2015 Goals

Happy 2015! I had a lot of fun in 2014 and I am so grateful for the past year, but I honestly felt like I kind of put my life on pause last year - it was a year of let’s see what happens instead of steering my own life. In 2015, I would love to change that. 

First things first, I want to gain control of my goals by PAYING OFF ALL MY CONSUMER DEBT. This will be my main goal this year and the primary purpose of this blog. I also listed some of my savings, blog and personal goals below.

Financial Goals :

• Pay off Debt Completely - I will be paying them off at this order

• Personal Loan - end of 2014 $5,145 | approx monthly $450

• Credit Cards - end of 2014 $9,466 | approx monthly $800

• Student Loan - end of 2014 $6,062 | approx monthly $520

• No credit card spending - I am not leaving my credit card into my wallet. I am kind of nervous about this, but as much as possible – I do not want to add any more debt into my CC.

• Learn about retirement – what’s the best thing to do with my old 401k and an old investment

 Savings Goals : 

• Build an Emergency Fund – Increase to $1000 liquid funds

• 401k - Increase contribution to 6%

• Roth IRA – Increase to $1000

 Blog Goals : The main three things that I will still keep posting are

• Weekly Spending Report - I will keep posting my weekly spending just to keep myself in line of the goals

• Monthly Update - I will also post monthly goals that I would want to accomplish during the month.

• Month End Updates - A closing on what I did during the month - see if I accomplish the goals I have set for myself.

 Personal Goals : 

• 1 International and 4 Domestic Travels - I want to do a big trip this year and maybe little trips spread out each quarter 

• Start running again - Log 10k+ each week

• Do yoga or a Barre class - and commit to it!

• Walk my dog - I just want to spend more time with him this year

• Read/Listen 12 books this year

• Learn something new - I want to learn how to knit, scuba dive, design a website and drive a stick shift

• Become a Yelp Elite =)

Lets do this 2015!

Target End Date - Revised

This week I am starting think of financial goals that I would like to accomplish in 2015. The main goal is paying down the big three debts that I have and in this order

1. Pay off the Personal Loan $5,788 as of today
2. Pay off/down Credit Card @ $9,000 as of today
3. Pay down Student Loans @ 6,220 as of today

There are also 3 options that have been circling my head on how to get these bad boys paid off.
Keep in mind that I get paid bi-weekly so most of these are broken down by the pay period instead of per month.

• Debt Snowball 
• Paying the minimum on the last two debts and the max I can pay on the first debt.
• My debt budget will be hovering around $700 
• Personal Loan Payment $540 - paid off by April 2015
• Credit Card Payment $100 - paid off by Oct 2015
• Student Loan Payment $60 - paid off by Jan 2016

• Pay off within the year - 26 payments
• Debt budget approx $850
• Personal Loan Payment $250 - paid off by Nov 2015
• Credit Card Payment $350 - paid off by Nov 2015
• Student Loan Payment $250 - paid off by Nov 2015

• Pay off within 1.5 years - 39 payments
• Debt Budget approx $600
• Personal Loan Payment $150 - paid off by May 2016
• Credit Card Payment $250 - paid off by May 2016
• Student Loan Payment $200 - paid off by May 2016

This doesn't include any extra payments that I might be able to pay out next year. Either way - this will be sooner than the Target Date I have set for myself which was July 2016.



Which one do you think is the best option? 

July & August Update - Starting New

I am back with a few changes! July was just a bad month for me because of the vacation trip and it completely threw me off the loop with my whole debt progress - just as predicted. But I am now fully determined to get the debt payments out that I think I went a little gazelle intense.  

Current Debts:

Below is the breakdown of my debt progress… I think (I hope) I am still on track for the July 2016 payoff date! 

Name	Jun-14	Jul-14	Aug-14
Personal Loan	8,976.00	8,662.00	8,346.00
Student Loan	6,970.00	6,869.00	6,688.00
CC #1	6,542.00	6,424.00	6,200.00
CC #2	634.00	1,275.00	200.00
CC #3	-	840.00	-
TOTAL	23,122.00	24,070.00	21,434.00

How was I able to pay off $2,636* in a month?

CC#3 Story – Paid off $840

 I am NEVER going to book another hotel from hotels.com again!

A gist of what happened - J and I were not able to check in the date because of weather related issues. There was NO WAY for us to get back to the mainland since ALL flights were cancelled. I kept explaining this to the reps (yes, plural) at hotels.com - and its either I was placed on hold for how long and I even felt like the manager didn't believe the story. Feeling defeated I googled what else I can do because I didnt want to pay that 'extra' amount. Thank goodness CC#3 was there to the rescue (Ok, its AMERICAN EXPRESS - I think they deserve a shout out on my blog) absolutely no explanation needed. I disputed almost $300 of the charges from my July and got the funds back into the account almost the next day. That was how I was able to pay off that CC by August!

CC#2 Story – Paid off $1075

 The vacation completely threw me off the loop and for this – it was a good thing!

Originally my automatic deposits are broken down by :

• 10% Main Savings
• 20% Credit Union Checking
• The rest is on my main checking account

But pre-vacation, I changed the 10% to deposit to be sent to my Credit Union Savings instead. I saw a pretty nice sum (4 paychecks later) on the savings account and decided to just pay off most of the credit card debt from that.

The rest of the $721 went to… 

Were paid to my Personal Loan, Student Loan and CC#1…. +/- interest rate charges.

	Rest	Aug Paid	Interest
Personal Loan	316.00	396.00	(80.00)
Student Loan	181.00	200.00	(19.00)
CC #1	224.00	300.00	(76.00)
TOTAL	721.00	896.00	(175.00)

July Ending Debt: $24,070 || Paid: $2,636 || August Ending Debt:* $21,434

Weekly Spending:

The $150 weekly goal, I realized, will not work for me... However, I will still aim to keep around that amount and I will still enter my expenses weekly under this group

I am just going to focus on paying $500 bi-weekly (+/- $1000 a month) to my debt total 

Pending Expenses:
Christmas is almost here! 120 more days and 8 more paychecks to go. I cant really calculate what I will be spending the next couple of months, but here's what I will be expecting to spend money on.

• End of August - Birthday season is coming up for our group of friends. It starts this week!
• September - Continuing the b-days and festivities
• October - Trip to visit friends out of state
• November - Car Registration due!
• December - Christmas Funds are completely depleted to pay off debt. Time to restart again! *sigh*

I am sure there will be more changes. 

*This update is for Week 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12