Goals for May 2008

Since rent is expected to increase, I'm going to take my 401k contributions to 15% pre-tax instead of the 10% pre / 5% after tax contributions I was making before. I'll check my paycheck in two weeks to see how much more money I net. PayCheckCity has an excellent calculator for this.

Mint.com has some recommendations on how to save more money, such as moving to an E*Trade Checking account (which I've already done), and let us know that Starbucks and Peets Coffee are our most frequented merchants. I'll have to talk to the wife about that again.

Cleaning up clutter. I have lots of stuff lying around the house that I could probably put up on Craigslist. I'm too lazy to pack stuff up to sell on E-Bay. I figure I could gain another $200 or so selling all this crap I haven't been utilizing. Better yet, I might be able to donate and take an itemized tax deduction... except I don't expect our itemized deductions to top the standard married filing jointly deduction this year.