Alright! DH and I had our year end/ year begin budget meeting today. I got a pleasant surprise. I'd been thinking all year we were putting 8% in his retirement- we were actually putting 10%. So provided he gets a COL increase in the spring we'll likely up that to 11-12%.
Now onto our hard goals- main goal this year is to pay off our sedan and trade it in for an SUV. It'll break our heart to do it but with DS getting bigger and wanting to start trying for baby 2 at the end of 2019, we're simply outgrowing sedans for now. We're going to continue doubling payments and throwing extra at it until it's paid, hopefully by summer, and trade it in.
Question: We should do that, right? Or instead of doubling payments should we make the regular payment and put the extra into savings for a down payment on the SUV, and then trade the sedan in with some money owed? This is the first time I've ever had a car worth more than scrap to trade in, so I honestly don't know what to do. We'd likely be trading in for a pre-owned SUV at similar mileage to our sedan or maybe a little less. We're only trading it in because we need an SUV- the sedan itself still runs very well and only has about 80k miles.
The other goal this year is to put $3000 in savings, so we mapped out a savings plan to get that done. We also have an extra $60/ mo going into savings for DS now, plus contributions from family.
Amother thing we're doing (and the one thing that really tripped us up last year) is cutting down on visits to our hometown several states away, and budgeting way ahead for the 1 visit we are making this year, along with our December cruise. I won't have hard numbers for a little while, but our December cruise will probably run us about $2000 with the balance on the cruise (will be paid with income tax), the hotel halfway there and back, and food on the road getting there and back, plus parking at port.
The other expense we have this year is my cousin's wedding. We're very close and he's DS's godfather, so that is going to be our one trip to our hometown this year, in lieu of Thanksgiving, which is traditionally our trip up. The wedding is in late August, and we're thinking while we're up north we may take DS to Sesame Place. We can use my mom's timeshare for the room (she and some other family with little ones will join us) and we'll just spend one day with them all at the park, so it shouldn't be too bad. We priced it out and came up with a savings plan for it, so provided it all goes well, we'll be doing that. I'll have to post more details on pricing later but it looks like buying tickets ahead would put us at $120 for a day there (DS would still be under 2 so free there), and we'd probably do a character meal. We plugged that in as well and made a savings goal for that, so we're in good shape!
Finally, we made a monthly gifting budget, and mapped out the whole year of gifts we still need for birthdays, weddings, and Christmas next year, so that we can save a little each month. I shop all year when I see good deals so this will give me a set pool of money to pull from for that rather than having to check the spending budget and take from that month's allowance. Sadly, we've decided we likely won't be traveling for my good friend's wedding in October. It makes me really sad because she's important to me and she's been through a lot, but we just can't make it work in the budget. It's a tough though, but we have aging family with serious illnesses and we need to save a bit of wiggle room both in time off and budget for an emergency trip up. At least by not going I can give a bit more generous of a gift, and hopefully I can see her when I'm visiting in August to give her my well wishes personally.
So it looks like all in all this year is going to be about saving and meeting very specific goals. Then, provided everything goes well, 2020 will be straight about saving, saving saving. I'll likely be pregnant and then have a newborn at the end of the year, so we're thinking just a small long weekend trip to Disney's Vero Beach Resort in February for our anniversary and that's the only trip we'll do anywhere at all that year. So that should give us several extra thousand we don't normally have to just throw at savings like crazy people!
Oh, and I didn't mention, but none of the budgeting we did today factors in me having a job. DH and I decided we want to have the whole budget set in place as though I'm not working, even though I'm actively searching for part time work now, because hours can vary so much. So my money will always have a different "job", but mostly it'll get socked away straight into savings I'm guessing.
Woof. That took forever to type! Here's to 2019!