Financial Shape in 2008: Monthly Check-up

It's the beginning of May--wow!--and that means it's time for our monthly Financial Shape in 2008 Check-up. How did you do in April?

Here's how we did:

Short Term Financial Goals for 2008

1) Have our fully-funded emergency fund in place (6 months' worth of living expenses) by the end of April.

As of March 11, 2008--DONE!

2) Switch health insurance plans and open an HSA.

We were approved for our new health insurance plans in April and have also set up our HSA. So another goal to check off the list! Woohoo!

3) Start up an IRA and invest at least 5-10% of Jesse's income in this.

Started in March. (We plan to increase this to 12-15% of his income as soon as we purchase our home.)

4) Open up a mutual fund for each of our children and invest $50 per child per month in it.

Started in March.

5) Save up and invest $30,000 this year towards paying cash (100% down) for a house in 3-5 years.

Now that Goals 1-4 are finished, we're working super hard on Goal #5! We opened our house savings mutual fund the end of March, and as of the end of April, we have $2500 in it. I was hoping it would be more like $3000, but I'm grateful that we at least made some decent headway.

Our short-term goal is to save $15,000 in our house savings by August 31, 2008--this is a rather ambitious goal, but we're working hard towards achieving it and are excited to see if we might actually make it!