First step - Organization

In order to assess my family's financial situation, I needed to get an accounting of every bill I have and how much I owe. I'm using a few tools found online:

• mint.com - Online money manager/budgeting tool. This site, although scary in the amount of information centralized, is pretty good for giving a person a single website for aggregating all accounts.
  
• networthiq.com - A simple tool that allows one to enter the general finances on a monthly basis. It's not perfect by any means, but it is one of the better financial tools for what it does on the internet.
  
• google.com - I have a google account and have a tab with every single company with which I have an account (credit cards, bank accounts, retirement, stocks, etc.), the Google calendar widget (to allow me to keep tabs on when my bills are due, in addition to Mint) and some of the financial websites I read frequently.
  

I've spoken with my wife about our goals, and while I know she wants to be debt free with a good credit rating as much as me, she does not feel the need to actually plan for it like I do. She would rather argue about it, which is one reason I've set up a Roth IRA for both of us, funded with a minimum amount of money ($50 bi-weekly). She has a state funded retirement plan (she's a teacher), and I have a 401(k) at both my full-time job (6% matched, funded by me to 14% - more on that later) and at my part-time job (4.25% matched, funded by me at 20%). I have a part-time job at a home improvement store, and don't really think that I'd miss the extra $15-$20 I put in each pay period.

I've also been thinking about what my family needs to accomplish, and really the reason I'm posting this online. I think putting this out there for people to read may keep me more focused on actually accomplishing my goals. I don't have much in the way of credit card debt (less than $2,000), and will have that cleared in the next two months. My real focus is on budgeting, retirement, saving for my kids colleges (I have two girls, 12 and 8) and improving the credit scores of both my wife and I. I own the car I drive, we just purchased the car my wife drives, we have a third car that I drive only during the summer (a 1973 VW Bug that my mom and dad bought in 1973), we own our home, and would like to get a vacation property. I'd like to put an addition on to our home to give my wife and I more of a master suite - my wife takes up our spare bedroom with all of her clothes and our bathroom is so small that getting ready in the moring requires a bit of planning so we're both not in the bathroom at the same time. My wife isn't sold on the idea, but after seeing a friend of mine put the same type of addition on his house (added a master bedroom above his garage and family room), she is starting to think it might be a good idea.

I'll have my financial goals posted by Saturday of this week (1/5/2008) for 2008.