a year of

It's been a year since I put up this blog. I don't even want to check what my goals were for this year afraid that I didn't meet at least one. All I remember is planning to start investing this year, which I did but conservatively.

We have a larger debt as of this month. Though it's not that bad, it's still debt that I really have a much stronger will to get rid of in 2009. I also don't stress so much about it anymore, thanks to J who always sees the good in everything and rubs it off on me.

Now that we have a child, we have to be extra extra careful and stricter with our money. Thanks to some good sense and planning, we didn't splurge on baby stuff. Thanks also to family who gave plenty of help to us during the first months of parenthood.

Despite our debt, our holiday will be spent on cash. We won't be using any credit cards at all so there's no need to worry upon our return. Because we saved money for this trip, when we return our focus will be paying off our car loan first. We managed to save money for the trip so that means we can manage paying our existing debt with the same amount we regularly saved to prepare for our trip. I'm trying to be realistic right now by planning to allocate $500/fortnightly just for debt. Although I know that wouldn't take us to debt-free state fast, $500 is a very significant amount to part with every 2 weeks. With that amount we can manage to pay off our $14k plastic debt in a year excluding interest. Gosh, that's so long! But $500 is the planned minimum. We can certainly up that.

My next pay increase takes effect on January 1st. I still don't know how much my new salary will be but the increase will help in achieving our goal to rid ourselves of our debt. We have to make it work because we are going to make improvements to our home this coming year, such as better insulation and taking off ugly carpeting (and maybe putting on new ones in bedrooms).

This new year I'll take it a month at a time so as not to disappoint myself. I think that's what caused my discouragements this year. One goal at a time.