Prioritizing my goals and the money to fund them

I find that I work best when I have a handful of major goals that I am working on at one time. It keeps things less mundane by not working on the same thing day in and day out. Even still I have to pick which ones are the most important to me. At the moment those are increasing my income and fully funding my emergency fund.

I have reached a milestone in my emergency fund: I can now cover 3 months of basic expenses with no income at all! I am very happy as this definitely helps me sleep better at night. I am now debating on whether I should continue to fund this until I reach 6 months (my original goal) or if I should be saving more for retirement and travel instead. As of today I still don't have the answer.

In the meantime I am putting the money that I have not decided which way it will go into a savings account. This way I am not tempted to just spend it and know that I have to decide what to do with it. I did increase the amount of my emergency fund monthly transfer form $50 to $100 but still have some leftover cashflow to allocate. I suspect my answer will be somewhere in the middle.

My other top priority, increasing income, I went over yesterday. I am reserving a bit of my monthly cash flow to go towards that (such as I did when I paid tuition for the class) and in the future will need to pay for the Microsoft exam, Notary application fees, and anything else I deem necessary to get ahead. The more I can earn the more I save each month!

By prioritizing my goals I pretty much know where my money is going each month after expenses are paid. In the case of increasing income I am unsure what the exact costs will be so I have a general savings account with money earmarked for it. If I have some leftover then I can divide it among other goals in order of priority. In my case retirement/travel are the next in line. Even if you are unsure what the saved money will be used for having it in a savings account is much better than simply spending it!