It is a lot that one has to save every year. These are savings goals that we view as mandatory and must be met each year.
5,000 roth me
5,000 roth DH
2,000 baby's ESA
5,000 to DH's 401K (slightly above full match) We used to max this out at 15,500 but not after I got pregnant.
These are set in stone and have to be met, because these are limited-time opportunities. If we don't invest for the current year, that opportunity is gone forever.
plus $250 monthly autoinvest into a mutual fund, which is part of our emergency fund, which could be stop but trying not to. The market has been dipping, so we need to continue to invest to compensate and keep EF at a steady number. It is more important to invest when the market is down than it is when it is up.
401K comes out of the paycheck pre-tax, and it is a small enough number.
but the post-tax ones come out to 5K+5K+2K=12K, is 1K a month mandatory +$250 post-tax
That number does not work with our budget, it just does not, but we have been managing somehow so far.
I did not think we'd be able to make it the year of my pregnancy, or after the baby was born, but we did.
2011 is fully funded!!! Now I don't know how we'll do it next year.
I guess the key is not to give up and just do what you can. $100 here, $200 there... eventually it adds up to something.
So even though I don't see how we can possibly max out 2012, we'll keep trying this year as well, taking it one year at a time.
Mandatory savings
October 11th, 2011 at 05:05 pm