Taxes are in!

Yup we waited till the very last week to get them done :)

Glad that's over! until next year that it :/

Ha ha next year we will get a tax break....how sweeeeet is that!!! ;)

 Can you believe it has been a year in our house already

Good Friday last year we had our closing....oh how time flies

we are still not done with our renovation to-do list though

going at a really really slow pace....zzzzzzzzzzzzz

slow and steady wins the race...I hear :)

We also had to re-do our monthly budget

lots of new developments, increase in earnings, increase in spending :)

budgeting doesn't mean you can't spend and live a little

you just have to learn to do it within your means

so yes sat down and re-organized our finances

We are doing pretty good

changed a few things from last year, grouped our home projects with our living expenses

decided to do a monthly budgeting on our yearly bills for insurance and taxes

Oh yes and we are counting down the days (or rather months) on a few of our payments

that's right...

4yrs to get our education debt squared away (the thing is the interest on it is so low that it doesn't make sense to pay it off any sooner)

3.2yrs to go on our Mortgage (this we are paying off aggressively just cause we don't like living in debt and maybe a few other reasons....like that beach house that's waiting for us ;)

Oh and only 1.1yr on the car wooohooo! will have to have a party when that happens super excited! That 8% can then go into savings or I am sure we will have some new category by then.

Oh and guess where our Christmas budget is planned to come from this year

our credit card points! 

Yeah I don't believe people who try to tell you that credit cards are only good for putting you in debt

it is sooo far from the truth....bad financial management does that.

Love doing finances!
Or maybe just plugin in the numbers to make neat looking charts :)

Are we saving enough for retirement?

Today a friend introduced me to this awesome tool to calculate how much money you will have once you retire aka how much money you need to put away to be able to retire 25 or 30 years from now. 

You can also use it if you don't have that many years left to holidaying and relaxing ;) (lucky u)

Again there are sooo many calculations out there.

Here is what our forecast looks like :) It says we will have our first million at 50!
Assuming of course that we decided not to buy that second home on the beach before then :P

Our grand kids are going to be millionaires!!! Lucky them I guess :/

With many assumptions of course including....

• Current annual savings increases of: 3% (assuming we continue to have awesome jobs)
• Expected inflation of: 3%
• Desired retirement age of: 60
• Number of years of retirement income: 25 (not sure what exactly this means I guess I am suppose to die by that age or something :) )
• Income replacement at retirement: 75% (did not understand this as well...I think they are asking if I am going to get a part-time job at wal-mart once I retire, but not sure why it has me withdrawing upwards of $200,000 after the age of 60...I guess we are going to be world travelers (for wal-mart) or something flying business class of course ;)
• Pre-retirement and Post-retirement investment return: 8%
• And last of all NO SOCIAL SECURITY benefits or Pension! (if we do get SS then Gr8)

Now we will just have to wait and see.

Here is the link check it out
Am I saving enough for retirement?

Saving for the future.

Now that summer is here we needed to sit down and look at our to-do list again.

Realistically we just would not be able to finish everything this summer.

So moved things over to next summer and will try and get as much of the rest done.

 Red = just done

Green = working on

Blue = to do

Next we took a look at our finances and our budget. 

It was time to seriously think about retirement - where we want to be in 25 to 30 years. 

And how much money we want to have. It has been on the back burner for a while - time to take action.

We decided to start saving aggressively for retirement. They say it is never too early! Especially since life is so uncertain and we won't have pensions or social security by the time we retire. If we do it will just be an added bonus. (So I am learning all about the stock market and investing) 

 I am happy that we are not stupid when it comes to financial decisions and know better than to live beyond our means. We have learned to use credit cards to our benefit. Instead of us paying them they pay us. Ha!

Here is what our budget looks like at the moment. I am sure it will change as life changes. 

The home projects is a temporary thing till we get everything we need for the house (and no

this budget does not include our renovation budget -for that we have a fixed amount set aside).

If people took a closer look at their finances I am sure they would realize things they didn't before.