In previous years, I would create a long list of financial goals, only to have little accomplished by the end of the December. Too many shiny quarters and not enough focus gets absolutely nothing accomplished. I almost stopped writing goals down altogether.
In 2018, we decided to focus on just 2 main financial goals and before I share my 2019 goals I thought I would give you a recap on 2018.
Our 2018 Financial Goals:
- Finish our Will
- Save $10k in a savings account, specifically earmarked for medical expenses. This amount is our Annual Household Portion with Medi-Share. It’s similar to a deductible.
#1 – DONE!! In March of 2018, we had our wills, medical directives, and powers of attorney completed by an attorney. This should have been done as soon as we became parents back in 2005, but we kept putting it off.
I considered doing it online, but we both felt we needed to discuss some things with an attorney. I called around to several local attorneys to get prices for their services and we settled on an out of town attorney that a family member recommended.
We discussed everything with the attorney over the phone, she then sent us drafts for us to review, and once the final copy was complete, we printed copies and had them notarized. It was an easy process and I know that we could have saved money by doing it online, but I trust that everything is properly complete. The peace of mind is worth the cost.
# 2 – DONE!!
I won’t rehash our entire health insurance story here, because I have written extensively about it and INCLUDED OUR NUMBERS, so to start from the beginning, read:
- Why We Left Traditional Health Insurance
- Why We Chose Medi-Share, an affordable solution to traditional health insurance
- Medi-Share Recap of our First Year (2017)
I have yet to write a Medi-Share recap for 2018, but our goal was to replenish the healthcare savings account that we depleted in 2017.
We use Medi-Share for our healthcare and our Annual Household Portion is $10k. That’s the amount of our medical bills we need to pay before our bills are covered by the members’ shares. Prior to Medi-Share, we always had high-deductible health insurance plans and we made it a priority to have the amount of our deductible in a separate savings account. It was routine for us.
Unfortunately, we had a medical event in 2017 and we were on the hook for the first 10k of bills. In an instant our $10k vanished.
We were hoping to have an uneventful 2018 with just usual and routine medical expenses so we could build that health savings account back to $10k. But for the second year in a row, we hit our AHP of $10k. We needed to pay out that $10k once again. Fortunately, we were making good progress with our #2 goal prior and had quite a bit of it saved for this second medical event.
We hunkered down and paid our expected medical expenses and by the end of 2018, we were also able to save enough money to cover us for 2019.
We were grateful once again for Medi-Share. We switched to Medi-Share because the monthly premium costs were much lower for us than traditional health insurance. Medi-Share is not traditional health insurance, so it was a complete leap of faith for us to join. For the second year in a row, Medi-Share worked exactly how they told us it would when we signed up at the end of 2016.
Part of me didn’t even want to make a financial goal for 2019. By reading my own words above, it sounds like reaching our goals in 2018 was very easy to do. I can assure you it was not.
We’re mentally exhausted by the toll of the medical issues and the financial strain they caused.
But as much as I would love to hid under my covers, we must keep pushing forward. We’re praying really hard that our medical costs are minimal in 2019, so we can knock our new goal out of the park!
Our 2019 Financial Goal:
Our one and only financial goal for the year: Pay off the student loan, our last non-mortgage debt.
That’s it! That’s all we’re going to focus on.
In one sense I’m exhausted by our financial situation. Scrimping and saving in 2018 to pay our medical bills and to save up for our 2019 Annual Household Portion was exhausting. We want so badly to move on to the fun stuff, like traveling to Disney or even Europe to visit some friends who recently moved there. There are improvements we would like to make to our house and some day, we want to upgrade our pop-up camper to a travel trailer.
Those things will come.
I’m very motivated to focus on one goal this year. Paying off this loan has been a goal before, but I really feel like this is THE year.
Before we wrote our Debt Freedom Plan in 2012, I couldn’t see the forest through the trees. Our debts were massive and I was not as financially organized as I am right now. We have really come a long way and I need to remember that.
Will 2019 be THE year that we pay off our last non-mortgage loan?
Only time will tell, but I’m shooting for the stars!
Related Reading:
- Our original Debt Freedom Plan
- 2018 UpdateWhat is your big financial goal for 2019? Share it in the comments.
