2015 Financial Goals

Starting January 1st our normal income, paid twice per month, will cover all of our living expenses and savings. This amount is from my salary, which is the same every pay, and Mr. R's normal pay.  He gets paid hourly and usually has at least a little bit of overtime each check.  I'm using his base pay amount if he actually just worked 40 hours per week to count as "normal income".

My goals for our income in 2015: 

• Increase the savings for each of our daughters from $20 per month to $40 per month each.  (I know this doesn't seem like a lot but we are still budgeting $600 per month for child care. September 2015 will mean no more day care and we can reevaluate how much to put in each of the girls savings accounts at that time.)
• Continue to save $100 per month for home repairs out of the investment property income.  In April, we should be able to increase this amount to $150 per month saved towards home repairs.
• Add $5,000 to our saving.  This should be a stretch for us but not so much that it is impossible:
• $3000 for Emergency Fund
• $2000 Car repair/new car fund
• Groceries - We waste way too much food.  I'm going to try to really pay attention to this and reduce our food waste in 2015.  My goal is to maintain a $110 per week food budget and preferably come in under budget some weeks.

Vacation Savings:

Vacations are very important to us.  I love to be able to take 1 family vacation a year and 1 long weekend away for Mr. R and I.  Plus sometimes we come across great deals on day trips or 1 night trips for the family.  As long as we can afford to continue paying cash for our vacations while still adding to our other savings goals, we plan to continue these trips.

I love the experiences and traveling is the biggest motivator I have to save money on the boring stuff like cell phone bills, groceries, etc.  It's also why we buy a lot of items used from thrift stores when possible and don't waste money on name brands.  Mr. R asked me if I would like to upgrade my wedding ring some day.  I said "No Way".  If we have some extra money to waste on a bigger diamond, I'd rather use it for a vacation instead. :)

So here is how we will fund our vacations in 2015 to early 2016:

• extra money from 3 pay check months
• Since I don't count on this money to pay our regular bills or increase savings the extra pay will go towards vacations.  We do already use the 1st extra paycheck to pay for the girls birthday party every year and the 2nd extra pay goes towards Christmas.  Plus we still have food, groceries, gas, spending money, etc. out of these checks.  But what is leftover will be for vacations.
• Extra income from additional projects I do at work.
• eBay Sales
• Ebates Checks
• Credit Card Rewards 
• Overtime/Holiday Pay