Day 365:Cinching the Ol' Belt Up A Bit Tighter!



Photocredit: hooodlumm

I like the countdown idea - let's go backwards...it is day 365 here! And off we go counting 'er down! Tomorrow is day 364.

Have been out and walked down to the creek bridge this morning already and come back to read that someone else has beaten me to it. Ima we are way too much alike!! But, I love a good competition and will use you as a carrot dangling in front of my face. Like I said on the forum...I keep thinking "What Would Ima Do?" The air is cold and brisk here this morning - fine day to step it off so you can hurry back to the house for a cup of hot joe!

Checking the Fidelity statement this a.m. we are up over $6,000.00 this year w/o any additional contributions from us, so that was good news. Two of our better performers were FSIIX up 26.15% and FSUTX up 30.08%.

I haven't set any specific goals yet for 2007 - am still mulling it all over! I've been busy trying to cross most of the '06 goals off that I haven't really spent much time thinking about '07 YET!

I like to do things incrementally (either percentage or $$$$ wise)- so t'will be helpful to get all of 2006 reports in and then take off from there!

You guys are all so very inspiring to me!!

I do know one thing that I'm working on for 2007 is to pay an additional $60.00 monthly from OUR family budget on the mortgage this year. That's the projected figure that Countrywide's new little calculator tells me I need to add to each payment in order to pay it off by retirement schedule! Sooooo, there is that.

However, I just increased The Hubster's 2007 401-K contributions to 10% and the first paycheck came in last week with that out of it - so it's smaller and things have already been scrunched up tight!

We've been pretty successful in living only on our own current income during 2006 and staying out of the inheritance money and the emergency fund and I would surely like to continue doing it that way!

???Where??? to come up with the additional $60 is going to be interesting!!

At any rate I was able to do it with the payment just posted 12/29 (hehee!! extra interest deduction captured) for January so we're good until February. I'm working on the final draft of January's budget right now (which will include February's house payment) so I'm just going to MAKE IT HAPPEN!

What won't happen is - I will not decrease our Roth IRA contributions to make this happen. The investments have a possibility of growing to MORE THAN we put in. While the mortgage payoff is a definite set return (6.75%), but the house payments are still certainly doable even w/the possibility of an economic down-turn or even into our retirement if it doesn't get paid off before then.

Yesterday was a no spend day for me! I actually made it to stay awake til midnight last night!! That was a total fluke and unplanned. Usually I'm beat and hit the sack around 9:30 or so only to rise at 2 or 3 in the morning to read under the cubbies!