Eight Goals for 2008
1. Eat at least three different fruits &/ vegetables per week. Pretty straightforward–this week, it’s been spinach, red lettuce, and onions in salads. I need to get more fresh foods in my diet.
2. Be able to type 60 wpm by March 1st. I’m a two-finger typist, and I clock in at about 38 wpm. I’ve decided I want to learn how to type faster than that. K. and F. gave me a fun typing game for the Christmas, so I’m going to use it.
3. Play Free Rice fifteen minutes a day. Learn vocabulary and feed people. I’m on the internet all day at work anyway, so I might as well do something fun and useful in my downtime. If this site closes, I’ll do some other vocab-building exercise daily.
4. Read at least 50 books. Again, pretty straightforward.
5. Reduce the principal of my personal loan debts by $5000 this year. Okay, now we’re talking. My personal loans are my Federal Direct Stafford loans and my Federal Perkins loans. My first debt snowball target is my Stafford loans, with a total of $15,482 owed at 6.97%. I also have $11,450 in Perkins loans at 5%. Achieving this goal would mean I’d have $21, 932 left to pay off. My stretch goal is to get my principal under $20,000. I’m going to apply $430 a month minimum to these loans, but a lot of that will go to interest. I’m also going to put any alternative income I make (see #7) towards my loans. I should also get a decently-sized tax refund this year, because I had taxes withheld like a person who makes $32,000 a year for my November and December paychecks, when in reality I only made about $8000 total (including my school and summer jobs) in 2007. My last strategy to reduce my principal is to apply my “rollover money,” that is, money I saved out of my budget by being frugal, to my loans as snowflakes each month.
6. Open a Roth IRA. I want to do some more research before I do it just yet, though. Also, I plan to open a Simple IRA through my company when I become eligible at the end of March.
7. Make at least $500 in alternative income by August 13th. This doesn’t include gifts, but does include things like income from selling books online. I’m currently applying to do freelance for our local newspaper. If I get a few jobs, that should go a long way towards achieving this goal.
8. Limit my time online at home to 2 hrs. a day. Like I said, I’m on the internet all day at work. I don’t need to be on it all night at home, too.
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Jonas said,
Wrote on January 7, 2008 @ 7:26 pm
hey, can you direct me to some info/blogs of people trying to pay off student loans and how they are doing it? Much appreciated.