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2008 savings goals

April 30th, 2008 at 06:46 pm

A while back, I read the Automatic Millionaire and it inspired me to put my savings on auto pilot. It is a simple idea, but it's been working out great for us.

I was worried that the checking account would dip or we somehow wouldn't be able to keep up with the aggressive saving strategy I had set up for us, but so far it is working well.

I originally earmarked:
$500 a month to online savings act.
$175 a month to 529 plan
$360 a month to brokerage act
$325 a month to hubby's Roth

I recently upped it to
$600 a month to online savings
$200 a month to 529 plan

and added an additional $100 a month to my student loan payment. (On top of the $293 I already pay).

I've also managed to put more into the savings account than I had originally intended each month, so it seems that $600 has become the minimum saved, rather than the total.

If you had told me 6 months ago that I'd be able to put this much away a month, I would have told you you were crazy. Especially since I gave up my full-time income for freelance and we have since become a one and a half income family.

It's amazing what you can do if you just take the plunge and stop talking yourself out of it.

The end result of all this is that we are more than halfway to meeting our 2008 savings goals, and it's only (almost) May.

We have put $10,685 into various savings and investments. Our goal for 2008 was to sock away $18,600. So less than $8,000 to go.

This really makes me wonder what we were spending all of our money on before!

9 Responses to “2008 savings goals”

  1. cashqueen Says:
    1209578392

    Great job! There's no way I could come up with $1360/month that is not needed for necessities. It certainly is nice to put it on autopilot though.

  2. merch Says:
    1209578892

    Nice job!!!

  3. Broken Arrow Says:
    1209582038

    Haha, love the last sentence. I used to wonder that myself before I tried to get on a budget.

  4. 76Chick Says:
    1209584241

    Nice!! Makes me excited!! I agree, where is (was) the money going? Great job!

  5. Ima saver Says:
    1209588830

    Good job!!!!

  6. thriftorama Says:
    1209592018

    cashqueen--

    I didn't think we could come up with that much to save every month either, but once we really set our minds to it, the money just followed...

  7. terri77 Says:
    1209595534

    Automatic Millionaire is my favorite finance book, mainly because I was already doing much of what it advocated and I knew that it worked. I'm glad that it's working for you as well! I've been sending copies of the book to all my friends and family. I always find inexpensive copies at the Amazon market place.

  8. scfr Says:
    1209596883

    Recently I was musing about which of the Savings Advice members was the biggest over-achiever. You must be added to the list! Very impressive!

  9. thriftorama Says:
    1209601783

    Admittedly, I have always been an over achiever... But I have to admit that the money that goes to the brokerage and Roth IRA are really a "pay back." When we bought this house we cashed out a few thousand dollars in stocks to add to the money we made selling our previous house. We used it to buy the house outright. I always swore I'd payback the money we took out of stocks, because we don't have a mortgage. Now, we're doing it. The IRA and brokerage money is about equivalent to what our house payment would have been...

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