New Goal - To buy a dishwasher

To be honest, selling calls against CZZ the last several months has been boring.  However once I ended up selling my stock this month, and tallied up my earnings, I was shocked at how much I was able to make since I started on this adventure.  I haven't been keeping good track of my investments, because every month was pretty much the same. Expiration Friday would arrive each month, and I would turn around and see how I could sell seven more Calls of CZZ for the most money.  Then I would wait for Expiration Friday again.  Like I said before, it was “BORING”.  But in looking back on things, earning approximately $100 once a month really does add up.

This leads me to my next topic…. I need a goal to keep me motivated; something to push me.

With my past experiences in mind, I have decided to set a relatively short term goal of acquiring a tool that would improve the quality of life for my family.  My objective?  To obtain a dishwasher.  We currently wash our dishes by hand, and have done so for over the last 10+ years. This would be a luxury item for us.

So, now to the goal.  A good goal has a specific time line, with a specific objective in mind.  It has to be measurable. And it has to be realistic. 

I believe we can get a decent unit for under $400.  To make sure that I continue to grow my cash I would like to earn $800, before I make the purchase.  Based on my past experience with trading options I feel confident that I can achieve this in seven months.  


Now that my goal is set, I need to find an Option that will provide me with the return I am looking for.  I'll keep you posted.

Table 1: Goal

Goal	End Date	Amount Needed	Amount Earned to date
Buy Dishwasher	09/30/2012	$800	$0.00

Getting out of Debt

How it started......

My husband and I moved in together after we wed, and combined our income and expenses. When I was living by myself, prior to the wedding, I had no problems paying my bills. However, after the wedding party, I was finding that we were coming up short each month. I became upset because I was having to take from our small savings account to pay bills. This was something that I had never had to do prior to being married. I was frustrated and mad, and for the life of me could not figure out what was going on.

On August 5, 2002 I decided to put together a notebook of goals.

Here is what I wrote.

1. Have college loan paid off in two months. Current Balance: $500
2. Have car loan paid off in six months. Current Balance: $1,547
3. Have credit card loan paid off in eleven months. Current Balance: $2,101

Here are the calculations I used to determine the time for each goal.

Goal (1): $500 / (minimum payment + extra cash) Note: I added more money to pay off faster.
Goal (2): ($1,547 - (minimum payment x 2 months))/(minimum payment + goal (1) payment)
Goal (3):($2,101 - (minimum payment x 8 months))/(minimum payment + goal (2) payment)

I chose to pay off the school loan first. My focus was on paying off the loan with the smallest balance first, not worrying about which one had the highest interest rate. At the same time, I paid the minimum on all of the other loans. Once goal (1) was completed I rolled the payment from goal (1) to work towards goal (2). The process was repeated for goal (3).

I also created a list containing information on each loan, including the current balance and the minimum payments on a dry-erase board. This was stuck on our refrigerator so that it would always be visible to me and keep me motivated. As I paid off the loans, I would mark them as completed. If guests asked me about it, I was proud to tell them what I was doing.

Goal (1) was paid off 8/27/02. Goal (2) was completed 11/7/02. Goal (3) was completed 02/24/03. What I discovered was that I paid off my loans a lot faster than what I predicted.

This was just a start because I still had one more large school loan hanging over my head.

June 25, 2003

1. Pay off school loan in 22 months. Current Balance: $8,591.13
2. Save $10,000, for six months living expense, in 14 months.
   

Repeating the process I started on August 5, 2002, I went after paying off my second school loan. This loan was paid off on 07/14/2004. The second goal was completed 08/27/2004.

If I knew then what I know now, I would have started building our emergency savings while I was paying off my debt. If one unexpected expense arose during that time, we would have had to use our credit cards.

Through this experience, I realized my husband and I had not communicated who was going to buy the household groceries. We were both buying them without the others knowledge, and that was why we did not have enough money at the end of each month for the bills.