Mapgirl’s Fiscal Challenge

I am a dork. I thought I wrote a post with some goals earlier this year. But I see that I haven’t. Apparently the road to blogging is paved with good intentions.

I remember part of the reason why I didn’t write formal goals for 2007. I was lost at the beginning of the year. I had a lot of things to think about in terms of a job offer cross country and what was happening with my job. Life was full of intrigue and that made it hard to write down anything concrete which I wanted to look at again 6 months or a year later. I was pretty sure that anything I wrote down in January 2007 would be fairly meaningless by June.

Somewhere in my infinite spreadsheet manipulation, I decided to make some goals for my net worth. I tried to be kind of specific about it. I started out thinking that I could make a net worth goal of ~$64K for the end of the year. In April, I revised that down to ~$63K. But I am much more specific than that. I have monthly goals laid out which I will put down here. I am shooting for $60K net worth by the end of 2007.

July: $47,585
August: $50,164
September: $52,470
October: $55,278
November: $57,580
December: $59,700

First thing to note: Unlike many PF bloggers, I consider my May net worth to be at the end of May, not the beginning. This is due to an accounting convention where you close the accounting period at the end of the calendar month. (easiest, but not always true) When you close your May accounts and post your net worth balance on June 2nd, you are not putting up June, you’re putting up May. (And if you’re one of the guilty parties, you’re too late! You can’t change it! Or else an auditor will need documentation of the accounting practice change for your audited statement!)

Second: I hope to have about $3K in growth each month. I put away around $1K a month in my 401K. I also pay my mortgage down, but not too quickly. The main thing is that I hope to pay down my credit card debt for the bulk of the $2K rise. I had hoped that by making an aggressive plan that I might stick to a good plan for reducing my credit card debt.

Third: I should provide a breakdown of what December Net Worth will be in the form of NetworthIQ categories. That way I’ll have something to either crow about or not when the new year comes around again.

Cash: $4000
Retirement: $30,000
Home: $155,000
Vehicles: $6,700

Credit cards: -$9,000
Mortgage: -$127,000

That is all. I will try to make some comparisons to progress and goals when I look at my monthly net worth updates.

Goals are good.

Read more about Goal Setting:
Why bother with setting a goal?
Some basic help
Making realistic goals - for after you’ve failed your first try (Believe me, we all overshoot the first time around)
Setting goals and measuring them

Some PF Blogger goals for 2007:
(no particular order and no particular reason for these other than I could find them quickly)
SingleMa’s goals
James and Miel’s goals
King and Queen of Debt’s goals
TMac’s goals
Tired But Happy’s goals
Donna Jean’s goals
Our Financial Journey’s goals
Simplicity in Kansas’ goals
The Digerati Life’s goals
Tricia’s goals
Flexo’s goals
Jim’s goals
Medicated Money’s goals
Lulu’s goals
Make Love Not Debt’s goals
Moominoid’s goals

If you have a 2007 goal post and would like to be included, let me know. I suppose this means I’ll have to do a round up next year!