Well, we officially quit saving yesterday.

After a brief chat with Girl Ninja yesterday, we’ve made the wise decision to stop saving money for the foreseeable future. No, we haven’t hit our $100,000 savings goal yet, and if I all goes according to plan, we never will.

I first blogged about our ambitious $100,000 savings goal in June 2010. Exactly three years ago. And here we are, probably four weeks away from reaching said goal, ultimately deciding it’s time to throw in the towel and give up.

Don’t worry, I haven’t gone off the deep end yet. It’s just time I start practicing what I preach.

While it’s true we have not hit $100,000 in savings, we are pretty freaking close. About $3,500 short as of this writing. This week’s blog post about 401(k) loans got me thinking. I like the idea of using a 401(k) loan, but ultimately have decided against it for one reason.

I wont need (or want) a boat load of cash sitting in the bank once we’ve made our down payment.

As I’ve mentioned before, we will likely use between $70k and $80k for a down payment and closing costs. This will leave us with a $10,000 emergency fund and between $10,000 to $17,000 for “other things” (furniture, vacations, etc).

I have no desire to keep more cash in the bank than necessary. In other words, we’ve reached our MAXIMUM savings threshold. I feel like any additional savings would no longer be classified as “being responsible” but instead as “hoarding”.

We knocked debt freedom off the list years ago. Yesterday, we put a check mark next to savings. Now it’s time to make some new priorities. So…

• I upped my 401(k) contributions last night from 13% to 20%, and after I see exactly how that affects my paycheck (thinking about $430/month less in take home pay), I might increase it even more.
• We’ll probably begin living slightly more frivolously (emphasis on slightly). Maybe we go out to a nice restaurant once a month. Take a weekend trip somewhere once a quarter. Or finally update one of our six-year-old laptops. We won’t be keeping up with the Joneses by any means, but it will be fun to splurge every now and again.
• Lastly, and what I’m most excited about, we will take the majority of our discretionary income and FINALLY start throwing it in to taxable investment accounts. If all goes well, we can make some serious progress in our goal to build up some short to mid-term investments. It’s important we get a jump-start on this now, before we have kids, a larger house payment, and only one income. 

While it would be cool to actually reach our $100,000 savings goal, I think it’s way cooler to move on to the next phase of Operation Build Wealth.