Wednesday, October 24, 2012

Longer Range Plans

I loved this post from Sharon, as it reminded me that M & I are due for resetting our own priorities, & talking them through to make sure we agree on where we're headed in the long-term as a family.  We have restructured some of our goals & long-term plans, but here's where we landed.

Priority order:
  1. We're going to sell our vacation house. This has been a very difficult decision (mostly for me - M is very pragmatic). We LOVE our vacation house - more than our primary residence, in fact. However, owning that house means we can never remodel our primary residence, which is in desperate need of a major remodel. I'm glad we discussed and reached a conclusion of how to fund our long(er) range goals, but I'm definitely still wrapping my head around this one. Our timeline for getting the house listed & closing is a year (we'll list in the spring), but we're not desperate to sell. We estimate that we will break even (after closing costs & fees), but selling the house will free up close to $3,000/month.
  2. Pay off our second mortgage. Doing this will free us up those funds to pay for the remodel.  Our timeline for paying this off is 2017. We currently owe $182K.
  3. Fund a remodel for our primary residence. As you can see from #2, we will use the money freed up by paying off the second mortgage (and, maybe part of the money from the vacation house) to pay for our remodel.We don't have a solid estimate for how much we will need to spend, but plan to start investigating. I think somewhere under $300K. Our timeline is the same as above - start funding in 2017.
  4. Fully fund the boys college tuition funds. We save in a 529 plan that covers college tuition, & have a plan in place for funding that account. We're still on the fence about how to fund other college expenses (room & board, books etc), but we will likely figure that out as we get closer. Our kids are 5 & 6. Four years of tuition equals 400 credits, and we currently have 172 credits for each child. Our goal was to have 200 credits in each account by the end of 2012, thus reaching the 50% mark. However, I don't think we're be able to get there & have prioritized paying down our second mortgage over this goal.Our timeline for fully funding these accounts is 2020, when our boys are 13 & 14.  The cost (in current dollars, & the tuition credit prices rise each year) is just under $80,000.
  5. After we accomplish goals 1-4, barring any other "new" financial goals, our plan is to pay off our primary residence before we retire. We'll then be moving to Hawaii when/after the boys are in college. Our timeline is to have our primary residence paid off by 2023.We owe $546K on this.

Our next long(er) range step is to establish a 2013 budget (both yearly & monthly) & look for other opportunities to reprioritize our spending to match our goals. How do you prepare for a new year? Do you do long range goal setting & tracking?

5 comments:

  1. Yes, we do long range planning and goal setting. We actually have three levels - now, short term and long term.

    Every year we evaluate all of it and we semi-evaluate monthly. Sharon got me thinking about those long term goals as well.

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  2. It looks like you have some good long range goals set. My husband and I need to sit down and do this. Our top priority right now is getting the House fixed up so we can sell it.

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  3. I think that it is great that you have a plan in place. I'm sure that you will get there without a problem and probably sooner than you think!
    Den and I are at the point of re planning our lives. We have always kept our expenses pretty low considering we are in the Chicago-land area. We have two juniors, one in college and one in high school. We are a bit torn, do we work hard and pay off the house we are in? Or do we build something really small and maybe buy a house in Vegas? These are all nice things to think about. Just a few more years and the kids will be out of school!

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  4. good luck on those goals, I am sure it will all come together for you.

    We too have short and long term goals.

    Thanks for popping by my blog and commenting

    Gill in Canada

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  5. we have long and short term goals, but I have to admit they change along the way as life takes it's various twists and turns. good luck with your plans, a remodel will be interesting to read about :)

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