I'm always looking ahead as well!

My 2009 goals remain the same as my 2008 goals. Contribute 20% to TSP, build savings to 6 months' of income (I think I currently have about 4 months' income), pay off credit cards, and pay down my car and graduate school loans. I need to do better on paying off the credit cards, otherwise I'm doing pretty well on accomplishing my goals for 2008 and beyond.

I decided to write down my goals for 2008.

EMERGENCY FUND:

Contribute $245 to my three accounts. My goal is $15,000 in 3 years, my current balance is just over$5,000.

DEBT:

I have about $2,000 on a credit card. I will contribute $500 plus the amount of my monthly purchases every payment.

My original Sallie Mae loan is now at $300. With automatic payments my loan will be paid off in about 4 months. My grad school loans will begin repayment 6 months after my December 2008 graduation.

My car payment will be $326. After finishing with the credit card balance I will contribute the extra to the car payment.

RETIREMENT:

Continue contributing $400 biweekly to my 457. That is an annual contribution of $10,400.

Continue to fund my Roth IRA to the maximum. That will be $5,000 in 2008.

HOUSE:

My payments are $313 biweekly. I occasionally get a few pennies interest from a savings account and will transfer to principal. Otherwise, my payments will continue as is for this category. I'm more focused on the other debt.

CAREER AND SCHOOL:

In somewhat related plans, I want to focus on school and looking for a new job. I'm off this week since I worked the holiday (12 hour shifts for 4 days) and I'm writing papers and taking civil service tests.

The lady asked why I wanted to take the test again since I scored so well. I told her that I wanted an 80 on the test. I scored a 74. She said that few people score so well and I must be a perfectionist. I'm not. What I am is really motivated to move on to a better position.

I took another test since it hadn't been 28 days since I took the one that I wanted to retest on. Next time I'll take a different one again. I'll keep taking them until I'm where I want to be.

What are your goals???

I figure today's market is a great value. It's a bargain to buy today. My funds automatically purchase on the 15th of every month. Sometimes I buy high, sometimes low, but I definitely prefer the buying low. I'm not worried. I first started investing in 1999 so I got in while things were high and just before things started going down. So that was my first exposure to investing and this seems like the norm to me. I enjoyed the great market of the past few years but they also made me a little nervous. It almost seemed too good to be true. I've been waiting for a correction and now that it's happening I'm just glad that it was the even more dramatic downturn that I envisioned.