by Hope
I have spent a great deal of time over the last couple of months thinking about this new year. Planning my financial goals, working on a new budget and formulating a 5 year plan to tighten things up. The biggest criticism was me being all over the place. And you are right.
I do best with bite size pieces.
So I will tackle one financial goals one at a time this year…beginning this month.
2021 Goal #1 – Small Student Loan
I held off paying off my student loan until I get started in my new job this month. As soon as my pay comes in, I will make the final payment on the smaller of my two student loans.
This is a great way for me to start as I don’t know exactly what my take home pay is going to look like. Since we live on last month’s income, I won’t need to touch my new pay until February and it will give me this month to revise my budget once I see it.
I can then layout the rest of my goals for the year.
Paycheck Deductions
It’s really going to be different having a regular paycheck. On Monday, I will set up my automatic and pre-tax deductions. These elections will determine my take home pay. I have decided to start with:
- High deductible health plan – $250 per paycheck
- HSA – $250 per paycheck ($6000/24 pay periods, company contributes $1,200 which combined will max out the contribution for the year)
- Dental – $27 per paycheck
- Vision – $2.90 per paycheck
- 7% to 401K
Still to be determined – additional life insurance, accident insurance, cancer insurance and critical illness insurance.
Debt Free 2021 Goals
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Hope is a creative, solutions-focused business manager helping clients grow their business and work more efficiently by leveraging expertise in project management, digital marketing, & tech solutions. She’s recently become an empty nester as her 5 foster/adoptive kids have spread their wings. She lives with her 5 dogs in a small town in NE Georgia and prefers the mountains to the beaches any day. She struggles with the travel bug and is doing her best to help each of her kids as their finish schooling and become independent (but it’s hard!) She has run her own consulting company for almost twenty years! Hope began sharing her journey with the BAD community in the Spring of 2015 and feels like she has finally in a place to really focus on making wise financial decisions.
Great job. I think a singular goal can give you great focus and momentum to keep you going.
Once you get your first paycheck, be sure to run it through a tax calculator to ensure they aren’t taking too much (or too little!) out of your paycheck. Depending upon the results of that, you can contact HR (or it might be on your companies HR website) to modify your W4 to either withhold more or less taxes on your paychecks. And don’t forget to pay quarterly taxes on your side income still!