topic Re: 2020 - Your Personal Finance Mid-Year Check in in Personal Finance

2020 - Your Personal Finance Mid-Year Check in

jetsfan2013 — Wed, 17 Jun 2020 10:34:20 GMT

Speaking with my father recently, we shared stories about this year, and how crazy 2020 has been in general. When the topic of finances came up, he showed me a notepad, in which he kept track of the goals he and his wife had, crossing out the ones they accomplished.
With the year nearing the midpoint, I felt this could be a fun topic for all to reflect on what has passed, and what lies ahead regarding 2020 goals financially.

Accomplished So Far:
New credit card (15K - Navy FCU)

New credit card (1K - Home Depot)
CLI on oldest credit card (5K - Navy FCU)
Refinance of auto loan (3.xx% Navy FCU)
Purchase of new home (3.5% Wells Fargo)

Closed unused store card, no impact on FICO (IKEA)
Paid off a $7.2K lingering home improvement loan

Goals to Accomplish before 2021:
Pay off auto loan ($13.9K)
Pay down oldest credit card ($6.2.K)
No new inquiries until 4/2021
What about you?

Re: 2020 - Your Personal Finance Mid-Year Check in

ChazzieT — Wed, 17 Jun 2020 18:49:01 GMT

Alright, I'll play:

Accomplished So Far:
Top up Emergency Savings ($2800 to bring me back up to a full 12 months of expenses)

Payoff Home Improvement ($8k)

Get better than 2% with all credit card transactions (Thanks AOD)

Spread my Emergency savings over several accounts to maximize interest rate (halfway there)

Pay off Disco and BofA cards before 0% apr runs out

Increase total CL to above $150k

Maintain Ficos at 761 or better

Goals to Accomplish before 2021:

Spread my Emergency savings over several accounts to maximize interest rate (only halfway there, need to let chexsystem cool down)

US Bank Cash+ Visa

Affinity FCU Cash Rewards Visa and Hi5 program

Synchrony Marvel Card (Pure Vanity App)

Increase total CL to above $175k

Refi Mortgage to 3.5% or better

Get my LASIK renewed and pay off surgery by end of the year

Re: 2020 - Your Personal Finance Mid-Year Check in

Anonymous — Wed, 17 Jun 2020 19:02:01 GMT

Accomplished so far:

- Get TCL back to $100K

- Keep apps to a minimum (I have had one since October, AOD, and I don't regret it at all)

- Get revolving balances under $1K (currently about $650)

- Cap the $2K Medicaid asset limit to have some kind of emergency savings

Goals left:

- US Bank Cash+
- One or more FICO 8 at 800

- Get back to having no revolving balances

- Continue to stick to budget and track cash flow

- Continue gardening after Cash+ app with a goal of getting under 5/24 by 10/2021

Re: 2020 - Your Personal Finance Mid-Year Check in

KLEXH25 — Thu, 18 Jun 2020 04:33:53 GMT

Here's mine....

Accomplished So Far:

- Got my Emergency Savings to about 4-5 months of expenses (goal is 6 months).

- Saving for my wedding (whenever that will be).

- CLI Citi Costco VISA: $11k > $13k

- Paid off 0% Discover BT

- CLI Discover: $2,300 > $2,600

- Oldest account reached 2 years

- Achieved highest score so far: 772

Goals to Accomplish before 2021:

- Try to get CLI on DCU Visa (& others when applicable)

- Get Wedding Savings to at least $12k.

- Gardening until at least youngest account turns 1 year (August).

- Get under 5/24 for Chase card (likely Amazon Visa).

- Possibly close Amex Gold & open BCP.

- Celebrate auto loan inquiries falling off in October!

- Get scores as close to 800 as possible.

Re: 2020 - Your Personal Finance Mid-Year Check in

jetsfan2013 — Thu, 18 Jun 2020 07:28:46 GMT

Hopefully we can keep this thread going...a lot of motivation in here!

Re: 2020 - Your Personal Finance Mid-Year Check in

minski — Fri, 19 Jun 2020 00:24:50 GMT

Added 2 new tradelines this year for total of $35,000.

Maxed out 403b and IRA contributions early.

To Do:

Pay off car loan by October

Get a decent chunk of down payment saved up by end of December

(Maybe) Close Discover It#2 by the end of the year (minus $7000)

I just calculated my total amount of credit and I have too much. Get CLD on a few of my cards!

Re: 2020 - Your Personal Finance Mid-Year Check in

importxpresions — Sat, 20 Jun 2020 12:27:31 GMT

Accomplished So Far:

•New credit cards

-Chase Sapphire Preferred $10k

-AMEX BCP $2,000

•Replaced wife's Ford Escape with a Lexus RX350. Ford had electrical issues.

•Paid off all of our credit cards and high apr loans

•I transferred to a nationwide company and raised my salary by 17%

Goals to Accomplish before 2021:

•Pay down student loans

•Bulk up emergency fund

•Save for mortgage

Re: 2020 - Your Personal Finance Mid-Year Check in

JTC-137 — Sat, 20 Jun 2020 19:52:15 GMT

Accomplished So Far in 2020:

paid off all consumer debt

purchased a home

saved 4-5 months expenses

started saving 21% towards retirement

Accomplish by YE 2021:

Kids college fund to 10k each

refinance home and pay $1-2k/mo extra

increase giving

increase emergency fund to 6mo expenses

Re: 2020 - Your Personal Finance Mid-Year Check in

tricie17 — Sat, 20 Jun 2020 21:25:57 GMT

I am not a part of the big money ballers here however my half year goals are to

1. Maintain the CC's that I currently hold which are Discover, NFCU and AU on AmerX.

2. Start my snowball process (on closed accounts) which was started earlier but somehow was re directed.

and 3. Pay those pesky collections

Re: 2020 - Your Personal Finance Mid-Year Check in

Revelate — Sun, 21 Jun 2020 01:34:44 GMT

Good idea for a thread!

Accomplished so far 2020:

- Bought a new home

- Moved halfway across the country

- Opened a few useful cards, AOD, and if I can get the AR on recon that would be a win.

- Finished all my spending for things I had to have for the new place, finally back to steady state this month.

Goals for rest of 2020:

- I think all the rest of these could be summed up as just sitting on my hands.
- Keep my poop in a group financially working multiple jobs. Cash flow is there just need to maintain it, which means getting off my ass and working hard tomorrow.

- Keep pattern of investment sane, things are way up and to the right for me this year in the market, just hold the line and don't do anything stupid.

- Finish paying down the auto loan to yuppie food stamp levels.

- Get back out to California to move the rest of the stuff or just get rid of it in preparation for disposing of the condo. Something like 1K/month just being flushed on it between insurance taxes and HOA.

- Do nothing else credit wise except maybe close a card or two, otherwise sit in the garden at least till beginning of 2021 and probably longer than that.

Re: 2020 - Your Personal Finance Mid-Year Check in

Anonymous — Sun, 21 Jun 2020 08:09:34 GMT

I actually keep my financial plan on my phone to refer to. I'm weird like that.

Anyway, in 2019, I had a fairly new job with higher income so I started putting as much in my 401k as I could and got that up to 12%. I also bought a house in December so most of previous year's goals were around that.

Earlier this year, I had a few things come up that required using CCs, including expenses relating to selling my dad's home after he died. I ended up with about 5k on my CCs after the estate reimbursed me for his costs, so paying that off was my top priority. I just sold some stock to do that so that part of my list will be done. I also started paying an extra $300/mo to my mortgage to add up to one extra payment per year.

Here's the rest of my plan for 2020:

Pay off all credit cards (done)
Pay off car lease and purchase it cash (done in Sept with bonus)
Pay off Amex loan (done by end of year)
Save $25,000 in emergency fund (will start this year but may take a year or two as retirement saving is more critical for me right now)
Increase 401k to 15% (will switch in September since my raise will likely be 3%, so I'll convert it in full to 401k)
Increase HSA to 5k (will switch, you guessed it, in September)
Keep stock grants in brokerage and don't sell any
NO NEW DEBT (this is how it is in my phone lol)

When I pay off the Amex loan and car, I'll have $1100 back in my monthly budget. Half will go to student loan repayments now that I've finished law school, the other half will go straight to my goals above. I also did add more charitable payroll deductions as well since my company matches and I wanted to make sure I wasn't forgetting.

I'm at the point where I can live fine on my current budget so my goal is to convert any additional income into retirement and savings.