2023 is almost here, and you know, I’m sure it will be wonderful just like 2022 with no surprises.
We are continuing the 22 in 2022 challenges but have slightly adjusted the goal post for a new year!
The goal is simple, but not easy: save $20,230 this year.
If saving $20,230 of your salary isn’t practical - or if you make less than, say, $80,000 - consider the alternative 23 in 2023 Challenge: Save 23% of your income in 2023 Both get the same sticker, but the threads will have people at similar income/challenge levels.
Basic rules:
The goal is to save $20,230 in 2023. If you make $65,000 per year, that’s 31% of your overall income.
If your income is not in USD, you can choose to save 20.23K in your currency (i.e $20,220 CAD or $20,220 AUD or €20,220 ) OR save the equivalent to $20.22K USD (i.e. currently €17,783.13, $27,838.62 AUD, or $25,556.36 CAD) Just state the path and exchange rate you’re choosing (feel free to choose based on what makes sense for you.)
You can combine any type of savings: emergency fund, 401K, Super, IRA, taxable investments, buffer, house down payment fund, student loan payments - to reach your goal.
You can choose household or individual savings, whichever you prefer.
What Counts
Debt repayment counts towards your savings total!
Mortgage principal (but not interest or escrow) counts.
Only savings that occurs between 1/1/2023 and 12/31/2023 count
If you are already retired, you can count savings that you made after distributions (like pulling from a pension, etc).
You can use tax refund or any other windfall money towards your total savings.
you can count Biden student loan forgiveness towards your savings if we get it.
What do you get:
Support on this thread as you go along - post monthly or quarterly check-ins as appropriate
A forum badge when you complete your $20,230
A sticker mailed to you for completing your $20,230 goal for the year
A shoutout on the livestream for reaching your goal!
Here’s 2021 and 2022’s slightly unhinged stickers:
We’re in again. To be determined whether we go for $20,230 total or per person; we are still trying to get quotes to pave our very long driveway, plus we may well have to replace a vehicle this year.
Base
$20,230: household, ex standard mortgage payments
Stretch
$80,920: the goal amount per person in the household, really sort of a cash-net-worth goal and includes mortgage principal, bonus, dividends, whatever money I can scrounge.
Hello! I’m coming off an absolutely abysmal saving year, so I am going to join this challenge. This is already almost the exact amount that I will be paying for childcare in 2023 (with a 60% lump sum due in May - yikes!), so I have absolutely no clue how I’m going to pull it off. I guess I’m hoping that just by paying attention to it, I can at least do better than I did this year.
I read the rules and the what counts, but I’m assuming that everyone can determine their own rules? If so, my super duper stretch goal is to count our IRAs ($6500 each), and then after tax savings ($7230) for the remainder. If it looks like that will be way out of reach (likely) then I will count HSA savings instead of after tax. This will be a household - investing goal.
I’m in, I need to replenish my emergency fund after my 6 month maternity leave this past year plus I plan to dump a lot into my 401k (hoping to max out, we’ll see)
Goal is $20,230 x 2 = $40,460 as we are a two income household, however should one of us loose our job then I’ll reevaluate.
Inclusions: mortgage principal, employee pension portion (me, getting ahold of his slips is impossible) TFSA, RRSP, RESP (1 child, J1 already has the maximum lifetime grant) RDSP (J1).
Exclusions: Heloc principal payments, car payments.
I’m in this year! Going to include cash savings, retirement contributions and matches, and other investments, but not mortgage principal. This year we saved around $15k in those pots, so it’s a bit of a challenge!
I feel like you might be more likely than me to hit it I am interested in using it to see exactly where all our money comes from over the next 12 months. I might pay more attention to the employer superannuation contributions!
I’m in again! Tracking my savings (and debt payments*) was really satisfying and helped a lot to quell my inner thoughts of “i’m not saving enough” which hit since i’m not maxing out my 401K or saving 50% of my income or other huge ‘goals’ like that which i’m not actually working towards but get anxious about not meeting. Brains are weird.
*my debt is a mortgage (i know, principle only counts for this) and then i have 2 interest free loans from purchasing my car and a new mattress.
Posting to follow because I’m not sure which is the right challenge for us! We make a bit more than $80k, which is a big drop (scaling back for new baby) and I’ve never tracked our savings rate or amount before.
Ready to go! I have a plan to easily hit $20,230 by the end of the year at my current savings rate between all my retirement accounts and personal savings, but I will believe things are going to stay stable only when the year is over!
I am in! Need to sit down, do a year’s financial macro thingumy, and then work out which version of the challenge I can do. It will be more than I think it will, because I am getting better at saving, so it’s time to take that further.
This one should be easy because I’ve set automatic contributions to max out my 401(a) for the year (something like $22,500 this year), but as a stretch goal I’m going to try to 1) set up a Roth IRA and help my wife set up a spousal IRA and 2) max out both of those as well.
I am in! Basic goal - 20230, stretch goal - 60690 (one for each adult in our house). Our earnings could change a lot this year so I have pretty vague goals. Mortgage principal and student loan repayment should get us a decent ways there!
Well due to Reasons, RLG and I have decided to beef up our Emergency/extra/cash fund instead of funding the IRAs, so forget everything I said above. We will be saving cash instead. Same goal, but if some major miracle happens and we fully fund the cash reserves then maaaaaybe the IRAs will get a few dollars.
Just adjusted some of my savings pots, because by adding a couple more (contents insurance and a house contingency fund), I managed to take the amount going out of my current account quite high. So a re-shuffle was needed.
Still not done the budget over-view. Right now the focus is on more intensive house-clearing. The morale boost from finally getting down to this all is great. Then I plan to start selling the things I can sell, and putting the proceeds into the savings pot.
But yes, I do need to do a proper yearly budget overview at some point. Soon
Oh, and Plum is just ticking along in the background nicely. I’ve been logged out of the phone app (it does this monthly), and I think I’m going to leave it that way for a while, so the savings can quietly build up there, and not tempt me. That said, the interest is better in my regular savings account, so… I’ll weigh up the benefits of each method at some point.
If saving $20,230 of your salary isn’t practical - or if you make less than, say, $80,000 - consider the alternative 23 in 2023 Challenge: Save 23% of your income in 2023 Both get the same sticker, but the threads will have people at similar income/challenge levels.
I am interested in using it to see exactly where all our money comes from over the next 12 months. I might pay more attention to the employer superannuation contributions!
Great start to the year.