Travel Plans & Goals...

Headed to the Cape with the Guy for the 4th – we’re staying with his parents for the week, so hopefully it will be a relatively economical trip, but you never know. Things always seem to pop up. Also I added a travel fund to my list of goals (does it mean something that I just keep knocking that wedding fund down the list…?) I’ve decided that I’d like to take a nice long trip with the Guy before we (eventually, at long-last) pick up and move out of the Midwest. We’ll both be in transition at that point – him into a new job somewhere and me getting ready to go back to school. And I’m not sure if the right time is this Fall or next Spring (probably depends on how prices are looking), but I think $2500 should be enough for a lengthy budget trip. Maybe not, but it’s a start. I’m thinking South America – maybe a hiking adventure of some kind along the Inca Trail or perhaps checking out some of those great Malbec’s in wine country. We shall see. My goal is to save $50 a month in an automatic deduction and then whatever else I can afford at the end of the budget cycle.

Monthly Automatic Deductions

So, I thought I would do an audit of what I have automatically deducted from my checking account each month to help me save.
401(k) through my employer: $290 never see this 6% of my monthly take-home pay.
Roth IRA: $250
Term-Life Insurance (using as a midterm investment that I could cash into around the time I have kids/am settled somewhere) : $100
ING Deduct for B-School Savings: $100
Total: $740

I feel pretty good about the level of retirement savings, especially given how the markets are performing. But I think I could still stand to increase the monthly savings deductions for business school. I just did the math, and if I stay at my current deposit level and do nothing else, I will only be at 7% of my goal by the time I get there. To actually reach my goal of $50,000 by the time I reach business school, I would have to be putting in more like $3,000 a month. Which is more than I make a month. Fabulous. I probably should have done the math better before I set up that goal. But I should at least be trying to increase that incrementally each month. So this month we'll try to ramp it up to $150.