I sat down to figure out what my expenses would be if I had no cc debt.

If I don’t count my student loan payments of $250 a month my living expenses (rent 465, utilities~150, cell as no home phone~60, gas~175, rental unit 10, groceries 250, car and house insurance ~135, car repairs savings account 100, parking 80, Netflix 15, car payment 100) could be a very manageable $1410 a month without saving anything extra each month. (There is one small savings account for car repairs included in that total and no entertainment included other than my Netflix account). If I added in entertainment $200 which is what I allow myself currently it would be $1635. Add in my student loans of $250 it raises to $1855. That means (depending upon the length of the month) I have 60 to 62 dollars a day toward my expenses/spending. That seems a little high to me. I will work to cut that by 10% in the coming months.

My goal when I pay off my cc’s next year (and depending upon the real estate market here in Northern California as I want to buy a house) is to put away $1000 into my 401k and $500 into my 457 plans at work plus the amount I am required to put away (5.6%). This would still leave me more than $800 than I need each month to save for other things.

My retirement savings is no where close to where I think it should be and even if I can only sustain that for a year before I buy a house that would still mean I put away $21364 in one year. My goal is to be able to do this starting March 2009 and continue for a year getting some of the tax breaks in both years.

What kills me is that if I was to put away 1500 a month for the next 30 years (assuming 8% return with 3% inflation) and retire at 63 the total would be $2.3 not including my Roth IRA and other retirement benefits. It is only a pipe dream to sustain it for that long though as I want to buy a house and that is going to take a lot eat into it a lot. If I can sustain 500 a month for 30+ years I would have around 900k in savings toward retirement with the same assumptions.

And all of this is based on the salary I have now, not the 5% raises I’ll get for the next three years before I top out and can move into a new classification at work.

I plan to update the numbers on the side tonight or tomorrow. Tomorrow is pay day and i am planning to pay off a card and i would like it to reflect my new goals.