INVESTING FOR FREE-TIME: 2017 Goals: Third Quarter Update

With this being the first year that we have publicly set and tracked our financial goals, September has already come and gone and we are through three-fourths of another year. This experience has helped us to work really hard to stay on pace and reach our goals for the year. It provides a little extra motivation when you are showing your progress to others. I also hope it can help others to start thinking about their finances so that they can start setting goals and budgets, and that they can begin to climb out of debt and start building their savings accounts, rather than living paycheck to paycheck.

2017 Goals Update

Goal #1
Max out our 401k ($18,000).

We are well on our way towards maxing out our 401k account. At the end of September we have contributed $17,247. This puts us at 95.8% of our goal which will allow us to easily max out our 401k over the next three months.

Goal #2 Invest $250 a week for a total of $13,000 for the year.

At the half way mark, we had saved $4,633 in our investment account which had put us behind our goal to save $13,000 for the year. We made the decision to work really hard towards increasing our contributions towards this account in the third quarter and we now have saved $12,200. This puts us only $800 away from our goal for the year

Goal #3 Saving $200 a month for purchasing an automobile.

We have continued to put back $200 each month for a total of $2,000 this year. Hopefully by sticking to this goal we will be able to pay cash for our next vehicle purchase.

Goal #4 Saving $400 a month for home repairs.

We have made some major home updates this year, including replacing the furnace and A/C units. We will continue save $400 a month so that we can hopefully complete another project by early summer of 2018

Goal #5 Save $3,600 to take a two week vacation to California.

We saved the entire $3,600 for our big vacation. We had a great trip out west visiting the Grand Canyon, Disneyland, Denver, and Rocky Mountain national park.

It is looking like we are well on pace to reach all of our financial goals for 2017. Over the next couple on months we will start working on some goals for the next year.