2012 Plan

As most of you who read this blog probably know, Rachel and I had a plan to move to London by 2012. We were serious about it. To the point where I told my parents and totally freaked them out.

But between making that plan and now, a lot has happened. Rachel opened a successful Austin graphic design business, which would be difficult to transfer overseas for various reasons. We purchased a home, and then a second home. And a bunch of smaller, daily things that would make it hard to leave. Not to mention that it’s pretty difficult to trick England into letting you live there.

Point of the story being, a while back, Rach and I had a sit down and we decided that we weren’t moving to London by 2012. It’s not off the table in the future, just not on the original time line.

After that discussion, I was reading one of my financial blogs and they were saying you need to have financial goals – as you would workout goals or career goals – so you have something to aim for. It clicked with me so I thought I should create some.

With 2012 as my old date for a pretty big goal, I decided to arbitrarily make it the date for 2 financial goals: paying off my car loan and having my emergency fund fully funded.

After looking at the actual numbers, that’s pretty much the track I was already on. And that’s not really a goal. A goal is something you have to strive for.

So my new goals are:
Pay off my car loan by 2011.
Full fund my emergency fund by 2012.

I’m already making extra payments towards the principal of the car loan ever month, so I’m actually going to have to push hard to shave an additional year off. I’m really going to have to focus on that goal while maintaining my current efforts towards my emergency fund.

The extra car loan funds are outside of my current budget so I’m going to have to find ways to get extra cash. But reading plenty of frugal/financial blogs has prepared me for that. And I’ll get into my efforts as much as I can here.

On a side note, I also signed up for the 401K at my new job. I now realize exactly how much my car loan is taking away from my retirement efforts – in terms exact percentages. It’s enlightening.