Taxes

The taxes were turned into Rod the accountant yesterday. Hopefully we will know something before the end of the week. I'm anxious to start paying off the house again after we know what we owe to the IRS. The balance of the Vanguard account is now at the 26,900 range. So as long as we don't owe more than 16,900 between the Feds, the State, and the estimates, we can get to work on paying off the house again as soon as we get paid in February. If we don't know before the 28th, then the 3000 from the paychecks will go into the Vanguard account and probably push the balance over 30K as long as we get one more Paypal payment from WorldWinner.

The other thing that will be ugly is when we do pay the taxes in April. It will take a big hit on the net worth spreadsheet. In the future, once we know what the estimates will be, I play on dividing the amount out evenly over the three months so that the tax payment will be taken into the account at the end of each month for the net worth spreadsheet. I'm still hoping, even taking taxes into account, that we can still increase the net worth somewhere around 3% per month.

I did have a slight set back Friday, but Susan stopped me. I was ready to order Dish. I find it difficult to stay on task when it doesn't feel like we are paying anything off or accumulating anything. Yes, this will make it difficult once we pay off everything, but then we will be saving for a new house as well as saving for retirement. I do still want to get Dish after we pay off the house, but I can wait until that happens.

2008 Goals

Its getting fairly close to the end of the year so I'm thinking its time to go ahead with the 2008 goals or goal even....

The big one is to finish paying off the house by August. I'm saying by August because as of today, we have right at 46,000 left. I'm figuring, depending on the tax situation, that we should have 10K left in the Vanguard account to send to the mortgage which brings the balance down to 36,000. So 36K, we should be able to do at least 4K in extra payments a month, that's 9 months. One month left to go in 2007, so 8 months in 2008, August...tada!!!! If WW keeps their schedule on Survival Tournaments, there should be either 4 or 5 more Survival Tournaments left. If I keep on doing as well in them as I have been (averaging right around 4000 per tournament), that would be 16K in just Survival Tournaments. Add that to the other 2000 minimum we have been sending in extra payments per month (comes out to 18K), those 2 things add up to 34K, so only 2K left to come up with....LOL maybe I should be shooting for July. As long as we get it done in 2008, I will be VERY happy!!!! To think, that this time next year we will be done with the mortgage is a wonderful thought!!!!

Second goal is to have the Vanguard account at least at 30K by the end of the year.

That's it for the financial goals so far for 2008. I'm sure these will have to be readjusted at some point (hopefully upward).

November Goal

Ok, all the personal financial blogs I have been reading have been saying that you need monthly goals. So my goal for this month is to get the mortgage balance down to 45K. Right now its in the 50.9K range, so that would be another 5,000 off. That would be about 2800 in solitaire winnings, hopefully that will be possible. Hopefully, I will win the last round of the Survival and then I will just blow it out of the water and we will be below 40K before the end of the month....LOL