My financial goals for the next few years

I was thinking a bit about what I'd like to accomplish in terms for money over the next few years. I'm impatient and would love to accomplish them all in the next few months, but like when you're paying off debt, it might be best to put them in order so I can stay focused and motivated. I feel like I've lost a bit of my money motivation lately. Luckily my husband got a pretty nice raise last year, so the month to month expenses are pretty much now covered by his income alone. But we still could be doing a lot better so I need to use my money wisely.

Here are some of my current financial goals to accomplish in the next few years.

1. Pay for new windows and siding with cash ($20,000 to $30,000?). This really isn't my goal, but my husband wants to do it. I'll do it, but I don't want to take out a loan to do so.  I'll have to get some quotes this spring because $20-$30K is a large range and it would be nice to know how much this will actually cost!
2. Pay for a replacement vehicle for our aging 2001 Ford Ranger ($20,000 - $25,000) Ideally I don't want to buy brand new, but one that is about 2 years old probably is still over $20K)
3. Increase our emergency fund from $4,000 to $12,000 (about a month's worth of expenses to about 3 to 4 months of expenses).
4. Pay down the mortgage as fast as possible. I'm currently paying an extra $150 a month, but I want to save for that truck first so why pay down the low-interest/tax deductible mortgage if doing so means I'll have to get a car loan? Once goals 1 and 2 are done, I'd like to pay at least an extra $500 to $600 a month. 
5. Fully fund my IRA every year. That is unless I ever get a job with a 401(k). I recently applied and interviewed for one, but it doesn't look like I got in this time, but I hear there may be another round of hirings in 2014. 
6. Vacations - I hate winter and need to escape!

So right now I have about $30,000 in cash not including the $4,000 EF or cash that is being saved for bills. So I pretty much have enough to pay off number 1, and if it's not too expensive, I have a good start on goal number 2. It's tough when the goals are so big and sometimes it takes a year just to accomplish just one. 

Extra Cash Challenge - September results

Here are my results for September's extra cash challenge:

Advertising: $93.45
ING/Capital One 360: $17.08
Lending Club: $0.83
Part-time job: $72.15

Total: $183.51

Difference from last month: -$23.99

I'm not sure why the Lending Club was consistently getting about $1.03 or so and now it dropped to $.83. It says all my notes are current, so I don't think one the loans went bad. Oh well, it's not that much money to worry about now.

What are my financial goals now?

I used to write a lot more in this blog back when I was paying down our second mortgage and aggressively contributing to my IRA.

I thought I should write a bit about what my current financial goals are. I'd love to be aggressively paying down our mortgage and saving for retirement. But my first and most important financial goal is to stay out of debt. We have two "big ticket" items to pay for in the next couple years. Our house, which was built in 1987, still has what we believe to be the original windows and siding. We did replace the windows in the basement about a year ago, but the upstairs windows and siding still needs to be replaced. I have not got any bids on this yet, but I'm budgeting about $25,000 to $30,000 and crossing my fingers that it's less!

We also have a 2001 Ford Ranger. It still works, but since it is now about 13 years old, we know it'll come time to replace it soon. I am hoping to get a used vehicle when we do replace it (maybe about 2 years old). When the time comes to replace the truck, my husband wants to get another truck. I'm estimating it'll cost about $20,000 to $25,000 to get a new used truck.

So right now I need to save about $45,000 to $55,000 in cash to pay for this stuff.

As you can see in my last net worth update, I had nearly $34,000 in cash already saved. Some of that is my very tiny emergency fund of $6,000. (Because I am saving a ton of cash now, that money ear marked for these other goals can be reallocated to an emergency if I needed to.) So that leaves about $28,000 already saved towards the first goal (which looks like it'll be the windows and siding as of now). So I just need another $2,000 and I should have that one saved for. I'm slowing myself down a bit though because I just invested $1,000 in my Roth IRA. We won't be able to get the windows and siding anytime soon anyway because it's almost winter.

Throughout this year, I have contributed $2,500 towards my regular IRA (I'm more motivated to put money into that one since I don't have to pay taxes now). So between the two, I will have invested $3,500 for 2013. I can still invest another $2,000, but I haven't decided if I want to do so yet because I want to get these two big purchases saved for ASAP.