2023 MM Goals

[ohgillian]

It's time. What are your MM goals for 2023? And/or big money things that may happen this year for you? ("Big" being self-defined and subjective here -- if it's big for you, it's big.)

[ohgillian]

1) We owe a lot of taxes this April -- five digits. I know this is routine for some, but it's not for me. I'm nervous I haven't set enough aside. I'll feel so much better once taxes are fully calculated.

2) First overseas trip with the kids. We've already paid flights (about $3400) and booked a hotel with hilton points. I set aside $6k for the remainder of the trip and have no clue if that's way too little or too much.

3) H and I have been talking recently that we need to cut back spending (see #1 and #2). My goal is to put an additional $1k/month into short-term savings.

4) Related to all of the above, I want to at least keep our retirement contributions where they are, or maybe increase them. Our planner says we could pull back but I’d rather cut back on other things now when it’s optional vs having to cut back in retirement because it ends up mandatory.

5) Update the “emergency info” doc I made for H in case I die. I manage *everything* business and money related, and he has said that if I died he’d bring someone in to manage everything. I last updated the doc (it’s maybe 5 pages long) last year, but then we bought the Airbnb and I changed jobs so i need to update it significantly with info about the new house and about all my work benefits.

I think I have shared my Microsoft word template for this before on here and am happy to share it again if anyone wants to PM me their email address.

[ssmjlm]

1. Pool and fence will be in early 2023. I'm just hoping to not pull from investments for anything.

2. 15th anniversary cruise, kid free. We're going to do a 10 day Panama Canal partial crossing. We're paying for this from bonds that are maxed and we need to cash in. We have so much money in savings bonds because my grandparents gave me them even when I was in grad school, so even with cashing some in, I've still got almost 5 figures still maturing.

3. I would like to get our downstairs repainted, but that may be 2024 because of the 2 above.

[konapoppy]

A few things come to mind:
1. Continue taxable and non-taxable donations
2. Get stucco fixed and ideally redo our floors
3. I need to go through our recurring payments and see what we have in there as recurring to eliminate.
4. Save more outside of retirement

[midwestmama]

1. Continue to pay ahead on the mortgage. Whether we pay a lump sum from our bonuses (and how much) is dependent on how much we want to do #2 and #3 in 2023, and how much our bonuses are. (DH isn't sure how much his is going to pay out, he's thinking maybe 50%, and my bonus is tracking around 100%.) We will continue to pay more each month (around $250-300/month, which is about 2.25-2.5 additional principal payments over the whole year).

2. DH and I would really like to take a family trip to Germany this year, since I can add a family vacation on to a work trip and then work will pay for my flights. My company seems to move people around from one job to another (at least at leadership levels (I'm a manager)) more frequently than I've seen at other companies, so we thought it might be best to go while we know I am able to pair the family vacation with a work trip to help reduce our costs.

3. DH and I are discussing replacing the flooring on our main floor in the main living areas and hallways. The carpet in the living room is original (about 22 years old) and is starting to look worn. (There is laminate wood through the rest of the main living areas and hallways.) We are considering LVP, but need to price it out to see if we can afford it this year.

4. Really work on decluttering and reduce impulse spending.

[chpmnk1015]

I wrote mine up the other day.
1- Both our roths for 2023 done by Feb
2- continue to pay down mortgage a little extra each month and i have a dec goal amount to end at.
3- small but start 1000 for both kids for an investment account that they can play with and learn
4- xx amount into each of their savings by August
5- we booked a big spring break trip for April.. so far we have not had to touch the vaca fund and have paid for flights, car rental and half the Air bnb. Id like to pay rest w o touching vaca fund.
6- up my 401k 1% in April
7- Add xx amount to our ameritrade account and another managed account.
8- keep vaca fund where it is at or ad 1K or so to it

[sadlebred]

I'm reiterating my 2022 goals since I didn't meet them. Some are with a twist.

1. Be in a better financial position. This will mostly come from trying to quit bleeding money every month and increasing savings. Also quit discresionary 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. I probably won't get a raise or if I do it will most likely be under 1%.

2. Try to have the side gig bring in some additional money. I run a website for a hobby I am in. 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.

3. Try to get my health stable. (My attorney won't let me post about it. No, really.)

4 Save, save, save! I want to build back up my e-fund to 6 months (this will take me more than 2023, probably 2024 as well).

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.

6. Pay off the e-mountain bike I bought (See: health problems. I've posted about a few over the years.). This should happen by the end of March. I hope to be cleared to ride at some point this spring/early summer (see number 3). I bought this before number 3 happened.

7. Depending on how big my bonus is--if I even get one this year--I'll put some towards my new car down payment (hopefully 75,000 miles away) and some in the "trees need to be cut down fund" that will be started.

I'm sure I'll think of more things later.

[heygrey]

Goals:
1) Bathroom reno, phase 1. Should be ~$8,000.

2) Maybe, finally pay off my student loans? They are under $5,000 now.

3) A few long weekend trips, about $1000 each.

Reality:
Hang on and hope we continue to survive inflation. Everything is so expensive, it's really eating into our ability to save for discretional items.

[laterz]

We need to replace a water pipe. A not at all fun or sexy thing to spend a lot of money on.

We get takeout too much. Need to curb that back. Not just for the money, but making healthier food choices.

[wildrice]

Here is what I have so far:

1. Finish paying off our flooring replacement. I think we owe just over 5k and I am planning to use what I am paid for teaching two adjunct courses this spring to do this. ETA: This is 0% interest until sometime during spring 2024, but I don't like having debt so I don't want to drag it out that long.

2. Refinance my H's student loans whenever the federal payment pause ends. Along with this, continue paying at least 1k a month toward them.

3. I'd like to get a new mattress and a new couch/loveseat set for the living room. I want to get things that will last, which costs more, so I'm not sure if both in the same year will be realistic. It will probably depend on what my H gets for his bonus and if there is anything else he would prefer to spend it on (we have no idea what to expect - it's his first one he's ever had in his life - so haven't discussed it much yet). Otherwise I may use some of my fall teaching money on one of those.

4. Still need to do some estate planning/will writing. This goes beyond financial but we do need to designate heirs and make more specific plans for if something were to happen to us both.

5. We would like to take a vacation somewhere, in addition to the trip to Turkey that we already have planned/partly paid for. No idea what the budget will be but we wiped out all of our points on airfare for Turkey, so we should save up to be able to afford something else!

[fryjack2]

I combined ours:

-H is supposed to get a 20% raise. Goal is to have that happen by June.

-I would like to earn a specific income by 2025 and would like to be at least 15% closer to it by the end of the year.

-continue to pay cash for all house projects. We spent 6 figures this past year on projects from savings we had built up outside of our efund. Dumb, I know but we never got around to figuring out how to invest out side of retirement accounts and it was just sitting there and figured we should use it instead of take out a loan.

-continue, but increase our automated deposits into our DAF, savings, and vacation/house funds by 10% each.

-once H has his raise, actually meet with a financial advisor who can help guide investments

[brooke77]

My 2023 goals are pretty similar to my 2022 goals.

- contribute to 529 for DS
- set up estate plan (once we close on our house)
- make extra mortgage payments each month
- catch up on retirement savings
- create savings account for a fun trip

We are building a house and will hopefully be closing on it late summer/early fall. It is our forever home (or at least for the next 20ish years), so I really want to focus on paying down the mortgage.

[lolalolalola]

- First oversees trip for our family. I spent $3000 on flights. But holy smokes I did not anticipate how expensive accommodations would be in London and Paris. We have had to increase our budget significantly. 
- Older DD starting university. She has a registered education savings plan and we are hoping to cash flow the first couple years entirely from there and her savings. 
- Landscaping our yard. We moved into new construction last year and the builder hasn't done our grading yet. It should be done in the spring. We have $120K put aside for it from the sale of our old house, so hoping that will be enough (we have a large, very sloped lot).  
- Continue to pay the maximum allowable on our mortgage without penalty. 

[aprilsails]

@@@mentions.
1. Get a raise to match my promotion. Figure out where I’m going to fit in my company in the future.

2. Pay off my car payment with my tax return. I think we’re down to the last $3k so I just want it gone.

3. Open up additional savings accounts for DD and DS and put in $100 per month. They already have an RRSP but DH wants an additional slush fund for each of them.

4. Find a house cleaner. Hire them for my sanity.

5. Figure out if we need an accountant for 2023. DH may be bought out of some shares for a start up he worked with years ago and I don’t know if managing that is beyond my Quicktax skillz.

6. If the shares are bought out figure out next steps for our basement renovation. Find a contractor and get a plan together for early 2024.

7. Feel like a bleeding millionaire once we’re done paying for daycare in September. In reality, use the cash flow to pay for the rest of the basement renovation through 2024.

[quesyrah]

Currently my only goal is to save as much as possible between now and March. This might get long, phew!

DH took a temporary position at work last year. It has been extended once and they are trying to keep him on full time. But he’s a project manager so it seems like it all hinges on being able to either justify having a full time PM or creating a new position for him.

If this position ends, he’ll either to back to his old job or an equivalent position. Potentially a step up from where he was before.

If goes back to his old position, he thinks there is a change the salary he’s currently at (which is like 80% more than his old salary) won’t go with him.

Financially, we’ll be fine. The increase in pay went to our efund (fully funded now) and travel fund. So basically all we’ll lose is our generous travel budget.

If he keeps his salary we will increase his 401K again and start a fund to landscape our front yard with drought tolerant native landscaping, and paint our house.

[aspentosh]

Hmm... I hadn't thought about them yet. Off the top of my head, I know I want to continue with some from this and previous years.

1. Continue maxing 401k for H and Roth IRA for me
2. Continue paying an extra 25% to our mortgage each month Financial advisor suggested using this money elsewhere, so we have funneled it directly to our saving for our next home project.
3a. H should be getting his electric truck any day now (!!) and we had to take on some debt for that. Our goal is to pay off in three years at most, but two years realistically. So put a bunch of money towards that each month.
3b. Now that we're not putting so much money to a truck down payment, reconfigure our savings goals and start that. Some will go into general investment, but some will go to our kitchen reno budget and maybe other places?
4. Splurge on experiences. We got DD tickets to Wicked for Christmas and Dude Perfect for her birthday. I want to take her to Hamilton (maybe in NYC) now that she's into it. We closed down shop for so long and it's time to start reentering the world safely. I want to spend the money on experiences more than THINGS.
5. Take an awesome spring break trip (PNW), a fun summer trip to a beach (TBD), and then at least 2-3 weekends at localish places. We have so many great weekend getaway locations near us, so I want to take advantage.

I realize it's probably weird to say SPEND MOAR on this board, but H is 41 and has worked hard to get where he is. A goal back in 2020 or 2021 was to unclench a little with our money because we are *fine* financially and we deserve to enjoy ourselves. So... yeah.

[Roc A Bee]

1. I recently got married- so change my name on all accounts
2. Calculate what I’m saving for retirement per month and increase it to 20%. I’ve got a COLA and a raise this year, so I need to reassess.
3. Recalculate how much I have saved in my efund. Figure out what 6 months of expenses are and reassess savings plan.
4. Save $5,000 in a travel fund so I can plan summer vacations.

[bee20]

1. I've had a lot of trouble focusing at my job. It's hybrid across a couple sites and I am having trouble with swapping work locations, my brain keeps saying we'll focus when things get stable and...I've been here for months and still feel like I'm settling in.  A goal would be to get some healthier routines in place so I can really accelerate.
2. I hit some career-long savings goals this year despite the down market.  I'm excited but basically just raised the bar for what I want to save. I am willing to loosen up a bit for necessary home improvements and maintenance, I want to set a realistic spending budget for these types of things.  
3. In relation to the above, I discovered a crack in the drywall underneath one of my windows that isn't wide enough to be a big problem yet but needs an eye on it. I guess I'm calling a structural engineer, hopefully under $10k but who knows.

[sadie]

1. Boost savings to replace $ we spent on our new car. Should hopefully be where we want it to be by March/April.
2. Pay off husband's one variable rate student loan.
3. Figure out 529 contributions for kids.
4. Do some minor car/house things-tires, new bed, carpet in bedrooms, lighting in living room.
5. Not MM, but plan Disney trip for early 2024.

All these things will be greatly helped by my going back to work full-time.

[wise_rita]

Dec 30, 2022 15:37:54 GMT -5 sadie said:

5. Not MM, but plan Disney trip for early 2024.

That's where I think you're wrong. 😅

[starlily]

Goals:
1) Pay off all credit card debt.
2) Have 6 months of expenses in liquid savings.
3) Buy more ETF shares after those two are accomplished.

Plans:
1) A couple home updates (yard, flooring, living and guest room furniture).
2) A solo trip to Vancouver for me.

[mae0111]

Every year I say that I'm going to document our goals, and I don't... so I'm going to do it this year!

1. Continue to max out 401k, possibly get into profit sharing this year. I'm a contractor, and I just earned enough to max out my solo 401K, but not enough to contribute any profit sharing into retirement last year. If I work a few more hours, I can do that in 2024.

2. Contribute something to brokerage account. This will be a challenge because we will may see a significant tuition hike if our kids get into the school we're hoping for. We are hoping we can cash flow the tuition with a payment plan, but I don't know. Our modeling has us not contributing to brokerage while we are paying this and college tuition, so it would be great if we could contribute even a little bit.

3. Increase charitable donations. We hit a high mark this year, but I'd like to set the bar even higher next year if possible.

4. Contribute to Roths for 2023.


Plans
1. Summer camp for DD1 - it's a big expense to send her to sleepaway camp - almost as much as her current school tuition. But she loves it and it's good for our family for her to go for a bit.

2. Beach vacation - we rent a house at the beach for a week in the summer each year. I assume we will do it again this year.

3. Wrap up basement project - we are finishing a hangout room for the kids and it spilled over into this month. Almost done, but a few more payments to make. It's all cash.

4. Solar panel installation - We are paying cash, buying not leasing. We will get rebates and tax breaks, but it's a pretty significant cash outlay.

5. Tuition increase if kids get into new school. I'd say it's about a 50/50 chance. It's a great school and I think they will be happy there, but it's a huge investment. We have been saving for this for years, but I'm hoping we can cash flow a good amount of it.

[gt7301b]

We are doing an addition this year so my main goal is to stay on budget with that.

Other goals:
- Cash flow all the items that we need to purchase for the reno outside of our contractor's bid (overhead lights/ hood/ etc)
- Increase my TSP contribution to the new limits
- Increase our charitable giving
- Reduce our food spending by 5% from last year (Not sure how this will work out with the reno, so may have to adjust this goal to just during the months when we have a restored kitchen)
- Use up our giftcards ( I still have 15 gift cards, was doing a good job working through them, but I always buy the ones with bonus value in Dec)

[sent]

1) My goal is to finally make enough money where I can switch my business from an LLC to an S-Corp. This will mean that I can put myself on the payroll and take home a "real" paycheck. This is the year it happens!

2) Buy the building + property where the business in #1 is located. I'm so close to finishing the deal but the bank is now requiring an environmental study so I just forked over $3K for that. I am really looking forward to fixing up this property to be something people want to look at when they are stuck in traffic in front of the building versus the current bleh eyesore that it is. At the same time, this is going to be somewhat of a money pit for the first few years because my rent + the other tenant's rent won't come close to covering the mortgage + taxes + all of the updating projects I want to do. And I have to carry flood insurance which the previous owner didn't have to account for since they owned it from the 1950s. But I think I will get a lot of tax breaks from owning this property and eventually it will be a good thing for my financial portfolio to own it.

[sent]

Dec 30, 2022 15:37:54 GMT -5 sadie said:

5. Not MM, but plan Disney trip for early 2024.

I did 2 very MM Disney trips. 

I also did 2 not MM ones. The most recent one was over the top. 

All of the trips were a blast. Tag me if you want ideas. 

[krystee]

1. Pay off bathroom remodel that went way off budget and half had to be put on 0% credit cards.
2. Save additional $5K
3. Cash flow all travel plans
4. Plan budget for basement mini remodel
5. Be ready to find a new position because my company is getting new leadership, and my role is one that is often replaced when a new CEO comes on board. (Update resume and start thinking about what’s important to me; maybe do some freelance writing to diversify the resume a bit)

[atarianna]

Our huge change this year is switching insurance which makes my DDs expensive medical condition moot in our financial picture. With her insulin and supplies covered, we will save thousands. With that said, it’s also a HDHP so the premium and $6k HSA contribution are coming out of my paycheck; and I only work part time.

Collectively it’s a great move for our family, but it’s going to be a little painful personally since I will no longer be able to fully cover my own expenses; and that’s important to me.

[sadie]

Jan 2, 2023 15:37:32 GMT -5 sent said:

Dec 30, 2022 15:37:54 GMT -5 sadie said:

5. Not MM, but plan Disney trip for early 2024.

I did 2 very MM Disney trips. 

I also did 2 not MM ones. The most recent one was over the top. 

All of the trips were a blast. Tag me if you want ideas. 

I'd love some ideas!

[simpsongal]

1. Pay down HELOC (at $36K+) - ETA: this just jumped to a high priority since the interest rate is up to 6.5%
2. Save up for next renovation + contract w/architect to draw up kitchen plan [see #1, this might get bumped to 2024]
3. Buy DH a new car (on order, we'll take out a loan + DP)
4. $4K per kid in 529s
5. Me - negotiate a retention bonus [ DONE ]
6. finally get my 401K/TSP back where it was at the end of 2022 [lol sob...]
7. execute will & power of attorney docs w/mom
8. pay for summer trip (flights, etc.)

[sent]

Jan 3, 2023 6:56:36 GMT -5 sadie said:

Jan 2, 2023 15:37:32 GMT -5 sent said:

I did 2 very MM Disney trips. 

I also did 2 not MM ones. The most recent one was over the top. 

All of the trips were a blast. Tag me if you want ideas. 

I'd love some ideas!

I’ll start a thread on the Disney board in the next few days and tag you over there.