Savings goals: A girl can dream, right?

How much money are you saving, and do you feel that it's enough? Do you ever daydream about being able to save more?

I'm always thinking wistfully of how much money I'd LIKE to be saving.

Just for fun, I decided to create a wishlist of each savings category I'd like to have, and how much money I'd like to be saving in each category. Of course, over time, I'd like to save even more, but this is how much I wish I was saving right now. In a couple of categories, I'm already meeting my goal, or close to meeting my goal. Most of the categories are to cover short-term expenses. I'm tired of scrambling to pay for things that I should be able to predict and save for ahead of time. Here's my list.


Category: Workplace retirement accounts
Short or long term: Long
Current savings level: $600/month
Monthly goal: $600
Annual goal: $7200
Notes: I'm pretty satisfied with our current savings levels here. Of course it would be nice to max out our accounts, but that would be half our gross income. It's not gonna happen for a long while, at least not until our incomes increase dramatically.

Category: Roth IRAs
Short or long term: Long
Current savings level: $0
Monthly goal: $700
Annual goal: $8400
Notes: Currently only windfalls go into our Roths. I am aware that current limits only allow us to put in $8000/year for the 2 of us, but I might as well round the goal up to be ready for 2008 limit increases. Also, this is just a fantasy, right?

Category: College
Short or long term: Long (15 years away)
Current savings level: $75/month
Monthly goal: $100
Annual goal: $1200
Notes: I wouldn't mind nudging our savings up just a bit, but I'm fairly satisfied with our savings level. We have a good solid start, and the grandparents add a little now and then.

Category: Irregular bills
Short or long term: Short
Current savings level: $150/month
Monthly goal: $150/month
Annual goal: $1800
Notes: I just started doing this and I hope to keep it up. This is meant to cover annual and biannual insurance premiums.

Category: Travel fund
Short or long term: Short
Current savings level: $0
Monthly goal: $250
Annual goal: $3000
Notes: My biggest indulgence. I have a tendency to rob my emergency fund to buy plane tickets. I'd like to start contributing to a special account to avoid that vice.

Category: Car fund
Short or long term: Short
Current savings level: $0
Monthly goal: $100
Annual goal: $1200
Notes: My car is a wonderful, reliable old-ass Subaru. It has 130K miles on it. It's going to need to be replaced some time in the next few years. I'd like to be prepared with a couple thousand dollars socked away to buy another older used car. It would be nice to save, say, $200 or $300 per month and maybe get something nicer when this one dies,
but saving even a little for this would give me some peace of mind.

Category: Gifts
Short or long term: Short
Current savings level: $0
Monthly goal: $100
Annual goal: $1200
Notes: I spend about this much annually on gifts. It would be nice to have it clearly set aside. $600 on Xmas, $400 on birthdays throughout the year, and about $100 on things like mother's day and father's day. Saving $100 a month would give me some wiggle room for graduation gifts, etc.

Category: Donations
Short or long term: Short
Current savings level: $0
Monthly goal: $100
Annual goal: $1200
Notes: This is such a pitifully small percentage of my income (about 2%) but it's a start. I give away something like 1-2% every year, but it would be nice to have the money set aside so it wouldn't be so haphazard. Then I could send all my donations at one time.


Total current saving (monthly): $825
Total current saving (annually): $9900

Goal short-term saving (monthly): $700
Goal short-term saving (annually): $8400

Goal long-term saving (monthly): $1400
Goal long-term saving (annually): $16800

Total goal saving (monthly): $2100
Total goal saving (annually): $25200


Given that my gross household income is about $60,000, or $5000/month, this would be a pretty high savings rate.

Now, this was just a game. I obviously can't suddenly nearly triple my savings rate. More accurately, my family wouldn't be willing to let me triple our savings rate.

But there are a few areas where the money is already accounted for in my budget. I'm just not saving for most of these expenses ahead of time, so I have to scramble when it's time to come up with the cash. Here are a few ideas for easy steps I could take toward making this happen.

1. Starting in February (I'll give myself a month to recover from Xmas) I could start that gift account and contribute $100/month. That way, I'll spread the pain of the holidays out over the whole year.

2. My spouse is getting a pay raise March 1. Instead of upping our 403b contributions like I usually do, I could maybe stretch a little and start putting $50 in each of our Roths monthly. (I think $50 is the minimum autodeposit at both investment firms where we have Roths). That would be $100/month, a far cry from the $700 contribution that I'd like to make. But it's a start.

3. Even a small car fund will help insure that the loss of our vehicle won't wipe out our Emergency Fund. Maybe I could start small, putting just $25/month into a special ING account, and then try to raise the amount by a little bit every month.

4. That leaves donations, and travel. I really should just spend less on travel, but the world beckons....


Anyway, it was an interesting excercise. What's your savings wish list?

Note: I was trying to think like a team player here, so all numbers refer to joint finances, not just my own personal money.