So it will be the halfway point of the year in a week or so. This has been my first year with full-scale budgetary tracking and I'm too anxious to wait for the 2014 off season to make adjustments so we will be making major upgrades by the trade deadline.
I'm creating a point after June 30 to mark and then attempt to beat that mark significantly between July until the end of the year. Removing taxes our total expenses for the first half of the year are right around $15,000. This is for my wife and I.
The goal for this is to save 2750, half of my allowable Roth IRA contribution for 2013 in order to begin funding it for 2013 and not pushing it off until 2014.
As a general rule (I have the category breakdown elsewhere) we budget for 1500 each month onto the Discover card (side note: this includes about 100 of reimbursed work expenses for my wife each month) and 300 for groceries that go through the debit card (Aldi shoppers). In the month of June as a test for ourselves we will be under 600 on the Discover card and only spent about 250 on groceries. So even allowing ourselves a bit of wiggle room and trying to hold our monthly spending to 1300 (1000 Discover, 300 Groceries), that easily covers my goal with 3000 dollars saved.
Big targets will be more (read: any) bike riding to reduce fuel budget, fewer or cheaper restaurant trips, better use of free or nearly free summer events instead of expensive entertainment, and reducing the alcohol budget.
In fact, maybe it is too easy, maybe I should really bear down and attempt to make the full 5500 this year. If we could hold monthly credit card budgeted items to 600, and groceries to 250 for the remainder of the year that would yield 5700 over 6 months. Saving an additional 7% of our annual income (so 14% if done over an entire calendar year).
Badass, major mustache goal: Save 5500 by end of 2013 and fully fund a Roth IRA
Wimpy, slightly inconvenient fallback goal: Save at least 2750 by end of 2013 and partially fund a Roth IRA
