My #2 (Pay off Lowe's credit card), #4 (Pay off Jimmy's student loan), and #6 (Save $2,000 emergency fund) goals are all financial goals that I would like to accomplish in 2012.
As I mentioned in goal #1, we need to finish my house and get it rented out. Well... we don't have any money because we are paying for the mortgage on the house right now and we can't fix it up with no money! That's how we got the Lowe's credit card. Part of fixing up the house meant buying and having new windows installed. With the old windows, we were not able to legally rent out the house. They were in such bad shape. We didn't have $4,000 dollars hanging around and we needed the windows in order to get it rented out so we got a Lowe's credit card. If you know anything about me, you would know that I HATE credit cards. I am very Dave Ramsey in that respect. Jimmy had 7 credit cards when we started dating and we had them all paid off a year and a half later! I swore we would never have one again but here we are with one. I am super bummed about it but we did get a no interest for the first 18 months card. Since we got the card in October, we should have til April 2013 to pay it off with out interest. That is why my goal is to pay it off in 2012. Then we will be no where close to April 2013 and no where close to all that CRAZY interest!
When Jimmy went to college, he didn't get any financial aid. I mean NONE. Not a penny. But Sallie Mae helped him out. Over $20,000 worth too. Since Jimmy was a young college kid with no credit, he was only aloud a few grand so his mom had to step in a put a loan under her name. Right now between the two we owe roughly $17,000. Our goal this year is to pay off the student loans that are under Jimmy's name. Which is the lesser of the two. We are hoping to get some forward momentum with paying these things off and get our debt snowball rolling! We have roughly $3,700 left to go on this one.
By this point you all should know that we have 2 houses :) With that, we need two emergency funds. That is why we are going to build up to a $2,000 emergency fund. $1,000 for my house, $1,000 for Jimmy's house. God forbid the water heater goes out at the same time in both houses, or something happens with ours (Jimmy's) and we don't have time to build it back up before something happens to the rental (mine). We are hoping to get it rented out and put the difference between what the renters pay and what we pay for the mortgage into this emergency fund along with other stuff.
For these three goals, getting the finances is our obvious first problem. And budgeting is our second. I have started a new job at McDonalds that we are hoping will help out a little, I am also trying to get in contact with DHS to get payments for my child care kids going (I still haven't gotten paid for most of my kids and DHS is roughly $1,000 behind!) As for the rest of the year, we will have to see what God has in store for us. My husbands bonuses will also go towards these goals along with any money made on craigslist from cleaning out the basement. I am hoping that goal #20 (make and keep budget) will assist with this also.
Good luck with all those goals - you have a lot on your plate! I look forward to seeing your progress each month - don't forget to link up each month!
ReplyDeleteI love how you have all your points listed on the right - that's a great way to keep you motivated to earn more.