I am officially impressed by J. Money. One of his goals each year is to max out his 401(k) and for varying reasons which he describes, this meant that he had 90% of his last paycheck taken out. 90%! That seems like crazy talk. But I'm definitely impressed. Nice work, J.
After much pondering, I recently upped my retirement contributions. I had been contributing 5%, plus the max to my Roth IRA. I upped to a whopping 7%. Clearly, nowhere near the max. The other day, I did some math to see if I wanted to up my contribution all the way to 10%, but decided against it for now. Until I know whether or not my roommate is moving out and if I will be able to find someone to take her spot, I need to have a bit of extra cash on hand to cover rent.
I know that I should increase my contributions. I should be saving for retirement. It's just a tough step to make. So rather than force myself into it now, I've decided that I'm going to make that a goal for next year. That's right, my first 2010 goal. By the end of January 2010, I want to have upped my retirement contribution to 10%. Still nowhere near the max. But it's something. In preparation, I'm going to continue to tighten up my budget so that I'm ready when the time comes. It never hurts to save.