7 baby steps to begin financial peace

4. Invest 15% of household income into Roth IRAs and pre-tax retirement.

5. College funding for children

6. Pay off home early

7. Build wealth and give! Invest in mutual funds and real estate

We need to seriously work on these next four. We don’t invest in IRAs. We really need to do something about college. We need to buy a home. And I’m really good at giving… need to work on the building wealth part.

This is a two part-er for me:

1. Save 6 months of rent
2. Save 6 months of all other expenses (not including debt)

First thing I need to do is figure out what these figures actually are. It helps that I am going to ignore the debt when doing this. That’s what’s been holding me up.

Ugh. We just finished paying off all our debt at this time last year. Now we are up to our eyeballs in debt again. We need to refocus and stop spending. I need to refocus and stop spending.

It should be a whole lot more than it is. We really need to work on the other baby steps before adding more. Part of me wants to continue to add a little bit each month… especially since we stopped saving altogether not long ago. This baby step is done.