HisHersMoney

As we get ready for 2009 it is time to look ahead and establish our 2009 goals. The first thing I did was determine how much money we would need to live for a year and just pay our bills. No vacations, no spending, just food, rent, car, phone, etc. I was astonished when I realized that the amount was $3973 a month, $47,676 a year! This is getting rid of cable, dropping down to minimums and getting rid of all extras on cell phones, no going out, cheap food. All I can say is HOLY COW!

We really need to attack our Emergency Savings account goal this year! Our goal is to save $12k towards this number in 2009. We already have about $5k saved so this will bring us to a total of $17k which is about 60% of our total goal. That’s $1000/month. Can we do it? Really, there’s no reason why we can’t.

On a monthly basis here’s our savings plan:

1. $100 Savings towards car purchase, pay cash in about 3 years
2. $250 Vacation account, where ever, when ever
3. $50 Next year’s xmas savings
4. $1000 Emergency savings
5. $350 towards down payment fund

That’s a total of $1750 a month and $21,000 for the year. On paper it looks like January will be about $400 short of that goal. We are going on an unplanned vacation over New Years with a group of friends that we really didn’t plan or save for.

In addition to this savings we have $417/person going towards maxing out our Roth IRAs and $16,000/person going into our 401k accounts which adds another $42k towards our retirement!

We will track and post our progress through the year.