Finding Freedom Friday: Financial Goals.

Financial goals. Do you have them? You should. You really should. This year The Bob and I have two simple goals. Well, they seem simple, but sometimes everything works better on paper than in real life. But we are really working on these two things:

1. Saving. In the past couple of months we've purposed to put more in our savings account than we have saved in six months. Oh, we could have been purposing to do that all along, we just didn't. What a waste...but better late than never. Also, we recently upped the amount of our 401K. That may not seem wise being that the market has been so volatile, but our investor at Edward Jones assures us that we are "buying low". And we are in the market for the long haul. And he's been really good in helping with things us over the past 5 or so years. We have a good relationship with our Edward Jones guy, he communicates things to us, and we trust his judgement. So, a saving we will go....

2. The ole grocery budget. This pretty much falls on me and me alone. I'm attempting the game of coupons matched to grocery ads and shopping and planning meals around grocery ads. I find encouragement to do this from blogs like Stretching A Buck or Jen at Balancing Beauty and Bedlam. They are really good at this. Really good. I'm not so good yet. Emphasis on yet, and I'm going to continue working on it. My progress in that area is as follows:

1st week - I saved 28%

2nd week - I saved 52% (but that was a week I needed almost NOTHING, and bought very little. So, not a normal week.

3rd week - I saved 30%. You can see that week here.

This week - I saved 35%

Jen assures me that there is a learning curve to this, and it will get better. I hope to be consistently in the 50% range in the near future. But I do have to say even the 30% range is good for me, because I used to be in the 15% range.

So, that's it. Have you set any goals, financial or otherwise, for 2009?