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" It&amp;#039;s been a good week for me. The kids are still away until tomorrow and I can&amp;#039;t tell you how much I&amp;#039;m dying to see them and be covered in the hugs that I&amp;#039;ve gone without this week; but I&amp;#039;ve been productive. Going crazy in the deafening silence of the house made me realize that I had to do something that would be highly satisfying and would pass the time until they arrived back home on Saturday. I chose to make that &amp;quot;something&amp;quot; taking a good look at where I&amp;#039;m going in the next year financially and I think that I feel good about where I&amp;#039;m headed. The lessons and strategies that I&amp;#039;ve learned in the last year have armed me with the tools that will help me reach most, if not all of my goals in the next year. I started out by looking at just the month of September. It&amp;#039;s one of two months in the year where I have the good fortune of having three paychecks instead of two. So instead of just letting it come my way, I carefully planned out where every dime will go. The first two checks will go to all of my monthly expenses: mortgage, car payment, utilities, etc. The last paycheck, I really, REALLY made count and stretched it almost down to the penny. This little &amp;quot;bonus&amp;quot; of found money will fund Christmas for my kids, an extra car payment and money for my savings account with enough left over for an oil change, gasoline and groceries for the week! I can&amp;#039;t tell you how good it is knowing that I have the holidays almost completely funded with cash, which means no anxiety that comes with the inner battle of having to use credit cards. I&amp;#039;m excited! The extra car payment is a blessing too. I&amp;#039;ve been trying to pay at least an extra $50 on my car payment to pay it down early and this is a great little boost. Finding anything for savings is difficult in this economy, especially as food and gas prices rise beyond my imagination (have you seen the price of pork these days?), but I continue to save wherever I can. I decided to keep my financial goals for the next year down to only three, so that I can really zero in on them and focus hard. They are:  Make regular payments on my student loans; no forbearance Have $5,000 in savings Have no credit card debt  It may not sound like a lot to you, but these are still huge and very important goals to me and ones that I&amp;#039;ve been fortunate enough to be given the tools to achieve. Do you have a financial plan for the next year? Please share it with me! "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.womansday.com/life/a42274/a-week-of-planning-13229/>