Charting my progress
Put together some graphs that I will be using to chart my progress on my way to my debt and savings goals. I always like seeing charts on other people's blogs, and in general, I like math, data tracking, etc. So I've added a couple of images to help track my progress on a couple of goals.
This is for tracking my progress as my wife and I work towards being ready to begin looking at buying a house. We want to reduce our debt by $10k. The debt this is subtracting from is that which I'd previously mentioned, as well as the $4,500 remaining on my wife's car loan. The two colors signify the amount I've paid towards it ($900 currently) and the amount I have set aside by haven't used in a payment yet (an additional $1,400).
This is our progress towards my goal of saving $25k in reserve savings by the end of 2011. Currently, I only have $400 saved, but this is only the second month of my plan, so I'm actually ahead of my plan because I got my yearly bonus and the HR firm automatically transferred an extra fixed portion to my ING account.
I'd also put together a line chart showing my overall savings plan. As you can see, I am just barely at the beginning of it, and I am just a pixel or two ahead of the planned route! This is slightly modified from my original plan. Originally, I had a 5-year plan which gave me until August 2011, though I altered it to go to December 2011. I like round numbers. With that, I was able to lower it down to an annual growth of $30 contributions.
And finally, I have my retirement funding goal. I currently have it set at $2 million, though we'll see if that is too low. Afterall, I don't plan on retiring til about 2045, so I have plenty of time to re-evaluate my projections. And I don't mean "plenty of time to start contributing"... I'm now maxing out my 401k contributions, and funding my Roth IRA. Not maxing out my IRA, but will once I get my debt a little lower. Either way, I'm still at the beginning and haven't yet gotten to the point of seeing the power of compounding.