Today I made a transfer of $263 from my checking account to our emergency savings account, “officially” topping it out. We have saved four months worth of living expenses into that account. We decided on four months due to the fact that we are both working, and I feel strongly about my job security.

It took just over one year to accomplish this, starting with savings of just about one month. And for half of the past year my wife was not working (and not spending a dime either), so all in all I am very pleased at our accomplishment. This goal also comes a month after the expenses of moving (paying movers, paying double rent) as well as buying new leather couches (yes, you can spend and save at the same time!).

So … now what? It is a great feeling, to know that I can start saving for all of our other goals, but also a challenging one in that now I have to think of the best way to split money we put towards savings. Before, it was any money left over from our expenditures that got dumped into the emergency savings.

The biggest challenge, as always, is the fact that about twenty percent of my salary comes in the form of quarterly bonuses. So while I can still take a certain amount of money each month and set it aside for savings, that amount pales in comparison to what I can save each quarter from bonuses.

Currently, we have three main savings goals:

• A House:

We would like to be ready to purchase a house as soon as possible. Considering the fact that the median house price north of Boston is $450,000, this will be a few years. We do have a generous gift of part of a down payment from my wife’s parents, but will still need to save a large amount of money ourselves.

• A Baby:

At some point in the next couple years, we would like to have a baby. From what I could find, a baby costs about $10,000 in the first year. We would like to save at least several thousand dollars towards this to help lessen the strain on our monthly expenses.

• Retirement:

I am 25, and I know I could wait another five years before saving for retirement and still come out ok, but I also know that starting at least some type of savings now would help immensely.

At the end of the month, I will be opening another savings account at HSBC. This will be a long-term savings account, at this point focused towards our down payment, that we will never, ever touch. For baby savings, I figure we can add to the emergency savings account (which I should probably rename), and just make sure when we withdraw for baby expenditures to never go below our emergency amount. For the IRA, I will save $2,500 in my checking account. Once I reach that point I will open a Roth IRA at Zecco (I can buy and sell stocks, funds, etc at that point for free, minus a fee of $30/year).

All in all, it’s exciting, if not somewhat overwhelming. We were to want to save 10% for the downpayment of a house over the next two years, we would have to save nearly $2000 a month for that alone!