For 2023, I have decided to make only a couple goals. I will flush them out in a little more detail but essentially, they are decrease debt and increase savings.

Our credit card debt is hovering right around $20,000 and it has been difficult to get it below that level… this is the year! My goal is to decrease our debt (by the end of 2023) by $7000.  After interest, I want our debt to be lower than $13,000. Still high, but it would be progress. We will need to send roughly $900 a month to meet that decrease (including interest).  More importantly, we would need to not charge any more on our credit card. (*I guess that is a side goal of mine… to stop using our credit card unless it is absolutely necessary and to make sure we have the cash to pay for any charges we do make.)

My second goal is to increase our savings. We currently have $7500 in our savings account. By the end of the year, I want that to be at least $10,000. $10,000 is 2 months of (absolute) bare bones expenses. That would cover our mortgage, food, gas, utilities, and not much else. Eventually, once our credit card debt is paid off, I would increase our savings even more. Meeting our goal of $10,000 should be doable. Currently we are adding $500 a month to our savings and The Husband will have 2 months during the year that are 3 paycheck months. From each of those, I will add an additional $500. Should everything go according to plan, we should actually be able to reach this goal by the end of April. (That is of course assuming we don’t need to take any money out of our savings and are able to contribute the same amount each week.) But, realistically, I’m giving myself until the end of the year to meet the goal, because no matter the best laid plans… things happen!

Once we reach our savings goal, we will have to rejig our budget. But that’s another conversation for another time.

That's it... 2 main goals: decreasing debt and increasing savings. It sounds so easy on paper, but real life is hard! I know these are the goals everybody has, but I feel like this year I don't have much mental bandwidth to make more, or more specific, goals. 

Wish us luck for our goals this year! I want to experience the kind of freedom that you can only get from being debt free! Hopefully we can be credit card debt free in 2 years! If we make a good dent this year, 2 years is a real possibility!