My Financial WANTS

I read an interesting piece in the blogosphere of late about emergency funds and how they create this negative psychology around anticipating catastrophes at every turn and create a poverty mentality. That got me thinking about the right way to set up your goals to motivate you to save positively, and not discourage you about where you are, where you want to be, and where you may never be. That’s depressing, whew. For my goals:

Emergency savings – $9,000 really is three months of my current salary, so that one is based on a pretty typical principal.

Business School Savings - $50,000. I realize this is actually way higher than I can actually achieve. I sincerely doubt I’ll be able to save this much before I go to school. However, this is the amount that I would feel really good about going into school to sustain a semblance of my lifestyle without taking on excessive amounts of debt. For me, it’s more important here to acknowledge the real total rather than set an achievable end goal. In the end, I will have to take on tons of loans to go to school. Everyone does it. (Sigh) I’ll do it too, and I’ll be okay. What is important for me in the meantime, is to set achievable short-term goals along the way to that total amount, i.e. upping the ante on my automatic savings each month.

Travel Goal - $2,500 This is the bare bones amount to have a real South American adventure. I honestly don’t think I can do it for less. So this is more about budget setting than anything else.

Wedding Goal - $? I can’t even think about how much I’m going to need for this right now. I should probably take it off, because I’m not even contributing to this yet, but it’s a reminder that I really should be saving if I want to pay for my own wedding and get married anytime in the next decade.

Those are the big ones – the NEEDS – that I’ve chosen to prioritize but I also think it’d be great to set a few other positive goals, to recognize that I’m trying to save, cover my needs, and be more frugal so that I can enjoy some of my WANTS. And as long as you save and budget for it, you can enjoy these fun things that cost money. So, a short list of my financial WANTS.

+ A Personal Trainer for a Year
+ A Dog, complete with Dog Walker for weekdays
+ A few more of my favorite magazine subscriptions (right now it’s just Vanity Fair)

Right now I’m not saving specifically for these, but once I’ve finished up with my travel goal, I’ll choose one of these as a positive savings goal to tack on. Any other strategies for keeping yourself on the positive side of saving?