The first thing that I learned is that I need to set my personal financial goals, for next year, and next 3-5 years, and maybe next 20-30 years.

SMART: Specific, Measurable, Actionable, Realistic, Time-Bound.

Goals for next year:

1. Save up for EMERGENCY STASH, and set aside 3-6 months expenses by end of year 2008;
2. Save up for VACATION expense annually, if I put traveling budget $3000 and snowboarding budget $800, I should save approximately $4000 for this item;
- Wow, what does this mean is that I need to save 23K within next year. It almost looks like there’s no way that I can save $1917 per month but here are my action plans:

Action plans:

1.  Refinance my mortgage: A.Get rid of the mortgage insurance; B. Change into interest-only. This should save me $750 per month. However, I need to look into how much closing fee I need to pay and if that still makes sense;
2.  Stock awards: I’m putting around $700 into stock award and given 10% in return that is $770. However, I might be able to put more into it so that I have more return;
3.  Save on car insurance: A. Get rid of the unnecessary policy on my car insurance; B. Check my car insurance change;
4.  Reduce my current monthly expenditures: www.lowermybills.com
5.  Reduce my shopping cost (see next post);
6.  Investment Strategy: I need a better investment strategy, and define my risk/return expectation and tolerance.