Received an inflation raise of 6%.  Woohoo! 

This is extra nice because we have not personally experienced an increase in our expenses.   

Extra extra nice because taxes were strangely *shrugs* on new income.  I lost a $2K tax credit in 2022 but will gain it back in 2023.  I will just leave Federal tax withholding as is.  It's a little high, but I don't want to get too used to paying less taxes.  We have nowhere to go but up.  I did bump up state tax withholding a little bit.  

After that, we are left with $400/month, which will exactly get us to the goals I was envisioning.  Weird how that works out.  I mean, it's like down to the penny.  So I don't have to touch the new (2022) "breathing room" in our budget, to meet these goals.    

I am bumping up monthly cash savings by $50/month.  Making it an even $1K contribution.  I don't foresee increasing this.  With the exception of making this a full  $1,083/month in the future.  To cover IRA contributions (from my income).   The old $12K IRA contribution limit (x2) is probably why I have that $1K/month figure in my head. 

This leaves $250/month to throw at investments.  Happens to be where we left off, and was the figure I wanted to hit this year.  If I didn't have enough raise, I would have commited a flat amount from MH's income.  

Oh yeah, and the other $100 will go to health insurance increases.  For the past ~15 years, it generally goes up $100/month, every year.  That is nothing new.  

Still taking a breather, re: longer term goals.  That said, I can tell you three things:

1 - Efficiency is too important to us.  We won't be decreasing retirement contributions, accordingly.

2 - We don't want to increase retirement contributions.  

I mean, I am okay with bumping up to the new IRA contribution limit (with MH's raise).  & will have to re-evaluate (in the future) re: #1.  Rather park our income in retirement funds than hand over to the IRS.  But other than fiscal efficiency, it's not a goal of ours to put any more away into retirement.  

It's clear after this period of "auto pilot" that we don't want to make any big changes. 

3 - This will probably put our new goal at $800K retirement funds by age 50.  Just doing the math. 

This is what I had calculated before my raise.   Extra investments (raise) doesn't move the needle much on a 5-year goal.  Fair enough.

When will I circle back and start thinking more long term?  Commit to these new retirement goals and memorialize in my sidebar?  I think I am going to wait until college shakes out this calendar year.  Let a little more limbo sort out.  I just need to give it more time.

Overall, I am very happy with things.  Being able to have more breathing room in the budget and to also be throwing a chunk into taxable investments again...