(1) expand medical savings from $1500-$ 6000 ($4500 increase)
This will mean I have my yearly deductible, and max out of pocket expenses in cash,

(2) save an additional $21000 toward the purchase of a home.

The $3,000 is a good amount for a cushion, and if we need more than that we can utilize the $1,200 average monthly extra at that point. But honestly I do not see us needing anymore than $3,000 all the way through debt repayment – and this will bring us to the doorstep of debt freedom much faster – which ends up savings u a lot in interest paid.

To me much more important than the actual financial goal and is to execute this project with an intense focus on simplifying and simplicity while teasing and squeezing every bit of pleasure out of life that is available. In other words I want to execute my plan day by day not for the final outcome which will be a huge savings, but rather for the pure pleasure of the challenge and journey.

of course it does not escape me that it helps tremendously that i am doing it all by choice.

It is all moot if you are comfortable with 1 month’s expenses.

No, I never view our jobs as “that secure.” However, our funds are limited so we have to prioritize what we accomplish.

According to the numbers it makes WAY more sense for us to reduce debt than to build up liquid, low-interest savings. So… we build up enough to make us feel comfortable enough to drive all our efforts toward our debt while still doing what we can for emergencies.

Dave Ramsey gives a general rule of saving $1,000 then attacking debt – for us $3,000 was a more realistic number to start from. Once our non-1st mortgage debt is gone we will build our Emergency Fund up to 6 months or $18,000.

I ultimately want to pay off our car loan this year. That is the biggest one!

Per your labor, I suppose as long as you can directly correlate your labor increase with earnings increase, then you should be all set.

My non-financial goals include much of what you elude to here. One of my biggies for 2010 is to become MUCH more efficient with my labor time. I plan on employing the 80/20 rule along with the a,b,c priority system to try and trim the fat so to speak. I would like to accomplish more in less time, and I think it is a very tangible goal at this point.

My goals are:
- Pay off last credit card by late April (approx $4,500 @ 0% interest)
- EF at least $3K
- Pay off stupid car note by the end of 2010
- Increase cash flow with “side hustles” (no quantitative goal set yet)

I’ve been pondering this topic myself. Oddly enough (for a personal finance writer anyway), I’ve decided not to set any financial goals for 2010.

By way of explanation: Imagine that somebody with a full-time job maxes out both their IRA and 401k contributions for the year. Great job! But what if the market goes down? It’s possible that their net worth decreased even though they did a great job saving/investing.

So it would probably make more sense for that person to set their goals (and judge their success) as a function of IRA/401k contributions. They can’t control what the market does. They can only control how (and how much) they invest.

That’s how my income works right now.

There are several things I can do to increase the likelihood of my income going up. But at the same time, there are several factors over which I have no control that will have just as big of an impact.

So it would seem silly to set any specific income goal (or, therefore, a savings goal). Instead, I’ve opted to set work goals: “write X posts per week” and things of that nature.

We’ll see how it goes!