How did you do in January? We finally sat down together with our financial advisor and got some things straightened out/set up for our businesses and retirement savings. It feels good to have that all in place and to now be saving 10% of our income towards retirement. Lord-willing, this will allow us to not be a burden to our children financially when we are old and feeble someday!
We’re now working hard at funding our children’s educational savings accounts. We decided to do something rather out-of-the-ordinary and actually fund them in the amount we’ve both agreed upon in one lump sum, rather than just put in a yearly amount. Since our children are still young, we realized that compound interest is going to play out favorably for them over the next 12 to 17 years, so it would be less expensive for us to go ahead and just put in one lump sum for each of them now. This also will allow us to have one less thing to have a budget category for once we are finished saving the amount we’ve determined we feel we want to put towards their education.
We are not putting this money in typical educational savings accounts, even though it’s a little less tax efficient because we don’t want it to only be ear-marked for college. We definitely expect that at least some of our children will attend college, but some may be more entrepreneurial and may want to start a business in high school or pursue learning outside of college (such as a hands-on internship).
While I definitely think that college is a wise choice in many circumstances, since I didn’t go to college, I tend to be rather counter-cultural in believing that traditional college is not necessarily a necessity for every single young person. We hope to encourage our children to seek God and determine what their own bents, interests and passions are and then we want to help them out financially as they pursue those — whether that be college or some other route.
At any rate, here’s our financial goals update for January:
1. Give generously to the needs in our community and around the world. (This is an ongoing goal that we’re seeking to make a priority each month so we’re not checking it off.)
2. Pay cash for a replacement washer and dryer for our very used set. (DONE)
3. Pay cash for a replacement for Jesse’s van. (DONE)
4. Pay cash for a couch for our basement family room. (DONE)
5. Pay cash for bunk beds for the girls. (DONE)
6. Fully fund our IRAs. (DONE)
7. Bump up our retirement savings to 10% of our income. (DONE)
8. Fund our children’s educational savings.
9. Double our Emergency Fund Savings (Instead of having around six month’s worth of expenses set aside, we’re planning to set aside a year’s worth of expenses.)
10. Save 40% towards our goal of paying cash for commercial real estate.
We’d love to hear about your recent financial goals and successes! You can post about it on your blog and leave your link in the comments. Or, just share about your progress/goals in the comments. Let’s all keep each other accountable to be better stewards of our resources!
Our seven months of investing full-time in our family business are now passed. Project GROW is mostly complete, and the web-based version of our product will be debuting soon. We realize that it will likely take years for us to get to the point of self-sufficiency. But imagine what it will be like when we do!
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Tracie has helped her family eradicate over $37,000 in debt in 27 months. She shares her money saving tips, coupons and deals daily at 