November Financial Round Up

I'll continue to update how I have been in September and October-cutting to the chase. As the month to month variances are hard to explain, I've simplified to have our starting goal, progress in cash difference, and progress on utilizing the savings towards our priorities. We increased our cash savings balance by another $1,500 in November. As part of our original goal was to top off DH's retirement to the max of $24,000, I've added that into the non-cash progress towards our savings goal.

Annual Savings Goal          $40,417

Cash Savings Increase        $ 9,691
(since January 1, 2017) Financial Goals Achieved/Progress
Fully Fund Roth                  $13,000
DH Additional Retirement   $  4,016 (towards $6,000 as part of annual goal)

Total Savings achieved      $26,607


Goal Balance                     $13,810

We've achieved several things on our budget that I am happy to share or repeat.

• $13,000 fully funded our Roth, after tax IRA. This means we will pay no taxes on this money nor the earnings in retirement. 
• $8,000 towards DD2's college fund was achieved.
• $800 spent on our anniversary weekend and college weekend visits. This was our scaled down vacation plan since we decided to put money towards a big trip next summer with all our kids, and fore go Yellowstone. With this being the first summer with the new cabin, we knew there would be a lot of work there to finish-and there in fact was! I did not put the $800 into the cash savings tracking, but was part of the goal as we started the year.wanted to at least recognize that we did achieve this. 
• Additional contributions to family and friends with health crisis, and hurricane relief. 

We increased our savings average to $2,418. This is a little deceptive to myself though, because of the $4,016 DH has put aside more to date than we anticipated in his 401K.  Cash savings, including the money paid against the Roth, averages $2,062. I'll finalize this at years end, but including our 401K's it looks like our finish will be an overall short and long term savings rate of 42% of our income, cash being 14% of that. I have an automatic 5.5 %, with a 5.5% match to my pension. We have no control on this, so I have left that out of the equation entirely. 

Our cash savings took a  jump  after my raise, at least $1,500 of the cash savings a direct benefit. DH also did not have as bad a slow period this summer as he had last so his overall income increased. While these are good things, we need to continue to examine our spending as we will have a very agressive cash savings goal starting in 2018, our last full year to save before DD2 starts college. I'm also a tad worried how our taxes for 2017 will play out, and if we manage to make it through like last year without an extra tax bite. A few years back, DH's taxed earnings were low proportionate to his spiffs,which are untaxed. We were absolutely slammed! While I wanted to carefully set aside 40%, over the year these did get mingled in full with regular pay. We do have a side account that we pay ourselves, so if we take a hit, we can draw down there. Who needs a new car in the future anyway?

If you are curious to see what made up the $40,417 target, revisit the post from last December Thinking Ahead to 2017 Financial Goals.