It’s very easy to get complacent in life as well as with your finances.  I’m definitely guilty of this.  Therefore, i’ve decided to give myself a challenge.  I hope you’ll join in and create your own challenge.

I currently save ~20% of my gross income for retirement.  My challenge will be to increase that amount to 25% for this year.  I think it may prove difficult (I’ll be honest, I like my standard of living and don’t want to cut back) but I’m going to try it anyway.

For the purpose of this challenge, gross income will be my gross salary and any bank account interest received as well as any miscellaneous or side income.  I will not be including interest or dividends paid to retirement accounts as I have no access to those.  Retirement savings will be defined as my 401(k), IRAs and taxable brokerage account NOT any general savings accounts.

I usually do a month-end financial statement so sometime this week I will add a status bar as of April 30th and then update monthly after that.  What are YOU going to challenge yourself to do?