Goals - Project DebtStomp 2015

Having goals is super important when it comes to tracking finances. If you don’t know what you are looking for, then why are you looking? 

So, for Project DebtStomp 2015, these are my immediate goals: 

1. Pay off personal loan by June.
This is a debt total of $3,437.52 that accrued from a family friend paying part of my way to England/Scotland this past summer. I have already chunked away a couple of hundred off of this total. The new actual total is $2,901.07 

2. Pay off credit card by May. 

This should be one of the easiest things to pay off. It’s my smallest debt and even between two cards my debt doesn’t surpass $2,000. I pushed it a little with my “go-to” credit card this month, I had been making decent enough payments that my bank decided to up my limit. So, instead of the original $700, I had $1,200 to work with. These will be getting paid off with tax returns!
Wells Fargo Credit: $906.07
Target Credit Card: $561.38 

3. Pay my car loan down to $10,000 by December.
This one is going to be tricky. As of right now, the total loan balance is at $14,992.51. According to my calculations, in order to effectively achieve this goal by the deadline, I will have to throw an extra $283.20 per month starting in March. This means roughly $141.60 per paycheck seeing as I get paid bi-monthly now. I am also planning to cushion this with the money that I should be getting from my settlement check due to the car accident (not my fault) that I was in last November. But I have no way of even guesstimating how much that will be or when I will get it. 

4. Pay off 1/4 of my student loan by December.
This is probably my most unattainable goal seeing as I don’t have it set to flow into motion until June and I only gave myself six months to pay off 1/4 of my $8,399.45 student loan which I was foolish with and one of my loans has been accruing interest heavily for the past year. Silly mistake that I won’t be making again, that is for sure! The total amount for this goal is $2099.86 to be paid off in no less than six month which averages out to about $349.98 a month! Yikes! 

I always have several savings goals that I am trying to accomplish as well. The first six months of 2015, I’m not going to be seeing a lot of progress in these departments, but as my debts get smaller and ultimately dissipate entirely, I am hoping to see a huge turn around as I begin to manage my money properly.
These goals consist of: 

1. Max out my IRA by February 2016

I gave myself until February of next year for this goal, just for the sheer fact that I have already filed my taxes this year and unfortunately haven’t added any funds to this since last year. 

2. Put any extra money I get into my Savings.
This mean cash, checks or gift cards that I get for any miscellaneous holiday from my family. My family likes to give me gift cards the most so that I am forced to buy myself things that I normally wouldn’t and don’t spend the cash on bills. How thoughtful. So, I developed a system to force myself to save that money. I can’t use a gift card until I have “bought” from myself. For example, say I received a $100 gift card for Christmas to Target. I will not go to Target and use the gift card until I have deposited the exact amount of the total worth of he gift card into my savings account. I save money AND don’t actually have to pay for the things I need. Double win! 

3. Keep up with my Challenge Savings.
I have also enlisted myself in a Challenge of sorts. Inspired by a post by J. Money from budgetsaresexy.com (my most favorite finance nerd blog), I have set up an account (savings, duh!) and this is where I deposit any extra change that is left over from debit purchases, loose physical change (and $1 bills) that is saved, counted, rolled and then deposited at the end of the month and any left over margin from my bill budgets. 

4. Contribute 5% of my paycheck into my 401k.
This is probably the easiest savings technique to keep up with. I literally don’t have to do anything. I never see it leave and I don’t miss it once it’s gone. Conveniently, my company uses Wells Fargo for our 401k’s so there is no swapping between different banks to check in. It’s all right one the app.