a new vehicle (plan to purchase on in 2009)

a new television (no real rush on this one, but we will probably need one in the next few years)

a swimming pool (but doubt this one will ever happen -- they are expensive)

I'm also saving for the practical things like retirement and college.

We are swimming in so much debt that it is hard for me to think about saving. I know it is important, so we just started transferring $100 into savings each time we get paid. $100 is a LOT of money to us right now. We are going to do that for a month and see if we can still make our ends meet. It's going to be tight. How sad is that? We are two college-educated people with full-time teaching positions who can't pay our bills because he chose to screw up his financial life way before he met me. Sorry for the whine about that.

As far as WHAT we're saving for. . . no material goods, I hope. But it is our emergency fund, in case something breaks down. God willing, we won't have that problem.

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If you need to get in touch with me, my email is teach1107910@yahoo.com.

Anybody in Florida will understand this: the next property insurance hike.

Ours went up from $1300 in September 2005 to $2100 in September 2006 and is supposed to double by September 2007. We have NEVER made a claim either.

It is becoming a huge crisis in Florida. And eats into our savings quite a bit, too!!

Other than the normal credit card, tuition, house paid off and such our goals are

patio
fence
a pool
camper

In that order

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"Before I was a Mom I didn't know the feeling of having my heart outside my body." ~Anonymous

Short Term : Christmas (I do this every year), paying off our car early, vacation to Disney World this year

Long Term: Retirement, Kids Education, increase emergency fund to 6 months (right now we are at 4 months saved up)

We have two short terms savings goals:

1) cc debt only about 2000.00 left. We just paid close to 1000.00 this last week!!!
2) Moving- we have been living with family for 1.5 years and our move date is June 1st.
2A) with moving comes many needs plus there were alot of things that we had that were on their way to the the dump anyways so we did tons of purging. Now it's time to replace.
ie-tupperware type stuff, couch, kitchen gadgets(coffee maker eek!) etc

We just sold our house this week....hurray!!!!!
So, we are now staying with family untill we build the next home. But, we have to pay down a bunch of debt first. Where there's a will....there's a way, right!?!?!?

Like a PP we are also doing the Mary Hunt "system". So far we have an Emergency Fund, a Freedom Account - where our savings for Christmas, car maintenance, kids dental work, misc gifts & clothes go, a 529 savings for our kids and my dh's Thrift Savings Plan (similar to a 401K for military).

We have three savings.

One has our house down payment, we are adding until we find a house;
another is for our daughter's education ten years away,
and the third is for retirement.

Cheers, from
SwampWitch

Short-term ... we are saving to redo our kitchen.

Long-term ... saving to pay off the mortgage early, retirement, and daughter's education.

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Mommy to ds (my sweetheart in heaven - 10/04-02/06), dd (01/06), ds (11/08), and 5 little unknown angels in heaven!

Thank you, Jesus, for all the blessings you give me every day!