We maxxed out our HSA today. $5800, done and done. That feels so good. A whole lot better than shopping sprees and dinners out. We maxxed out our HSA last year too, but we did it in the last week of the year, and it was a struggle. I much prefer having it done in April! I got the idea to focus on one financial goal at a time from NCN. I remember reading about how he tackles each goal until it’s finished and then moves on to the next, and I decided to give it a try for our goals this year. So ever since the first of the year, we’ve put everything we could scrape together into the HSA. There’s been a little trickle devoted to other goals – we pay a little extra each month on our mortgage; we put $100/month into our ING account for emergencies, and we put $200/month into my husband’s traditional IRA. I like the automatic nature of these payments, and they’re small enough to be manageable, while still big enough to make a difference at the end of the year. So we kept those, but put everything else into the HSA. I would move money into the HSA as soon as we got paid, so that we weren’t tempted to use it on anything else – if it’s not there, you can’t spend it. Anyway, it feels great to be finished with the HSA for the year. And we shouldn’t have to take any more money out of it, since we’ve already met our health insurance deductible for the year.
Now we can move on to my husband’s traditional IRA, which is our second goal for the year. Since we put $200/month into it automatically, we only have to come up with another $2600 to max it out for the year. Our tax refund should get deposited tomorrow, and we’re planning to put $2600 of it into the IRA. That will be two of our goals met for the year, within 24 hours of each other. The refund is obviously not a normal part of our income (and not something I want to make a habit of – I’m hoping to get back to our usual refund of a couple hundred dollars next year), so it almost feels like cheating to hit the IRA goal so soon after the HSA. But I suppose we could be going to the mall tomorrow night to buy a big screen TV instead of putting the money into the IRA…
I’m debating where to go next… we had planned to start working on my Roth IRA as soon as we maxxed out my husband’s IRA, but with the baby due next month, part of me wants to pad the emergency fund a little more instead (we’ve only got about $1500 in it, which is a lot less than a month’s worth of expenses for us). Maybe we’ll deviate from our one-at-a-time method and work a little on both for a while.
Chief Family Officer says
I would definitely plan on cutting yourself some slack when the baby is born. I’m sure you’ll be a lot more composed than I was after my oldest was born, but things were rough for me – I needed an emergency c-section, breastfeeding wasn’t going well, and I was sinking into postpartum depression (fortunately, it was short lived). To make a long story short, my son cried every moment that he was awake (or so it seemed), and we weren’t getting much sleep. The first thing I did was chuck the budget out the window. We had lots of takeout, and spent more money than I ever would have predicted on formula and bottles (since we to supplement because my milk supply was low). Also, we had to pay $350 for a breast pump and $200+ for a lactation consultant because of my breastfeeding issues. Eventually we worked things out, and I breastfed exclusively by the time my son was six weeks old. But I will say, my last priority during those six weeks was our financial goals (and this is coming from someone who loves checking balances to see loans go down and savings go up, and can spend hours figuring out the best way to maximize our money). I am so glad we had a substantial cash reserve when my son was born so that we didn’t have to worry for a second about whether we could afford the unplanned expenses.
Chief Family Officer says
I would definitely plan on cutting yourself some slack when the baby is born. I’m sure you’ll be a lot more composed than I was after my oldest was born, but things were rough for me – I needed an emergency c-section, breastfeeding wasn’t going well, and I was sinking into postpartum depression (fortunately, it was short lived). To make a long story short, my son cried every moment that he was awake (or so it seemed), and we weren’t getting much sleep. The first thing I did was chuck the budget out the window. We had lots of takeout, and spent more money than I ever would have predicted on formula and bottles (since we to supplement because my milk supply was low). Also, we had to pay $350 for a breast pump and $200+ for a lactation consultant because of my breastfeeding issues. Eventually we worked things out, and I breastfed exclusively by the time my son was six weeks old. But I will say, my last priority during those six weeks was our financial goals (and this is coming from someone who loves checking balances to see loans go down and savings go up, and can spend hours figuring out the best way to maximize our money). I am so glad we had a substantial cash reserve when my son was born so that we didn’t have to worry for a second about whether we could afford the unplanned expenses.
(Hm, I got an error message so I’m going to try again.)