To join the bandwagon I’m going to look back over the past year to see where DH and I have come and try and look forward to where we want to go.

This year DH and I both opened Roth IRA accounts and were able to put the max out the 2007 contributions. We also currently have over $2400 saved for the 2008 contributions.

In January we had nearly $20,700 in car loan debt. Today we completely paid off my car and only have 6100 left on DH’s car. We could have paid off more, but we decided that it is not financially beneficial to pay off his car early as the interest rate is only 3.59%.

Our savings account has nearly $20K more in it than it did last January. At first I thought this was awesome, but then I realized that it’s been artificially inflated. At the beginning of the year we had several savings accounts. In May, we decided to combine them all into the account earning the most interest. So that was nearly 8K of it, and we received 10K of life insurance, and are holding nearly 7K from student loans. So adding all of those together, we’ve actually lost money in savings! Most of the money came from our down payment fund, which won’t be needed for several years. Regardless, the money was put to good use: retirement, paying off debt, and keeping us fed and sheltered.

We only started tracking purchases in August of 2006, so I can’t easily compare 2006’s spending to 2007, but I’m looking forward to seeing how our spending will change from ’07 to ’08.

Looking ahead to 2008 I don’t know what to expect! We are starting out the year with 2 households and if things continue at their present rate we will only be making about $50 more than our expenses. So that will drastically change the progress we are able to make. We also will have to deal with deployment…well, not technically deployment as it will only be for 3 months. In theory DH will be making more money during this time, and as he won’t be at home, his expenses will go down. So that might be a time for us to play catch-up. In December though, he will be deploying for real, and that will have major tax and income implications. Which I’m sure I’ll be learning more about as we get closer to that date.

Our priorities for 2008 are as follows:
1. Max out our 2008 Roth contributions, it goes up to 10,000 for both of us, so we have our work cut out for us.
2. Save for a down payment. We’ll only start putting away for this after we’ve got our Roth maxed as we are still several years away from actually buying a house.
3. Minimize the amount of school loans I have to take out and/or pay off the loans I’ve already taken out.
4. Pay off DH’s car. As I mentioned before this is not really a priority as the rate is so low.

Well there you have it! I’m really impressed with what we have done so far, a little worried about the near future, but really excited to see where we’ll go from here!!