2012 Financial Goals

To be honest, 2011 was a bit of a drain on our finances. The move to Thailand was a bit more expensive than we thought it would be (mostly startup costs) and it has taken us some time to come to grips with our budget here. Added to that has been my own struggles with the new culture and being a stay at home dad trying to get work done. Needless to say it has been a bit of a rough transition.

I believe all of that is now behind us though. We have a pretty good budget, although it could use some improvement it is at least accurate and one we can stick to. I have come to grips with how to work from home while also caring for my young daughter. Perhaps most importantly I have begun to set goals for myself. After completing the two goals of quitting my job and moving to Thailand there was a bit of a vacuum in the goals department and I have been a bit aimless the past 6 months.

Income Goal
I am not a frugal type blogger. While I do believe that expenses should be kept in check, I also believe in treating myself and my family once in awhile. I try to balance our frivolous wants with our income So, if we find that our expenses are creeping up and we feel that the items on our budget are acceptable “luxuries” I will look for ways to increase our income to meet our increased expenses. While our expenses are currently in line with our income it looks as if 2012 will see an increase in outflows making it necessary to increase our inflows. In simple terms, I need to make more money.

The over riding goal over the next year is to complete the 30k challenge. While I don’t meet the official requirements to join in the challenge, I will be taking it upon myself to participate. In 2011 I made roughly $15k from my blogging efforts so in the spirit of the challenge I will be aiming for $45k in 2012. One small change I will be making though is to include my freelancing income to my totals.

I typically work much better by breaking my goals down into smaller chunks too, so I am challenging myself to generate $135/day in income which actually works out to be a bit more than $45k, but only if I work every single day this year. I can be a bit of a workhorse at times, but not to THAT extent. Wish me luck.

Expenses Goal
As I mentioned earlier, our expenses have taken a while to nail down and bring into line, but I feel we are almost there. Our rent is quite high and we are thinking of the possibility of moving when the lease expires in June, but that would also mean a much longer commute for my wife and we are not sure it is a sacrifice we want to make yet. Travel time is already quite long for her due to the extreme traffic in Bangkok. Our food expenses have also been quite high the first few months here, but thanks to decreased cravings for Western food our food expenses are more palatable now. I feel that between these two areas we could cut $300-500 per month from our expenses, but I am still on the fence trying to decide if this is truly necessary. If I meet the income goal it probably won’t be, although it certainly wouldn’t hurt.

The other area of our expenses that I’ve been looking into is our personal expenses. Both my wife and I receive an “allowance” of THB9000/mo (roughly US$300). I’m trying to decide if this is really necessary. I think in my wife’s case it is, mostly due to her travel expenses commuting to and from work. The allowance is also for personal purchases such as clothing, grooming, accessories and treats. Since she spends roughly THB2500 on commuting costs I’m guessing I could cut that amount from my monthly “allowance” without much suffering. That money would then be directed towards either savings or investments.

On the downside (financially) is our plans to buy a car within the next few months. This will increase both our debt and our expenses as well as lowering our savings fund, but we feel it is a fair tradeoff for the added convenience. Traveling using public transport is fine for a single person or couple here, but it has been quite difficult with a small child in tow. Having a car will enable us to get out of Bangkok more often and will also increase our options when it comes time to decide on where we are going to live come June. In the long run, the savings from being able to move outside central Bangkok should offset the cost of the car.

Savings/Investments Goal
I lump these two together because we don’t have the typical emergency savings fund. We have about $1000 in cash for real emergencies, but other than that we don’t have the 3 or 6 or 12 month emergency fund. The reason for this is that we are actually living about 12 months in advance of our expenses already. What I mean by that is I transfer 12 months of living expenses from the U.S. to my account in Thailand and then over the next year I replenish the U.S. based funds to make the next years transfer. So in reality we have a minimum 12 month buffer at all times.

Regarding investments, this is a big opportunity for us in 2012. We currently have very few investments and the plan is to ramp up investment savings dramatically over the course of the next 12 months. We plan on investing both in the U.S. and in Thailand, where there are some very nice dividend bearing stocks. Investments will depend on my ability to hit the income goal, but I would like to see $500 a month going into U.S. dividend bearing stocks, focusing on the Dividend Aristocrats and an additional THB15,000 (US$500) going into a Thai brokerage account to invest in both growth and dividend stocks. Currently we have THB20,000 to invest here (I need to get the brokerage account opened) and US$1000 to invest in the States (also need to get an account opened there…perhaps through Sharebuilder).

I also need to get a custodial account opened for my daughter here in Thailand and would like to invest THB3000/mo for her. She currently has THB45000 in her savings. Since she is only 19 months old this should provide a nice starter for her college expenses and even more if she chooses to stay in Thailand for university.

Debt Goals
We currently have about US$12000 in debt split equally between one credit card and a personal line of credit. We also have about $US10000 in student loan debt. I am going to ignore the student loan debt for 2012 and just make minimum payments. The interest rates are so low (and tax deductible) that I feel it makes better sense to use our cash for investments. If I can’t beat the 3.15% in interest on these loans with investments I am not meant to be investing! Contrary to most popular advice I am also not going to focus heavily on paying down the other debt, preferring to increase our investment funds this year. If I can lower the LOC and credit card debt to US$8000 I will be happy.

So here are the financial goals for our family for 2012 in a nutshell:

• Income – generate $135/day from all sources
• Expenses – cut a minimum of $100/mo from our food bill. Cut a total of THB4000 from our “allowances”.
• Savings/Investments – Open brokerage accounts in both Thailand and the U.S. and invest a total of US$1000/mo combined.
• Debt – Lower LOC and credit card debt from $12k to $8k

Personal Goals

On a personal note there are also some goals I want to share with you. These relate primarily to family and health and even though I am not going into as much detail as for the financial goals, these are more important in my mind than any money based goals.

Work/Career Goals
Even though I am now self employed it doesn’t mean I can’t have career goals. In fact, I think it may be more important now, since there is no boss to push me when I get lazy.

Get organized and start growing my business. See above for my 30k challenge commitment. In addition, make my day more structured by setting aside specific time for work. Specifically, get up and start work at 6am. Work until noon and then spend time with my daughter in the afternoon. Work again at night, possibly 5pm-8pm…this is still a bit up in the air.

Family/Relationship Goals
Spend more quality time with my spouse. Because of her work schedule we don’t get much time to talk. Plan for 30-60 minutes each day when we can talk together without interruption. This will almost certainly have to be after our daughter goes to bed., although it could also be in the morning before she leaves for work.

Start cooking again. I enjoyed doing it in the States, but haven’t been cooking much since we arrived in Thailand. I think making Sunday “Daddy’s day to cook” could be fun and will also help share the household responsibilities more. Plus it will keep our daughter exposed to foods other than Thai.

Health Goals
While I did lose about 20 lbs when we moved to Thailand I could definitely stand to lose another 15 lbs or so. Get started with an exercise plan that will help me accomplish this. Gyms are quite expensive in Bangkok so I am thinking of something like the 100 pushup challenge combined with sit ups and using our wonderful pool to rediscover swimming.

Quit smoking. Stupid habit. Nuff said I think.

So there you have the Money Infant goals for 2012. I’ll be printing these out and referring to them throughout the year and we’ll see how I did in December. Until then I hope you all have created a list of goals for yourself to encourage improvement and growth in all the areas of your life. I would be very interested to hear about what everyone else is striving to accomplish in 2012 so leave me a comment and let me know what your goals are.

Up to this point my own personal finance goals have primarily been to pay down my credit card debt as quickly as possible.  That being the case, I didn’t do much in the way of planning outside of creating a budget and doing some quick monthly analysis to make sure I was freeing up as much cash as possible to accomplish that goal.  Definitely a down and dirty approach to financial planning, but it’s worked thus far.  It has taken me the past 2 ½ years and I’m not totally free yet ($6900 to go!), but I have been able to pay off over $30,000 from the credit cards.

Now that I’m almost done with the credit cards it’s time to get the rest of my financial house in order.  At 43 years old I have very little saved for retirement and that needs to be a priority.  In addition, my taxes this year are astronomical and I need to formulate a tax strategy to avoid a repeat next year and in years to come.  Third, I will become a father in late May/early June and want to start saving for college expenses for our new little girl right away.  And finally, we plan on making a move to Thailand within the next 2-3 years and need to put money aside for a variety of things in connection with that move.

Detailed Personal Financial Goals for 2010 and Action Plans

1. Pay off the remaining credit card balance.  While this is a priority it is no longer my only priority.  Over the past 30 months I have been using every dollar available to pay down credit card debt.  With a bit of breathing room now available and some changing priorities I won’t be doing that any longer.  My current balance on my one remaining card is $6906.17.  The plan is to continue to pay $350 per pay period (I get paid bi-weekly) throughout the end of the year.  Come December 31^st I will pay off any remaining balance with emergency savings.  Chance of meeting goal – Very High
2. Increase retirement savings.  There are several things I can do to address this and have already begun to do so.  I would like to max out my 401k by the end of the year and have already increased my withholding to get closer to that goal.  The nice thing is this also addresses my tax strategy as it will lower my AGI (Adjusted Gross Income).  At the current rate I will be putting roughly $11,000 in my 401k in 2010.  The second part of this strategy involves opening Roth IRA’s for both myself and Golf and funding them fully ($5000 for 2010).  Chance of meeting goal – Moderate  I believe I can meet the Roth IRA contribution, but am not sure I will hit the full $16,500 contribution limit for my 401k.
3. Start saving for our daughters college expenses.  Honestly I am still a bit clueless on this one, mostly because I can have no idea where she will be attending college.  As I mentioned we are planning on moving to Thailand which means our daughter will grow up in Thailand and will be attending English speaking International schools there for her primary and secondary education.  So that begs the question of whether or not she will want to come to the U.S. for college or if she will choose to stay in Thailand for college.  Obviously if she comes to the U.S. we could use a 529 plan, but I am unsure what would become of the money contributed to a 529 if she chooses to attend college in Thailand.  I am also trying to determine a good way to start putting money aside for International school in Thailand as they can be quite expensive.  I still have 3 months until she is born which should give me time to do the necessary research and you can rest assured I will be revisiting this topic in the near future.  Chance of meeting goal – Undetermined, more research required.
4. Increase emergency savings.  We currently have a nice 3 month cushion that will be mostly wiped out by our 2009 tax bill and 1^st quarter 2010 estimated taxes.  So, we will need to replenish the emergency fund.  We are looking to get roughly $5000 in there since we would also be able to draw upon the Roth contributions if necessary in a true emergency.  Our current budget allows us to put aside $1000 a month easily into this fund so it should be back up to strength by August.  Chance of meeting goal – Very High
5. Saving for the move to Thailand – This is another area that requires a bit more research as costs in Thailand can be very low to just as expensive as the U.S., especially in Bangkok which is where we plan on settling.  The good news is that some of our other savings vehicles can also be considered savings for the move to be drawn upon as necessary.  The emergency savings can certainly be used for this expense as can the Roth contributions.  At this point this is the lowest priority on my list of things to accomplish and I can’t say I have a set goal for 2010 as far as how much needs to be saved.  If I meet both the emergency savings and Roth contribution goals I will feel I am on a good path.  Since we do not plan on moving for a few years this goal definitely has some wiggle room.  The timing is also dependent on meeting my final goal – increasing self employment income.  Chance of meeting goal – Moderate
6. Increase self employment income.  This one will come down to how much work I put out over the next 9 months.  Currently my monthly income runs somewhere in the neighborhood of $1200-1300 and I would like to double that by the end of 2010.  I have started new projects and am re-investing 25% (currently) of my gross income back into my ventures in an effort to push the income higher more quickly.  My projections show that I will need a minimum of $3500 a month (at current currency exchange rates) prior to our move to Thailand if I don’t want to have to get a job teaching English once we’re there.  Obviously the higher this number is the better off we will be and the easier the move will be on our finances.  Chance of meeting goal – Assured.  I am committed and this one is non-negotiable.  Boy did I just put myself out on a limb or what?

So those are the current goals in a nutshell.  I will be assessing my progress on a monthly basis and updating you all on where I stand and where I’ve fallen.  As an infant it’s quite common to fall down pretty often when you’re learning to walk!  I’m considering meeting with a certified financial planner as well, just to get a second opinion and ensure that I am on the right course.