Struggling to be debt free

I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas! I enjoyed sometime off of work and time with family.  I ate too much and did not get a chance to relax, but I sincerely enjoyed my time off work.  I hope to post soon about my goals for 2018.  Stay tuned!

I have been working on my financial goals for 2018 and I plan on increasing (as I do every year) my charitable contributions.  I generally give to a legal aid charity and my law school.  This year I also donated to the victims of Hurricane Harvey through the American Bar Association.  I also often donate clothes and household items to Goodwill.   Looking forward to 2018 I think I would like to add the American Cancer Society and St. Jude's to my list.  I also want to donate my time to help others.  Do you have any favorite charities that you like to donate to every year?  Are there any charities that I should stay away from? 

I bought my house in 2013 for $247,000 on a conventional mortgage for 3.375%.  I put down 5% ($12,350) and ther fore my mortgage was for $234,650.  Today my mortgage balance is $209, 645.  In 2012 I started saving pretty aggressive for a mortgage.  I had started a new job in 2011 making $70,000 (up from my previous salary of $62,500).  By the end of 2011 I had paid off my car, all credit card debt and a student loan.  For Christmas that year, we received a bonus of approximately $2000. I saved the majority of that bonus for a down payment on a house. By the beginning of 2012, the only debt that I had left was student loans.  I stopped making big extra payments on my student loans and started saving every dime that I could towards a down payment. We received a few small bonuses throughout the year (less than $400) and I saved those towards my down payment.  Also, I was careful not to spend all of my allotted spending categories and all of the ext...

I wrote a post a few months ago about retirement savings.  The gist of the post was how much to save for retirement and whether I was on track.  Since then I have read a bunch about retirement savings on various personal finance blogs and various articles, etc about retirement savings. I noted that many of the articles that I read focused on saving a particular percentage of your income for retirement.  Some indicate 10-15% should be saved for retirement.  Dave Ramsey indicates that %15 should be saved for retirement. I saved $9,500 for retirement this year.  That was 11.7% of my gross income income (before my raise) and 15.6% of my net income (again before the raise). When I started saving for retirement I decided to start with approximately 15% of my net and try to work up to 15% of my gross income.  However, at 35, I only have approximately $20,900 saved for retirement. Over the holiday break I was working on my goals for 2018 and I wondered if I shoul...

Just a quick pop in to say that I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving (US readers)! I had a great time with family and I am looking forward to Christmas!

I guess because its getting close to the end of the year, I have been thinking a lot lately about the future. There are several things I want to do over the next 5 years.  So this is almost a bucket list of things to do before I hit 40: 1. Have retirement savings of over $100,000 by the time I turn 40 (or at least sometime that year). 2. Have the outside of the house pressure washed and painted. 3. Have the inside of the house painted 4. Remodel the kitchen 5. Remodel the master bathroom. 6. Buy a new laptop. 7. Purchase bedroom furniture, including a nice new mattress to replace my 14 year old mattress. 8. Buy a new car. 9. Pay down the mortgage significantly to at least a balance of $150,000.  I was going over my yearly budget for next year and I wonder where I will find the money to accomplish all of these goals over the next five years.   Do you have any major financial goals that you would like to accomplish over the next 5 years?  What are they...

Friday morning I went into the garage to go to work and my car wouldn't start.  My sister had not yet left for work and was able to jump my car.  I drove my car to the shop and told the guy I brought my car in exactly a week ago for an oil change (literally exactly one week).  I also told him that when I got my car back from that oil change I had to reset all of the clocks in my car because for some reason the mechanic had disconnected by battery.  I also made sure that he knew that I had paid for a brand new alternator and battery this summer.  (Gotta love 11 going on 12 year old cars!)  Anyways after a couple of hours my car was ready.  It was allegedly a bad battery.  (I'm not so sure that I believe that, especially since just last week they allegedly checked my battery and said it was just fine).  I didn't have to pay anything as every thing was covered under the warranty, but it was inconvenient.  My new neighbors' dogs continue t...