Financial Milestones in Your 20s

We paid for this with CASH

There are many things that I want to accomplish in my life. Starting the things listed below will only make life easier for the most part. When you look at my list below, I have 11 checks so far so I'm about half way done. Some things I partially do, but decided not to say that they are a “check.”

However, I do think I'm doing good with this list, there's nothing I'd really change about what I'm doing now in order to have more “checks.”

Erika and Vanessa both shared a list of their financial milestones. Check theirs out! Below is my list:

1. Finance a dream vacation…in cash. Check! I've paid for all of my vacations in cash. I went to Kauai in March and this was definitely a dream vacation.
2. Pay off your student loans. I haven't paid them off completely. I have paid some though, and I plan on paying for this upcoming summer semester completely with cash. This definitely requires some saving and buckling down this summer.
3. Automate paying your credit card bill in full. Check! I pay my bill in full always.
4. Get rid of all bad debt. Check! “Bad debt” depends on the person, but all I have are a mortgage and student loans. I consider these to be “good” in my life.
5. Build an adequate emergency fund. Check! Our emergency fund is currently at $15K, we do want to take this and start applying it towards debt though. Our fund doesn't need to be this high and could be better used in other places.
6. Make your first, and last, investment mistake. I'm still making investment mistakes. I'm still trying to understand everything. I guess since I work in the finance industry, I am much more critical and analyze the market a lot.
7. Develop a statement of cash flows. I do this in my head, but I've never written it down. Probably need to do this though. I always make sure there's plenty of cushion in our checking account so that we never bounce anything though.
8. Max out a Roth & Contribute to your 401(k). I don't save nearly enough right now. This is something I need to work on, but I do want my debt to be gone quickly. Right now I save between 10-15% of our after-tax pay every month.
9. Get a degree or certification that increases your earning power. Check! I'm about to get my Finance MBA. WOOHOO!
10. Take a career risk. Never done this. I've only had 2 jobs my entire life. 5 years in retail management and 2 years as a financial analyst. Definitely no career risk there.
11. Negotiate something. Check! I always negotiate on vacations. When I booked our Vegas Bachelorette trip for this August, I called many places and eventually got a great deal. I asked this to match a price I found somewhere else, and they even threw extras in.
12. Earn your first side grand. Check! I've made nice side money from my blog, mystery shopping and surveys.
13. Start a sub-savings account for an upcoming financial goal. I don't have any separate accounts, but I do think this would help since the money would be separated from the other accounts.
14. Set a target retirement date. This isn't set in stone of course since we are still young. Hopefully around the age of 50 though. This most likely won't be a complete retirement though. I still see myself doing some sort of part time gig when I'm older.
15. Monitor your credit. Check! I check this all the time, especially since someone stole my social security number when I was younger. Things always tend to pop up but for the most part I am safe now.
16. Say no to a financial salesman. Check! I'm actually pretty good with saying no. My friends and bf always laugh because I can walk away so easily and not care. In Kauai, some guy tried selling us a timeshare and after about 15 minutes of him talking, I looked at my bf and I could tell he didn't want to be mean. So I told the guy no and walked away. My bf still thanks me for having no heart when we are around persistent sales people.
17. Give just enough to make it hurt. We hardly give. We used to give around $100 a month to United Way, but we didn't realize until now that they are extremely corrupt. So we have limited this greatly and now we only give around $20 a month.
18. Invest $1 for every $1 you spend- in progress. Check kind of. We save around 50% of our after-tax income every month, and soon this will be much more.
19. Start a 529 College Savings Plan. Ehh not really interested in this at all.
20. Buy a house. This is something I just added (thanks to Work Save Live). This is a CHECK for me!