What’s everyone’s goals for 2024? Mine is to rebuild our emergency fund, try to max both our Roths, and see if I can generate a little side income from my hobby. Other than that, hopefully business as usual
Save for a new (to us) car, have enough extra to fund kids’ 529s, and get our personal spending to be consistent (wife is the main culprit, it’s much too variable for my taste).
529s are great. And now you can roll excess funds into a Roth if your child doesn’t use all the money for school, which makes them even more flexible. New 529 changes.
Yeah, but that’s not particularly useful for me since I’ll be retired by then, and thus won’t likely have any earned income. So paying income tax on the gains isn’t particularly attractive when I’ll be in the 0% capital gains bracket when I go to sell.
It’s a pretty cool benefit, but not as interesting to early retirees.
While I won’t be able to do it in 2024, I should be very close to paying off my house by the end of the year. Assuming the economy doesn’t crash, my goal is to pay it off entirely in the first half of 2025, at which point I’ll be completely debt free (I paid off the last of my student loans two years ago and I paid off my car earlier this year).
My non-discretionary expenses (food, electricity, etc.) will be pretty low at that point, perhaps less than a couple thousand per month. Security, for me, is being able to survive on a minimum wage job if it somehow became necessary, and owing no one anything.
I’d be farther along, but I overspent this year. It’s unusual for me, but I’m not going to worry too much about it. I’ll just do a better job of reining it in this year.
Buying a new house this year, wish me luck.
Current house is abnormally small and the apps have no idea how to value it. The Zestimate range between top and bottom estimate is like 25% of the total value and Redfin is another 25% above the top range Zillow gives so I have this enormous range of possible sale prices and I can’t wait to engage an actual local professional and get some clarity.
Good luck! Fingers crossed it ends up being at the high end of the range for you. The differences in the pricing algorithms is wild. We’ve had a spread of up to $300k on our house at different points.
One thing that I do find annoying is that Redfin updates its estimate history retroactively, it’s not a point in time snapshot of their estimates, but instead an over time estimate using their current pricing model. I kind of get it, but it also kind of seems like cheating.
Happy New Year!
Or, since I couldn’t say it properly as a young child… habbynoony! (My parents still say this to me every year)
