Merry Christmas! and our goals in the new year

First off  I hope you all have a wonderful Christmas.

and now for the financial stuff....LOL.

For the new year, I have set us up some pretty aggressive (yet doable) goals.

New furnace!  (original quote a couple years ago was $4500 but I have talked to some people over the last couple weeks and I am certain that this will be cheaper now.  I am still budgeting $4500 and the leftover will go to meet our savings goal)

Have at least $7500 in savings by next November...would like $10,000 but that might be pushing it.  Ultimately I would like to have one year of my income in savings (just over $11K by the end of this year), but I don't know that we can do that before we need to be able to accomplish goal 3....

Goal 3 is for me to be a SAHM before Thanksgiving of 2010.  There are a variety of reasons (some personal, some I won't go into this publicly just in case, and because I would like some time home with both my kids before K starts school...and once K is in school my current work schedule does not work with getting her to school and home from school.  That is a mess unto itself so I won't go into that here). 

In order for Goal 3 to happen we need to get the minimum of $7500 in our emergency fund.  We could do without it but I want to have the cushion.  Why $7500?  That is 7 1/2 months of just bills.  The reccommended amount in an emergency fund for long term is 3-6 months of living expenses (more savings is better).  For us the yearly total for our monthly bills and our annual and semi annual bills comes to just under $15K.  $7500 is half of that.  I did not budget in groceries or other stuff in that $7500 for a few reasons:

That money is for unemployment for R.  Should he lose his job, he would get unemployment.  Therefore I did not feel it necessary to budget in money for gas, food, etc in an emergency fund.  If we were in a bind we could use some of it to pay for groceries, etc.  I can feed us pretty cheaply when necessary so I am not worried.

We have the stockpile.  We can live off the stockpile for a while, only needing to buy milk, bread and some fresh veggies and fruit.  I continue to stockpile even now so having food would not be an issue.

Should we need it, there are various assistance programs.  I do not advocate using assistance as a lifestyle but as a helping hand.  I will say that I have used assistance in the past and I will again if the need arises.  With the budget I have set up and the goals I have set, we should not need assistance barring any unforeseen changes. 


so those are my goals in the new year.  I am currently checking out my local banks and figuring out which one (excluding our current bank) that I should use to open a new account for this emergency fund.  I want the funds to be more difficult to get a hold of but not so difficult that I can't get to them in a time of need.  The reason for picking a new bank for this account only is so I cannot just transfer it online like I currently can from our mini emergency fund.  It is so easy right now and I want to make it a bit more difficult on myself.  My intent is to use our current savings as bill paying but clear it out (minus the $100 minimum balance required) at the end of the month when the bills are paid and transfer that to our other savings at a different bank.