How was your 2006 financially speaking?

(Following is my answer to the above forum question - thought I'd post the answer here as well so maybe I can keep up w/what's been going on in our financial life! Hopefully we'll be golden in 2007!!)




Great! But could be better!

Got FIL house empty and ready to sell, painted, roof repaired, carpeted and listed w/RE agent. Not so good in that much of this has cost us money that is still out - house has yet to sell. Estate has yet to settle and keeps having to borrow from us to keep the utilities on (cold weather winters).

Upped The Hubster's 401-K contributions to 10%. Currently 60% vested (he's worked at the same place 40 years come January 2nd, but a buyout a couple of years ago set him back to zero on this vesting point).

Have automatic deductions set up for his/her Roth IRA's. Not maxed this year. We had some big house remodel expenses on our home that were near necessities AND trying to keep lots of cash available until the estate settles - all of which kept the IRA's from being maxed this year.

The Traditional Rollover IRA from the above said buyout (profit-sharing plan monies) is up 16.45% for the year. And we are getting ready to reallocate some of it into one of those Targeted Date funds. Set up the Fidelity Income Management Account during November which I'm really looking forward to watching it purr along come 2007.

First meeting with financial planner tells me that we are doing all the right things to get ourselves ready for retirement in 6 years. An A++ from the CFP certainly was a high spot for the year.

Best for me was these last two points: 1)that we stayed on budget all year with only slight variations from our monthly target goals - all of which adjustments were able to be made by underspending in other categories - so each month the budget balanced!!! A big thanks goes to Jesse Mecham at youneedabudget.com for his zero balance budgeting software which made this doable by being able to see it all at a glance. I was rather anal about this as I didn't want to see any of my categories off target and having to be shorted on the next month!

In reality w/just one of us working our margins are so small that any variation from the plan caused a nasty ripple effect and the software makes it visible! In mid-2006 a $75.00 charge on the CC that was forgotten to be entered into the checkbook whould have made a nasty lil' dent in the next month's spending and had to reach }}}}}}shudder{{{{{{ into the carefully hoarded EF to make it work - so that it became an incentive to make sure it didn't happen again!

2) Continued to use our credit cards as aids only and not a crutch. Anything that was charged was fully paid off on every single billing cycle!

Bad points: I have had the cash crunch come out of my wallet - if money was tight it was MY spending and the grocery budget was often too TOO tight this past year. Christmas was also rather scimpy for my tastes. Need to up those three areas in the budget. Hopefully the year 2007 will see a little loosening in those areas as some of our biggest expenditures are now out of the way (house painting, house windows and the already saved for doors that are coming in the next little while).

On the horizons for a targeted savings goal is putting in new carpet at perhaps the end of 2007/beginning of 2008. We think we may downsize in a few years, but I refuse to fix my house up at the last minute to sell for someone else to enjoy all the new goodies. We're doing stuff now - enjoying it and hoping that it will enhance the sellability of our house in the future.

2007? Bring it on!!!