Just a 48-year-old mom of 2 in Northern California. My kids are Monkey Monkey(MM) and Drama Llama (DL). I am married to Monkey Hubby (MH). I have a good idea where things will land this month.
Pay cash for college ✔
Just one more tuition payment left for MM(22). Crazy!
$10K to Savings ✔
Final tally was $15,100.
Saved at the last minute, by a cash gift. Which made up for a wild spending year.
Note: I do not count money we deducted from our savings account to pay for college. This '$10K per year' is pretty much what we need to save to keep afloat and cover college costs. Ideally is for longer-term savings but haven't made any forward progress with two kids in college. Just treading water. The exception is this $10K gift we decided to keep in cash.
$7,500 to Investments ✔➕
Final tally: $7,500
Was able to hit the stretch goal with my bonus.
$1,700 to mortgage ✔
Mortgage goal is non-negotiable. I will not have a mortgage for more than 30 years on this house (while healthy and well employed). I moved this money over from cash last month.
9% Income to Work Retirement Plans ✔
MH and I both contribute the minimum for 401k match. The 9% includes employer contributions.
$6,000 to IRAs 2025 ❌
Decided to pass on this goal. $0 to IRAs. (Will probably put 1% of our income to IRAs, when I do our taxes. Just to put us at a full 10% to retirement. But that will be an April decision.)
I put 30% to retirement last year, and wanted to focus on other goals. This decision was before the cash gift. But I think it's important to stay the course.
We contributed 20% average (to retirement) during 2024/2025. This is probably the #1 reason we are putting IRAs on ignore. Will contribute $0. The other reason I suppose is because we hit a big retirement milestone. & the stock market is high. I am sure there's many reasons. I'd be more inclined to take advantage if we could get in some cheaper buys.
SUMMARY
My last few posts are the summary. Nothing more to add.
Retirement goals will start to decrease as we enter financial independence 'coast' mode. The 'saving for retirement' part is over and now it's about letting that money compound. & with that, we can start to enjoy our money more. I don't see the point on keeping the petal to the metal for the next 10 or 15 years. We are starting pre-retirement and enjoying our money.
2026 Goals
2026 goals will likely be mostly the same. I suppose I will evaluate what I want to do with taxable investments, if we set our IRA goal to $0. I will keep an IRA stretch goal to max out ($17,200). Something to ponder if we end up with unexpected money.
I've always had raises January 1, so it's just a sensible time to set financial goals for the year. 2026 will be a little different, with a kid finishing college mid-year. There will be some financial re-jiggering once he gets a job and is more self sufficient.
I need to do a 2026 tax projection before I can figure out what my actual net salary will be in 2026. From there, can start working through monthly savings and investment amounts. Things to figure out in January.