Come join me! Please leave a comment below of what your financial goals are this year! Let’s work together to achieve them.
I’m super excited to share our 2012 Savings Challenge. Of course, I’m sharing this in February. Time flies when you are having fun.
As most of my readers know, in March 2011 we were blessed with identical twin boys! It amazes me that we have survived the year. We also have “Doodle” our wonderful daughter who is a great big sister. If you missed it this is the review of 2011.
2012 Savings Challenge
Our financial goals for 2012:
Short term goals
Refinancing our mortgage.
Rates are very low and it makes perfect sense. I highly recommend refinancing but be prepared for anything!
In January, we took the plunge and now we are almost at the end of the process. I plan to write a bit about our experience. We’ve refinanced a couple of times in our lifetime and I will say this time it wasn’t easy at all. The laws have changed and it has made it very difficult.
It will take us about 12 months to recoup the closing costs and another 12 months to cover the cost of paying down our mortgage. One of the issues we had is our appraisal didn’t come in as high as we needed so we will have to use some savings to pay down our principle. The appraisal process is subjective to the appraiser. *sigh*
The good news is we will save more than $400 a month on interest! That is so exciting.
In addition, this is our ONLY debt.
Finding a financial adviser
We went to a financial adviser several years ago and really liked the idea of having someone that can look at our financial situation and confirm we are on the right or wrong track. We are looking for an adviser.
Save towards a vacation.
This is a goal we are so looking forward to do. It is an immediate goal since we will be doing it this year. We plan on saving each month in a separate account. We also are looking at ways to travel in a frugal way. Now that we are a family of 5 we love places that feed kids for FREE or have deep discounts for off season times. We can’t wait!
Long Term goals:
Saving for a car.
We have 5 vehicles! Yes, you read that right. We know since the vehicles are older that we need to do MORE maintenance and there might come a time when it will make sense to buy a newer vehicle. We hope to be completed with this goal in a couple years. I plan to write more posts about why we own so many vehicles and how we make it frugal. Here is Part 1 and Part 2 posts I wrote a couple years ago about our cheap SUV.
Saving more for retirement.
Since I’m working very little now I only include the matching that my company offers. My husband is maxing out on his 401k. I’m amazed that we can afford it. Now, with the savings from our mortgage I want to see if we can do additional savings for retirement. Wouldn’t it be amazing to retire earlier then what we think?
Saving more for college.
We did the minimum for our kids 529 plans and now that we have the savings from our mortgage to add additional savings.
Photo Credit: FreePixels.com
