, with a goal to be in house buying position this year.
Made some progress and could wipe out most of it if my tax returns would ever come. TBD if /when we will buy a house. I think I just want to be in a position to do so and wait until it’s more of a buyers market.

Other good MM news. @ Our school district is putting on some summer programs and my kids got in for full time, free care until the end of July. We are going to visit family /work remotely/ vacation for a couple weeks in August so we’ll only need to pay for a couple weeks of camp and this is saving us so much money! Not having daycare expenses for the past year has made it feel like we can finally get ahead too.

[chpmnk1015]

Hmm. That link is taking me elsewhere and not to the mm post lol.

But, from what I've written down I think we are on good track

Roth iras done
Xx on mortgage by Dec on track
Vaca fund on track
Savings for kids by aug on track
Investing a little bit behind but we had a few big purchases we did cash for
New car bought- this i had the DP before.. we ended up being able to sell my 10K year old car for a ridic price, so w what i saved and that, we decided to just pay for it in full because we stayed at sticker price somehow and the interest on a car payment was more than our Efund was making so.. now just have to save that back

[egeiger]

1. Max 2021 and 2022 Roths to double as college assistance for our daughter.     2021 successful, 2022 on track with monthly budget.

2. Reign in food spending. Too many days where I don't feel like cooking so we eat out, and have groceries go to waste. It's a terrible cycle. I just have to figure out how to snap out of it. Tracking the numbers will make it easier for me to see it. It is ball season, so it has been tough, but def. improvement YTD.

3. I work full time, but also have 2 part time side hustles. Time to close one of them, and focus any side energy to one hustle. Seriously considering whether to keep the second one or not, and need to do some soul searching there and look at it more strictly from a financial position and not just an emotional one.    One side hustle officially closed. I don't miss it. I picked up one job as a favor to someone and it was confirmation to me that I am happy to be done with it.


I feel like I have knocked out a lot in H1, and H2 is maintenance, and I am good with that. We also redefined savings categories and snowball amounts so that we would have our house paid off when our daughter graduates high school.  Then, we can move payment to college payment and heavily cash flow her schooling.  It gives us a good balance of spend some now to enjoy life and save enough for future needs (separate from retirement investments).   I need to spend some time on home improvement budgets - we built a new home 5 years ago, so have had a reprieve here, but I know I need to start planning for appliances and repairs that will start to creep up in the next few years.

[steamboat185]

I don’t think I wrote them down here but-
1. Get a leave of absence for the summer. - this was a fail. They wouldn’t budge so my last day was Monday. I may go back to work or I maybe permanently retired.

2. DH gets promoted- he finally got bumped up in May. Not sure what took so long.

3. Rebalance our portfolio- we have slowly been moving more money into bonds as we get closer to both retiring. We’ve successfully increased the bond percentage to almost 20%.

4. Continue to early retirement. - I’m currently not working and DH is on track for 45, but might push to 46 with the new golden handcuffs.

5. Prioritize travel- we have plans to visit 4 new countries this summer.

[konapoppy]

I was surprise to see I posted in that thread!

1. Continue wealth redistribution. I am way behind on this after 2 great years. Honestly, I will probably spend Monday playing catch up in this space.

2. Buy less “stuff”. I have cut waaaaay back on stuff in the last few years (and a lot of what I declutter is from a decade ago). It would be fun to do a “buy nothing” category, but I’m not sure what it would be. Holding very strong on this! I don’t think I have even been in a store like Home Goods this year. Plus I kept getting rid of stuff and the house and garage are much more manageable.
3. MH is reducing his hours, so I hope that reduces the amount of takeout ordered and thus door dash charges. because of staffing shortages the reduced hours haven’t quite worked out. But we have cut back on door dash the last month or so. Finally.
4. Enjoy not spending 100k on home renovations. We will probably refinish the hardwood and we have some stucco to fix. But other than that it should be minimal. definitely enjoying this one! But I do really need to call the hardwood and stucco people. Our area has terrible soil and there are definitely cracks that need to be addressed.

[brooke77]

Here were my goals:

-Max 401K — Yes, on track.
-Save for down payment on house (and hopefully purchase new house in Spring/Summer) — We ended up signing a contract to build a new house in February. It won’t be finished for about 18 months. We are trying to aggressively save to add to the down payment because we ended up going over budget to get this home.
-Contribute to 529 — Yes, on track.
-Get estate plan in order — I tried! We had an initial consult with an attorney, but didn’t finalize anything because we are moving states this summer. I plan to restart this process once we move.
-Make separate savings account for 40th birthday trip to Maldives or Bali (and hopefully actually take this trip in the fall of 2022) — Nope. We are saving everything for our new house.

[sadlebred]

1. Be in a better financial position. This will mostly come from trying to quit bleeding money every month and increasing savings. Also quit discretionary spending. I've just taken steps to automate the savings. I will redo my budget in Feb. once my company's HR dept. catches up with the new tax tables. My auto insurance went up, so I need to find the money somewhere. I also recently took up horseback riding again (lessons only--so far), so that has to be included. Starting back this hobby has been in the works for a long time. It's time to tighten up the belt.

Nope. A burst pipe in late Feb./early March set me back badly. I had some other expenses come up at the same time. Even with insurance to cover some of the cost, it was thousands of dollars out of pocket. I purchased my own LVP flooring to avoid putting nasty carpet back in the basement. I'm still being eaten alive with unexpected bills of $150 there or here. Some are medical related that aren't covered by insurance. Also: See got back into taking horseback riding lessons.

2. Try to have the side gig bring in some additional money. I run a website that is currently undergoing a small refresh by the company I use for web design (Local company owned by a friend that does marketing work, web stuff, etc for companies all around the US. They do great work! They did a major overhaul of the site about 6 years ago; this is to freshen it up). I'm hoping a website refresh will bring in more revenue via direct paid advertising. I also need to identify some new revenue streams for it. I'm open to suggestions if anyone wants to DM me. The website is in the athletic/sports space.

The website is refreshed and looks amazing! I'm hoping to have time later this month to see if I can get some new ads.

3. Try to get my health stable. I'm hoping to have some answers by April. Unfortunately, it's just time and waiting at this point. While not MM exactly, it may have an impact on my other aspects of finances this year. (I have a very rare side effect that developed this fall from my open heart surgery in late 2020. It's being treated by my team of doctors at a major US hospital system.)

My health is stable! The blood clot is one, and I have permission to live my life, ride my bikes, and jump horses!

4. Save, save, save! I want to build back up my e-fund to 6 months (this will take me more than 2022, probably 2023 as well). I hope to be 100% debt free by the first of the summer. I had to put a roof on my house unexpectedly a couple of years ago, and this will be paid off! Finally! It's not much at this point, but I hate having it hanging out there.

Uh huh. Save. Right. I did pay off the roof loan in Feb.

5. Contribute more than a token amount to my ROTH. Once I get some savings built back up, I want to start contributing to my ROTH more than the small amount I did this year.

Nope. Still contributing a small amount every paycheck.

[wildrice]

Copying and pasting mine:


1. Start paying off H's student loans aggressively. I am budgeting 1k a month but I would love it if we could actually do a bit more.

We are doing this. I've paid $1060 a month staring in January, so over 6k is paid off. I am anxiously awaiting Biden's decision on student loan forgiveness so we can refinance them with a private lender later this year. I hope he makes this decision before interest rates climb too much...


2. Ensure my PSLF goes through. I am hoping I'll get a bit of a refund and can actually put it straight into H's loans.

This is done! My loans were forgiven in January (or maybe early Feb). Unfortunately I did not get a refund though.


3. Sell our 2nd car - this one will hopefully be within the next few weeks so barely even counts.

This was done early in the year too. Sadly it started having major problems so we only got $900 for it, though.


4. I think the two big house projects are going to be refinishing or replacing our living room floors and doing something to make our backyard more usable, so saving up enough money to pay cash for those.


Working on this. I have one appointment with a floor company next week! I reached out to another but haven't heard back, so I probably will need to get a couple more quotes. For the backyard, I decided to just DIY for now. I did some additional planting and I'm working on finishing mulching the whole yard vs putting in grass or pavement or whatever. It's a very small yard so mulching isn't as crazy as it sounds. 

5. I've continued dragging my feet on making a will or doing anything related to estate planning, so I should probably focus on that this year.
Still dragging my feet on this one, lol. Haven't done a thing.


We also really need to figure out what to do with our money that we have budgeted for saving. I think our efund is large enough that we don't need to keep adding to it, but I'm not sure if we should invest more in retirement, general investments, focus on house improvements, or some combo of those things.
I did open a treasury bond account in my name and moved over 10k. Sadly we have not really put much more into savings this year so far (instead we've paid cash for a few things with that money) and with rising costs of basically everything, I am not totally sure how much more we will save. I am thinking whatever we do end up with might go into a 2nd treasury bond account in my H's name, but we haven't opened one yet. 

[quesyrah]

Hahaha I was obsessed with getting a new minivan after mine died.

Now that we can…I don’t want to spend the money lol.

[midwestmama]

Overall, we're doing pretty well against our goals.  It's hard/impossible to save more or pay extra on the mortgage (on top of what we had planned) with everything being more expensive now.

1. Make a principal-only lump sum payment of $5,000 on our mortgage after DH and I get our bonuses. Continue to pay extra on the principal monthly.  We made a $5,500 principal-only payment in April, and have been paying an extra $250-$300/month principal-only payment (including in April).  

2. Use some bonus money toward home improvements - a few small ones inside like new countertops and sinks for our master bath and 1/2 bath and possibly some landscaping.  We ended up having to buy new garage doors, so that used up the home improvement budget.  Maybe next year we can do the projects I had hoped to do this year.

3. Travel - we have enjoyed taking a trip somewhere warm right before Christmas the past two years, so I think we're going to make it an annual trip from now on.  We've booked a family trip (to FL) for the week before Christmas.  We booked it a couple months ago, since prices just keep going up.

4. I'd like to possibly review our will and trust, specifically as it relates to changing the executor (currently BIL), but DH and I haven't decided on who else we could pick to be executor.  We haven't done this yet, as DH and I are still discussing who would be the executor.  

[minzy]

I am definitely behind on my goal of “giving away more money than the year before,” but, to the consternation of development officers who like to plan, we usually have a strong December with donations. I do have automatic payroll deductions to three charities, so at least I’m doing something regular. We’re both maxing retirement and the state benefit for the 529s. I am somehow about to hit a full year of being back to work (and will be taking on more responsibility) so I should be promoted with a pay raise pretty soon.

I wanted to spend more on environmental charities, and found a good local one at the end of last year. I will keep giving to them, and a new one my friend is trying to form (especially since I turned down a board position with them because I just can’t).

I had also wanted to spend more on experiences. We did take a trip for spring break, but otherwise, I wouldn’t say we’ve really done much of that. We are just really busy since I still stayed on with 4 of the 5 nonprofit things I used to lead/do before I went back to a full time job. Fortunately I’ll have a little reprieve with those over the summer. Our next upcoming “big trip” is going to visit my dad in the boonies, so that will be pretty cheap.

All in all we’re doing really well with the numbers, and are so very far from where we started when I first began reading these boards 17(?!) years ago.

[aspentosh]

1. Continue maxing 401k for H and Roth IRA for me
On track to do both by October-ish.

2. Continue saving for H to buy an electric truck and decide if we'll sell my car and continue being a one car household (so far so good)
Planning to put down 50% of purchase price ($$) if it's delivered next year. Still undecided if we'll stay one car, only because H is contemplating the smaller battery range (300mi) and we do enough loooong drives that I am hesitant. 

3. Continue paying an extra 25% to our mortgage each month
Yup. Still doing this.

4. Increase charitable contributions even more, especially to minority and women owned businesses
We've done this, but would still love to contribute more.

5. Be mindful of my purchases and don't just buy because it's on sale or looks cool
So-so on this. I still buy more kid clothes than is necessary, but the rest of us have done well with clothing. Good on house purchases and other stuff though.

5b. Purge purge purge things that don't need to stay in our house
Doing well this this. Want to hold a yard sale though for things that I want to sell and not just give away/donate.

6. Go on a kick ass 15 year anniversary trip (currently have a place at Fiji booked but I'm not convinced things will be improved w/r/t COVID so may reassess)
Cancelled Fiji (no regrets based on current levels), but we're doing Acadia National Park.

[aprilsails]

1. Figure out our vehicle situation. My SUV will be paid off in the summer, and DH’s car lease is up at some point this year. He thinks he will buy it out, but he also wants a truck, which we don’t need. Reroute my car payment to an auto deposit in my TFSA account.
- DH is going to keep the car and buyout the lease. The car market right now is stupid and this makes the most sense. I will route my car payment to savings when I’m done in October.

2. Go get my raise this year. I’ve worked hard through a lot of bullshit in my office. I have not been perfect but I have kept the vast majority of the balls in the air. I deserve it. Increase RRSP savings.
- I got a 6% raise which I thought was decent until inflation murdered it. I’m working loads of overtime and absolutely over it.

3. Invest some money into our house. We need more furniture as well as the last side of our fence to go in. My next priorities will be an irrigation system and a couple of new trees/bushes to start building towards a properly landscaped lot. I need to get the primary suite and upstairs bedrooms painted as well. We also need to do the backsplash tile.
- Irrigation system is booked for August install. Fence will go in September. No progress on the primary suite but we got the bed that we ordered in September delivered two weeks ago.

4. I’m still dreaming of a cottage property. It’s not in the cards, I need to get over it for the next decade. However, I can rent one. I’m going to try to convince DH that we should do that for a week.
Lord knows we need a vacation.
- Just going to stay at my Mom’s cottage since she has booked holidays through the entire summer and will be out of town and not using it. MM and works for me! I convinced DH to do a 4 day vacation to Toronto with the money we saved.