2019 Savings Goals

Since 2018 was the year of decimating my car loan, I've fallen a bit behind on putting money into my Roth IRA.  According to my mint.com account, I am nearly on track to retire at the age of 70.  Sure, that's great, but also, I'm pretty sure I can do better than that.  I do love my job, and thankfully it's not physically demanding in a way where I won't be able to do it at age 70, but I also would like to have options.  Having money means having options.

Despite the fact that I didn't put any money into my Roth IRA in 2018, I was still saving for retirement.  I have a TIAA Cref plan through my work, and my monthly contribution is pretty aggressive, since until literally this month, I've been behind on saving for retirement.  My employer also has a very, very good match (10%), so that helps significantly.

So, the plan for 2019 is as  follows:

1. Contribute as much as I comfortably can to my Roth IRA for tax year 2018, which I can do until April 15.  I'm not getting much of a tax refund, but what I do get will go into my Roth for 2018.
2. Contribute as much as I comfortably can to my Roth for tax year 2019. I don't think I'll be able to max it out, but I'll certainly do my best. It helps that I can contribute for tax year 2019 until April 2020.
3. I will pay off the credit card that has the balance of my car loan on it in July, but I should still have $10,000 in my emergency fund at that time.  $10,000 is my low threshold for my emergency fund, since I need to have at least that much to get the interest rate of 2%.  I'd like to have at least $12,000 in my emergency fund, so I will still be putting some money in there each month, but the Roth is the priority.
4. Look into micro-finance loans.  This is something I'll write an entire post about, but in a nutshell, micro-finance loans are loans that you give to people in developing countries to help them grow their small businesses.  It's not something that will make me money, but it's a very low cost way to give people a hand up.  I'm still investigating this, so I will report back in the future!
5. Get our household emergency fund over the $10,000 threshold.  My husband and I have a shared emergency fund, and I really want to get that over the $10k mark so we can move it to a Money Market and double our interest rate.  We're close, but that goal is a few months away.

That's it for now!  I have a couple other things percolating in my mind, but I think five goals is a very reasonable batch to write down.  

What are your annual financial goals?