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 did a 2026 tax projection and so was able to finalize my net pay and 2026 goals.
My entire raise will go to taxes and healthcare. 😒 I had wanted to eke out some extra money from bigger raise, to cover expected tax increases in near future. I couldn't cover any of that, so I made a note in my budget spreadsheet. I need to come up with an extra $400/month (taxes) at some point in the near future. The obvious solution is to just move it over from the grocery budget, when I am no longer feeding kids. I wanted to get ahead of that curve, but I don't think it's going to happen.
Pay cash for college
Just one more tuition payment left for MM(22). & then there will be one...
$10K to Savings
The Usual
$7,500 to Investments
I am only going to be able to save ~$5,000 from my paycheck and credit card rewards. But there's always other snowballs (like MH's income) and snowflakes. So I will try to be a little more aggressive on this goal this year. It should also be easier, having less college expenses.
$1,500 to mortgage
This is the amount we need to pay to keep on our '$10K per year paydown' trajectory. This number is going to drop down for a couple of years (as regular principal payments increase).
We've been pretty set on not tying up any more money into the mortgage (than this) while we have two kids in college. & I think we are leaning more towards a 'mortgage payoff' fund at this point. (Piling up money to pay off eventually, with one final lump sum.) I was just doing the math if we front loaded this goal. It would save us a whole whopping $50. There's many reasons for the 'mortgage payoff' fund but definitely there's just not a lot of interest to be saved with pre-payments at this point, with low-balance/low-interest mortgage.
9% Income to Work Retirement Plans
MH and I both contribute the minimum for 401k match. The 9% includes employer contributions.
$0 to IRAs 2026
**Stretch Goal = $17,200 (MAX) to IRAs**
Hitting Coast mode, while strangely not getting as much tax benefit from (smaller) retirement contributions. Which I personally think is *amazing* and makes it easier to cut back on retirement contributions.
Leaving the stretch goal for the 'unexpected money' factor.
& to be clear, I consider MH's income to be a snowball. So the snowballs I need for other goals are very expected. The stretch goal is more about if money just falls from the sky.
SUMMARY
This is also an odd year where we may have some major expense decreases mid-year, with a college graduate. (e.g. a significant reduction in healthcare and food costs.) We may shift these amounts to building up investments, and bumping up goals. Will see how the year goes.
Edited to add: It's going to be a weird year of flux. Since I started this post, I now think we will be a 4-person household early in the year. I don't anticipate the extra houseguest to change our goals or numbers.
January 16th, 2026 at 07:57 pm 1768593422
Hope your year of flux is a good one as far as finding money to put aside.