My resolutions for 2005
will be mostly financial.
1. Pay off the budget debt by $250 each month. In general this will
probably consist of $100 from Computer and Home and $50 from Media or
Games. The $3000 could reduce my budget debt to $6100+.
2. Put aside $250 per month for a budget reserve. This would consist of
$50 from each of the five budget categories. This reserve would be for
emergencies so I don't have to pay the 100% budget penalty for going
over my budget.
3. The $500 per month should allow me to save enough real money to make
a $4000 contribution to my Roth IRA by August or September. [Come to
think of it I made more than $95k this year so maybe I contributed too
much. Checking my 2003 return my Adjusted Gross Income was $75k,
probably because mortgage interest payments lower my AGI. So for 2004 I
should be safe since I paid $17k in mortgage interest and I should
still be ok for 2005 unless I get a raise. Hmm so I should wait until
close to the end of 2005 before making my contribution. I'm only going
through this much trouble because it's more trouble to correct it after
the fact.]
4. Increase my Employee Stock Purchase Plan contributions to 3% and
then 4% for the next plan periods. 10% is my maximum contribution but
at that point I'm not making enough money to pay the bills unless I
reduce my mortgage payments to the minimum payment. I'm basically
increasing the contribution by 1% in each 6-month period.
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I believe that's all I'll
be able to do financially. There's a possiblity that if Oracle stock
goes way up I'll sell a bunch, which would kill my Roth IRA
contributions. There's also the possibility that I'll be laid off in
which case all bets are off.
5. Read 104 books. That's 2 books a week. This year I read 79 books and
23 books in the last two months to get it that high. Two books a week
is actually a bit ambitious considering all the other things taking
time in my life.
6. Get about a month ahead on my NetFlix DVDs. This amounts to the 122
I see in a year plus the 9 DVDs I'm behind plus another 10 to get a
month ahead. So 141 DVDs in a year, just from NetFlix. Again, a bit
ambitious due to the other time wasters in my life.
7. Finish updating my collections. This requires recataloging the
remaining items in my web site, deciding what stuff I don't want to
collect any longer, and getting rid of the stuff I don't want. This I
should be able to do.
8. Run 40 GURPS: BattleTech sessions. This is once a weekend with about
a weekend off each month. I have to be able to run adventures without
prepping too much. And I really need to be less hands-on with the
player characters, though I doubt that will change.
Ok, that's enough for one year.
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