    A New Year and new opportunity to achieve our financial goals. Goodness knows I have many of them… paying down debt, saving for a vacation or some new furniture, saving for our child’s college education, saving for retirement, and the list goes on.   Sometimes I wonder if we’ll really get there, and if we’re making any real progress. But I’ve found it takes a little time and patience to really answer those questions. It’s hard to tell in the short term. But if we look back 5 or 10 years, then it’s amazing at how far we’ve come. And also at how far we could have come if we had saved a little more!
MarketWatch has written a sobering article on retirement financial needs in Reluctant Retirement Savers May be Scared Straight by These Stats.  The author estimates that as many as 150 million out of 200 million U.S. adults are not saving for retirement in any meaningful way. That sounds incredible, but I’ll bet he’s pretty close. I think his advice is right on… if we don’t know where or how we’ll be getting our retirement income in the years ahead, now is a pretty good time to start figuring that out.
So with the new year, it’s time to look at those employer retirement and IRA contributions for 2008. After maxing out the employer contributions as much as possible (and enjoying any “match” of free money your employer may provide), it’s time to look at the IRA. I’m partial to the Roth IRA and usually try to make a full contribution at the beginning of each year. (Have you already made that 2007 IRA contribution? If not, you still have until April 15th to do so.)  This year we’ve tightened our belts a little, and will need to make our 2008 contributions over time.  So that means contributions will be on a monthly basis, essentially dollar-cost-averaging to the IRA fund this year.
Otherwise, my chief goal this year is simple… save more money. Hooray! Exciting to have that goal. Now, I’m not really sure how I’m going to do that yet, but I believe if we set the intention… the goal… and believe in ourselves, then we’ve made the first step. Practically speaking, I’ll start with another $50-$100 a month for example, and see how that goes. Does it really impact the budget? Maybe… we’ll see. I’ll look at it each month and quarter through the year and change it if necessary. Maybe we won’t even miss it! Have you started a new list of financial goals for 2008? There’s no time like the present!
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