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Archive for February, 2014

When the debts are gone, what do you use to keep yourself pushing forward?

February 20th, 2014 at 09:51 pm

The title is probably a question most people wish they had, but as I was looking at my latest paycheck, I realized I don't have the pleasure I once did when it came to seeing each paycheck, taking the numbers and entering them into my custom spreadsheet, and watching myself come closer to, and then passing, each goal.

I don't remember each one, but here are some I worked towards, and kept me motivated to keep coming into work.

* Get to where more of my mortgage payment went to principal instead of to interest
* Build up $20,000 in CDs (that was good only when CD gave you real money)
* Have more in my retirement accounts & savings than all my debts (mortgage / car / whatever)
* Have more in my retirement accounts than my mortgage
* Have more in my savings than my mortgage balance (I sense a trend here)
* Have all my debts paid off
* Have more than $400k in my retirement accounts (That was for late 2015 and I already passed it!)
* Have more in all my savings and liquid accounts (brokerage / DRIPs / etc...) than my yearly take home amount (I realized today I was past that as well)

Now I am at the point of "now what?". Any financial goal I make now really is long term. Dividends come to mind. Watching my dividends grow is soooo slow (It takes $10,000 to add just $400 to a yearly dividend amount - assuming 4% dividend which isn't likely). So using dividends as a short term goal isn't the best.

So I don't know. Not complaining (how can I?), but I don't want to be doing the same thing "just because". Intellectionally I know this is probably the best thing to keep going forward at the job for now (and probably until I can retire with a pension).

But still having something short term to work on knocking out would be a help. Do I want to make it "I want to have more than two years of take home pay"? That seems sort of arbitrary. "Have enough to buy XYZ car"? Well... I'm not a car guy, so that's no incentive. "Have enough for a cross country trip"? While that sounds interesting, that's a nebulous amount, and anyway I doubt neither I nor my girlfriend can take enough time off to make that happen. So for those that have gotten past the owing money point, what short term goals do you use, if any?

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Just some run-on items for the year to date:
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On non-financial areas so far this year:
* I have been able to easily take time off to take care of my girlfriend during medical issues
* My car is running well
* I'm keeping up with my daily exercises.
* I had physical exams so far this year for people over 50 and everything came out great (you can fill in the blanks there!).
* We even spent a couple of days in Florida in January having a good time.

In other financial areas I have:
* Sold on ebay over $150 this year. Half of the sales were hers, mine probably gave me a profit of $50 after expenses.
* Another $20 of Half.com sales, and $50 of sales on Craigslist. So I'm getting items out of here I don't need (though there is plenty more of that).
* Shoot, I even upgraded some of my clothes for cheap already this year (great estate sale three weeks ago).
* And we've been getting great things for extra cheap at Goodwill outlet stores this year. (and already resold some)