I had five financial goals for 2007. I also, somewhere along the line, developed an unofficial goal of reaching a savings goal of $5,500 in my Freedom Fund. For whatever reason, that goal was the most important to me. It represents progress towards being able to do what I want to do with my life.
And as of this very morning, that goal is met. My Freedom Fund account at ING reads $5,500, which actually represents cash savings from this year of somewhat less than $4,500 (the balance also includes a CD that matured). And I've transfered my beloved-and-generous aunt's $500 Christmas check in, so it'll stand at $6,000 for the year. And as to the rest of them?
1. Give 5% of my income.
My gross salary income for the year was $31,615.37. I gave $1,371.45 to good causes this year. That's 4.3%--short of the goal. Not by much, but still short. I copped out of giving for a couple paychecks (or maybe three?) this summer when money was tight. Had I given that money, I would still actually have been a little short (4.9%), so this goal will need a little rejiggering for next year.
2. Open a Roth and automate contributions.
Sort of. I actually funded my Roth in a lump sum, with the money my parents gave me. But the end is accomplished—the money my parents gave me maxed the thing out.
3. Earn the full employer match in my 401(k).
Big fat check, and I'm proud of this one.
4. Open and automate contributions to a travel fund towards a savings goal of $2,000.
No. But this one was by choice—I just wanted to prioritize the Freedom Fund as that goal grew in size and priority.
5. Triple my net worth.
Stupidly (as Moom pointed out at the time), I didn't count my checking account in my net worth when I set this goal. When I started this blog, though, I listed out every penny I had, an though it had clearly come up somewhat in the next two months, even if it had been $7,000, it would be well and truly tripled. And I bet it wasn't even that high—I bet it's more like quadrupled. My net worth as of today is $21,247, which is a modest increase from last month of 2.27% and well clear of my unofficial goal of $20,000.
So I think I made some pretty good progress. And this is just the numbers.
Tuesday, January 01, 2008
My 2007 Financial Progress: The Numbers
Monday, November 19, 2007
I'm Ba-ack!
So, France was very lovely and kind of appallingly expensive. I feel like there's kind of a disconnect with foreign money. I just changed everything into Euro, and then went around handing out those twenty-Euro bills with a sort of crazed enthusiasm, like, "You mean if I give you this piece of blue paper you will give me a ride on a boat? No way! Here!" I handed them over and nice French people gave me presents!
I still don't really understand the deal with restaurants, where an entree costs 17 Euro, but a formule of an appetizer and an entree (en Francais, entree et plat) costs 12 Euro. I kept sort of gritting my teeth for the bill, and then looking at it like, "oh...is that all?" But a pot of tea for 5 Euro ($7.50!) would have hurt, had I had any attachment at all to the pretty 2 Euro coins. But I didn't, really. So I had a lot of tea.
Yet somehow, on the combination of my visit overlapping with my parents', the convenience of staying in a house with a relatively well-stocked refrigerator, the cheapness and deliciousness of baguettes and tea (when consumed at my sister's house, as opposed to at a lovely Salon de The), the Luna bars I brought along, and K's kind agreement to pick me up at the airport in my parents' Volvo, I managed the thing on $300. My sister, generous hostess that she was, also paid for me to take a cooking class with her (in French, but I managed: the combination of French-from-fifth-grade, Latin-from-high-school, and German-on-the-level-of-a-preadolescent being, evidently, a reasonably effective one). The $100 I had sitting in my checking account for spending, then, is on its way to the Freedom Fund, where it will bump the balance above $5,000.
I brought a bunch of stuff back with me, and honestly, was more constrained in my spending by space than money. If I'd thought I could fit five more jars of jam, you can bet I'd've bought them. As it is, I brought home apricot jam, pistou, olive tapenade, fleur de sel, chamomile blossoms for tea, tea for tea, chocolate, and herbs de provence. Perhaps a few items that I can bear to part with will end up as gifts, but...probably not too many.
Anyway, I'm back at home, back at work, back at work on my finances, and rejuvenated for the final push towards the year-end goals. I'll be catching up on my blogroll over the next couple of days. And I learned a couple of new very frugal, very delicious recipes at that cooking class--I'll put 'em up this week!
Tell me something about your week in the comments!
Saturday, November 10, 2007
Blogoversary Trip
A year ago today I started this blog. It's been a fun year.
So y'all peruse my year's worth of archives this week while I'm in Provence, okay? I'm leaving with $280 in cash, $100 more earmarked and accessible, and the expectation that I'll be doing some shopping for Christmas gifts on my credit card (to be paid out of the gift fund). I opted not to schedule a payment to my card for K and my plane tickets to Chicago until I get back, or else I'd have a couple of days with literally $0 in my checking account, and that wigs me right out.
So off I go.
And by the way, I am bringing a camera with me after all—K very sweetly tracked down the missing parts for me.
Thursday, November 08, 2007
Another Plane Ticket
So, at the last minute I decided I wanted to to go with K to his family's for Thanksgiving. Not that I had the money for a plane ticket or anything.
We're flying on Thanksgiving, so we actually got a pretty good deal on the ticket: $224 apiece. (Flying on Thanksgiving also means that I can hang out at my parents' Wednesday night, bake a couple of apple pies for their dinner, and get to take part in the pre-Thanksgiving prep, which is actually, I think, my favorite part.) Nevertheless, not an insignificant chunk of money to come up with at a moment's notice.
My dad had offered to buy me this plane ticket too, if I decided to go, but come on, I can't let my dad buy me everything. (That sounds flippant, but I actually do feel pretty strongly about the need to set a few financial boundaries with my parents, because it's easy to accept that kind of help and start counting on it and/or let it set up a not-so-appetizing relationship dynamic.)
I can actually scrape up all the necessary cash from what's currently in my checking account--I'm just going to have to spend a little less in France, and I won't be able to save my clothing allocations from my next couple of paychecks (I need a dress for Christmas parties!). But I think that $400 (about 270 Euro) should cover food & spending money for six days in France, if I'm careful. Any gift shopping I want to do can come out of my gift fund (i.e., go on my credit card to be paid out of my gift fund when I get back). Besides, I get paid the Thursday I'm there, so it's not the end of the world if I need another $50 or something. The only think I think I might really have to give up is a taxi home on the return trip--which isn't the end of the world, just irritating.
Thursday, November 01, 2007
The Nick of Time
The round-trip plane ticket to Paris I bought yesterday for $575 costs $754 today. Whew! It's a good thing I didn't procrastinate and anxiety-waffle around for one more day. It's not my money, but I still don't like spending too much, and I would have felt really awful if my indecisiveness had cost my parents nearly $200.
Tuesday, October 30, 2007
Impromptu Travel & Lightbulb Moments & Blather
I think in less than two weeks I'm going to go visit my sister in Provence, where she's studying for the semester. (I would, in fact, be leaving on my blogoversary, which I somehow find funny, like my blog and I are going on a cruise together to celebrate our relationship.) I haven't actually bought a ticket yet, but they are oddly inexpensive for only-two-weeks-away travel: a round-trip plane ticket to Paris, nonstop, is available for $575. My parents are footing that bill as a birthday present (I find it funny that what I wanted for my birthday was a machine that makes seltzer and a plane ticket to France), and I'll be using their birthday check ($240) for spending money...except I'll probably need some more of it. I guess I'll try to cashflow what I can, and pull from the travel fund what I can't. It's not going to be super-expensive, though: I'm staying on my sister's couch, and really do need a chance to veg out, so I anticipate a lot of reading books in cafes and taking walks and making dinner in my sister's kitchen, and not a whole lot else, though my sister did mention perhaps doing a day trip to Marseilles, which sounds nice.
I've never really taken a budget-conscious vacation before. I lived in Berlin for awhile, but that was living there--it was different, somehow. All of my other travel has been with my family or some kind of group. So this should be new and different. Planning it, even though I'm not actually paying all of the costs myself, definitely gives me a new visceral understanding of how expensive it is to take a vacation--especially an international one (and with the dollar so weak, too!). If my parents weren't helping me out, I'd simply have to skip it--I wouldn't be willing to drain the travel fund entirely, not when I've got my sights set on a big, exciting trip before I start graduate school (whenever that ends up being). It's one of those important kinds of "aha!" moments, when I realize that I'm lucky, because on my own means, this would be a big, big financial deal, and I'm not sure that a little week off where I get to see my sister and hang out--but in France, instead of here--would be worth that big of a financial deal, you know?
I'm a total gibbering idiot about this trip--I've found planning it very difficult and anxiety-producing, but it seems to be almost all set now, and I know I need the week off. Badly. (This whole thing makes the rest of the year at work feel way more manageable: it's week of work, week off, week of Thanksgiving, three weeks of work, Christmas break. Easy.) And I miss my sister. And I've never taken a high-speed train before.
And so that's the way decisions are made when you're spending mostly someone else's money. Which is how this experience becomes one more lightbulb moment about luck and privilege.
Tuesday, April 24, 2007
Savings Projections
By my calculations, I should have 3 months' worth of expenses (which I estimate at $1500/month) in my ING Freedom Fund by the end of this calendar year.
The current balance is $1,300.
I also have a CD at Bank of America, which will be rolled into the Freedom Fund when it matures at the end of August. By then, it will be worth about $1,030. (Running total: $2,330)
I have two "extra paycheck" months still to come. Each will allow me to save $300 above what I usually do, for a total of $600. (Running total: $2,930)
I have 18 paychecks left this year. If I save $50 from each of them in the Freedom Fund, that adds $900. (Running total: $3,830)
Hopefully, my beloved and generous aunt continues the tradition of $500 gifts to her nieces and nephew at Christmas. (Running total: $4,330)
I can definitely find $170 over the course of the year above and beyond my normal savings. I'm pretty sure I can't come up with $670, so if my aunt's gift changes this year, I may fall just short of the mark, but I should be able to make it to $4,000.
That's pretty serious savings, actually. $3,000 (the amount I'd be saving out of this year's earned income) is about 9.7% of my projected pre-tax W-2 income for this year. Disregarding my Roth (which, in this scenario we should, since it's mostly money I didn't earn and it's all money I didn't earn this year), consider that I also save 8% of my (pre-tax) salary in my 401(k). A 17.7% savings rate? I'm no slouch.
My newfound enthusiasm for the Freedom Fund leaves me neglecting my travel fund, though. Its current allotment of $25 per pay period will bring it to $1,500 at the end of the year, substantially short of the $2,000 goal. I'll either have to resign myself to prioritizing the Freedom Fund to the detriment of the travel fund, or find some way to step it up a little.
