Very in! Because of my income, I’ve been able to save $20k+ for several years in a row. My goals for 2020:
I’m in. With the new baby and SirB having a new job and deciding to stay in our swanky apartment another year, it may be a stretch to pull this off, sadly. But I want to try! We have no debt now, and that’s been a decent part of our NW growth in the past.
My income will be less than my spending (I’m in drawdown phase), but I am planning to pay off at least this much of the mortgage with the income I do have. Does debt paydown count if I’m using savings to fund the rest of my expenses? I’m not really saving anything overall.
Dan and I are in! My goal will be $20K in savings for our retirement accounts - 457B, Roth and 401K and building our emergency reserves back up to hopefully $10K.
Q - if the accounts grow over year due to market growth can I count the growth as part of our savings or is it just what I contribute?
I’m in. It seems doable if I count mortgage repayment as savings. I give myself until the end of the year to decide if I stay in this thread or the 20% of income one. Big changes looming for me but it’ll all be clear by then. My goal would be to save €20K. Good luck everyone.
Question: Would the money my employer puts in retirement for me count in the $20K. If so, this challenge makes more sense for me. If not, I’ll head back to the 20% challenge.
Yes! The money your employer puts in retirement for you counts towards your $20K!
No you can’t count growth; only your own savings (or the contributions of your employer on your behalf). You wouldn’t want to lose that when the market goes down, so you can’t count the other way for the purposes of this challenge!
I am going $20k in AUD. I wont count compulsory super but everything else
I just realised I already save about $22k a year, so I am going to change it to saving $20k USD or about ($29k AUD to make it more of a challenge)
Cool! I’ll hang out over here, then. I finished paying off debt at the end of August, I’m moving now (so, lots of expenses), 2020 is going to be focused on saving all I can.
Ooh, I don’t normally count my mortgage payments in my savings, I’m going to limit mine to after-tax savings towards investing, ignoring compulsory super payments as well. So 20k AUD into investments (stretch goal of 20k USD!).
I normally count the amount I make above the minimum payment
Hmm good point, I’ve kept it at the higher payment since the rate dropped. Guess my savings rate has been a bit higher all along.
I’m in because I’d like to join some kind of a challenge, but I’m going to have to figure out what other goals make sense for me because I’ve got the $20,000 kind of on autopilot.
An aside: HOLY SHIT DOES THAT FEEL WEIRD TO SAY
Ahem.
I already have:
Employer contributions to retirement: $3900
My required contributions to retirement: $7150
My additional contributions to retirement: $16250
So that brings us to $27,300 that’s already planned.
I do want to max out my Roth and increase my emergency fund and those are definitely NOT on autopilot, so maybe I’ll make a goal around that. Now, how can I make that tie in to the 20 theme…
How often do you get paid? You could do a “20 separate contributions to Roth/EF over the year” as a theme if you get paid 2x/month (and then you’d have four paychecks where you could deal with cashflowing things).
I get paid every two weeks, so 26 times per year. I could definitely try something with contributions per paycheck - that’s a good idea. Or maybe I’ll just make a dollar goal and not worry about the 20 thing.
Ok, I’ve decided that my goal will be to max out my 457b and my Roth. That should bring my net worth to around $200,000 by the end of the year, which is suitably 20-themed to please my brain. I don’t want to make a specific net worth goal, though, because I can’t predict what the markets will do. So officially it’s maxing out 457b and Roth, which would be $25,500 total.
I want to try to do 20k from takehome, in repayment and cash saving. That allows 3300/mo spending, which is 600-700 more than my grad school stipend, so this should be easy…right?
I like that idea @RamonaQ ! My current savings/investment rate is at like 42% as is (over $20k already) so I’m going to do net worth-y/account goals instead:
Net worth of $200k in 2020 and pile an extra $12k into our e-fund (for a round $20k, as we have around $8k in there now since the move and some big medical costs cleaned our cash buffer a bit).
So, $200k and $20k! Easy to remember 
good luck everyone! Also is anyone else WAY excited about the twenties? I can’t stop thinking about it. I feel like a damn time traveler!!!