Well it’s been a while since I set my goal of having $100,000 in principal put away for retirement by Dec 31 of the year I turn 30 in and well I figured I should check up on my progress and make sure I am on track.

Year	Age	Roth IRAs	Traditional 401k	Roth 401k	Total Contributions
2004	24.5	$6,000	$1,146.68	$0	$7146.68
2005	25.5	$8,000	$8,268.10	$0	$16,268.10
2006	26.5	$8,000	$0	$5,230.43	$13,230.43
Totals	26.5	$22,000	$9,432.78	$5,230.43	$37,875.49

Well the first thing I notice when I look at the chart is that my total contributions exceed my total accounts value, meaning I am losing money on my investments as a whole, although I took the Roth 401k contribution number off of my paycheck stub and not out of my actual retirement account and I am sure there are about $750-$1200 that my greedy employer is holding onto for a month or more before they actually deposit the money into my retirement account. The next thing I noticed is that I am right on track to meet my goal for the year of $17,380 – in fact I think I may exceed that mark slightly.

According to my orignal post though I will need to bump up my contribution percentage to 20% starting this January to meet my goal. Seeing as how I recently realized that my cash flow has finally hit a wall after constantly tweaking my retirement savings amount up, I may have trouble staying on track. In fact I’m doing all I can to maintain my current level of saving.

There really is not much I can do at this point other than find ways to bring in more money. I am do for a review in November, but despite doing a pretty good job at work I work for a tightwad company and probably won’t be expecting more than a 1 or 2% raise. I could look for another job as I’ve had a few insights into jobs that I would be very capable of holding that pay roughly $20-$30k more a year than I am currently making, at same time its always a PITA to swtich jobs, but seems about the only way you can keep yourself at market value.

Anwyway I’ve got about 6-months to brainstorm ways to increase my cash flow so that I can follow through with the planned increase in my 401k contribution percentage.