One of my goals for this new year is to take better care (and charge) of my finances. I have three things I’ve thought of so far that I think are a good start. Here they are in no particular order:
(1) Increase the monthly allotment into my checking account set aside for student loan automatic repayment. After talking with friends about their new house purchase, I thought I’d apply their idea of paying their monthly mortgage PLUS 1/12. It’s a small amount in the short run, and something I’m able to afford at this time. So while I will effectively be saving for 13 annual payments instead of 12, because it’s automatically deducted from my checking account, I can’t automatically pay that 13th payment. Rather, I’ll either pay twice/year, or at the end of the year, or even quarterly, I’m not sure. But the intention is that by the end of the year, there will be enough money to pay a 13th month, thus reducing my loan-repayment-days by 1 year. Each year I do it theoretically takes away 1 year, so the longer I do this, the better. Oh– just had a thought. If I make the extra payment around Sept-early Nov., then it would definitely qualify for that tax year, and all interest paid on student loan debt is tax deductible, so that’s even better for my taxes. It’s a win-win 
(2) Keep all receipts. Now, I don’t want to get paranoid about this, but I will do all within my power to keep all receipts for every purchase I make. Anything that is purchased with a debit or credit card (the latter being EXTREMELY rare), I have a paper record of it. I have a habit of being a bit like Will as he tells Ado Annie in the musical Oklahoma!: “With me it’s all er nuthin’.” I get all gung ho and started on the right foot, but the second I forget or slip up, it’s a failure and there ye go. Might as well quit. That’s why I qualify this with my trying to be “reasonable.”
(3) Contribute what I can reasonably afford each month to my Roth IRA. Since I already save 5% of my income (with a 5% match from my employer), I do already save towards retirement. However, I also like the idea of me saving for me, in a place that is very easy to see. I have to log in to a number of websites w/ a few passwords to view my and my employer contributions. This Roth was just started literally a month or so ago, so other than the initial conversion from funds from a previous employer into a Traditional IRA, then the rollover to the Roth, I hadn’t made any additional contributions until today.
That’s it for now. If you have any additional ideas, please feel free to comment
