working hard to my goals! Keep up the good work everyoen!

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.

I completed a focus group tonight and earned 100. I was quite pleased with the topic, enjoyed the other women in the group and got paid. Not bad for a quick evening chat.

Had lunch out with a colleague but ended up having for free when it took a long time to bring. We ordered an appetizer and a bowl of soup. 35 minutes later, no food. Asked waiter, said it would be right up. 10 minutes later no food. Asked to see the manager. When he arrived, he asked for the ticket of our lunch. I said, what lunch? We have had no food yet. 10 minutes later we have food to go to get to a meeting and did not have to pay. Equaled a no spend day for me and I got paid. Pretty nice!

Thanks to monkey mama who shared the focus group idea! Worked well!