A New Year's Goals {2012}

I am still working on a recap of last year's goals, but this morning I have finally put together a list of goals for this new year.

Keeping in mind that we will be welcoming a new baby to our family in a few months, I have kept it fairly simple (I think!). I didn't want to keep it TOO simple, though, and not have much to aim for. After our baby is born we will see how it goes.

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Personal (the one I've kept the most simple)
7 - 8 hours of sleep at night regularly (I know that for a while this simply won't happen, but I do want to keep the habit going when I can!).
Be intentional about looking nice for Daniel, even if I'm staying home the entire day.
Intentionally exercise to lose baby weight (maybe another round of The Shred?).
Mail hand-written notes/letters regularly - I'm thinking weekly or monthly.
Visit my paternal grandmother more often.

Family
Swimming lessons for Susannah.
Inexpensive family vacations (might translate into "stay-cations").
Monthly date-nights, in or out.
1 or 2 weekends of getaway, just Daniel and myself.

In the Kitchen
Purchase a meat slicer (hopefully with swagbucks).
Finish sewing and hang curtains.

Financial
Do bookwork weekly (updating checkbook/budget) along with a weekly business meeting.
Make and maintain a needs/wants list of things to save for.
Restart Baby Step #4 (retirement/investing) and maybe Baby Step #5 (kids savings/college fund).
Start saving for Baby #3 (for if/when we have a #3 :) )
Put $1,000 into the Emergency Fund
Start a Cow Fund

Miscellaneous
Clean out/purge bathroom closet.
Work on photo project(s) regularly.
Keep the bedrooms clean.
Paint the kitchen trim.

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Looking over the list it doesn't look that simple, but I do like to have a target to aim for. Having these written down will help me remember things I need and want to work on. Towards the end of this past year when I started writing down my monthly and weekly goals, I was amazed at how much I was able to accomplish just by having a written, visual reminder of things I wanted to do.

If you're still looking for goal ideas, maybe this post will give you some. If you have a list already and are willing to share, I'd love to read it and maybe I'll get some inspiration, too :)

Financial Goals: Checking in for 2010, February

February has been an exciting month for us! To help me want to stay "gazelle intense" with our goal to be completely, 100%, debt-free-including-the-mortgage one day, I have been listening to Dave Ramsey's radio show online most afternoons. It helps me remember why we want to "live like no one else so we can live like no one else." And why sometimes a "beans and rice, rice and beans" diet is necessary.

Here's our progress with our general 2010 Financial Goals:

Goal: Cash only for Groceries and Entertainment/Recreation.
~For the month of February we decided to alot $10 extra to our Grocery Budget to be able to stock up on some things for the month of March when I probably won't be doing very much grocery shopping. I was able to stock up on lunch meat and cheese, buy extra flour to make bread to freeze, and replenish a couple other little things here and there. I don't think I went over-budget once, so the cash system is really working!

~For the Entertainment/Recreation, this is just hilarious. We tried. We tried hard. But it just doesn't work so well when you have a date night all carefully planned, you have just enough cash in the envelope and a coupon for a free appetizer... and then go to the wrong restaurant. And you eat before you pay. And the waitress comes back and says "Um, this coupon is for O'Charley's, not Applebee's" and you end up paying the full amount with your debit card! Lesson learned (and laughed about!!): don't rely on your rememberer to remember where the coupon is for. Read the fine-print!

Goal: Stick to the budget - less impulse buying.
~Success!! No lawn mower blades were purchased this month. That I know of. Daniel did buy me a cute little box of chocolates for Valentine's Day, but I don't think he needs my permission to do that :)

Goal: Put some money into savings each week.
~Again, 2 out of 4 weeks we did this. There were still some big ticket baby items we had to buy (ahem, nursing bras are NOT cheap!) so instead of putting money into savings then taking it back out to pay for those things, we just put it right into the baby fund.

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Now, on to the Extra Goals we had for February!

Goal: Get budget categories Entertainment/Recreation, Miscellaneous, and Gifts out of the red.
~Accomplished!! These were categories that I/we just "let go" during December. (Insert big regret!) At the beginning of the month I put down on paper a mini-debt snowball system, and we were able to "pay off" these categories early!

Goal: Get Daniel a debit card so we can wean out our credit card.
~Accomplished!! Well, it's been ordered and should arrive this week. I am SO looking forwards to not "paying for the past" anymore!! I'm not sure I have Daniel convinced to cancel our credit card (yet!), but he's definitely on board with using the debit card instead.

And, drum-roll, please!!!
Goal: REFINANCE THE MORTGAGE!!
~Woohoo, woohoo, woohoo!!! WE DID IT!! This is something we've been talking about for probably a year now (ever since rates started dropping), and we decided around the end of the year that yes, it was the right thing to do. We closed on the 22nd, with a rate decrease of .51%!! Shh, don't tell Dave, but we refinanced for another 30 year mortgage (the rate is LOCKED IN, baby!). With the refinance, our monthly payment is lower enough from what we're used to that we will be able to cash-flow the addition we are going to build (ourselves) this year. Once the addition is finished, we will throw that extra money towards the mortgage. I played around with an amortization calculator and if we simply pay what we're used to paying monthly, we can knock this debt out of our lives in 12-14 years, less than half the term of the loan! Of course it would be totally awesome if we could do it in less :)

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It is so exciting to see the teeny-tiny speck of light at the end of the tunnel - that is not an on-coming train :P 12-14 years to being debt free sounds so much more do-able than a dragging "30 years."

I'm not sure what our extra goals for March will be yet. They may not be very exciting since a lot of excitement will be revolving around Baby George's arrival :) But, you never know! So stay tuned!!

This post is linked to LifeAsMom's Frugal Friday.

Financial Goals: Checking in for 2010, January

For accountability (for us) and hopefully encouragement to anyone whom this might encourage to keep pressing on towards Financial Freedom, I plan to share each month how we're doing with our financial goals. Our overall goals for 2010 are in our "big" Goals for 2010 list. Over the past couple weeks we have been talking and coming up with some bigger goals that I will be sharing later. For now, here's our January progress:

Goal: Cash only for groceries and entertainment/recreation.
This has been a definite success! I did have a little goof-up my second week of shopping when I forgot to go to the bank before I went to the first grocery store, but I'm gonna let that sneak by. Using cash only was very strange at first, but I can certainly see how it keeps you from overspending!

Goal: Stick to budget - less impulse buying.
Hmm... well, this one is going to take some getting used to. Daniel called me this morning to tell me that he spent $20 on new lawn-mower blades. Then he asked which category that stuff comes out of... of course the one that doesn't have any money in right now :) Like I said, we're still learning :) (My first thought was "in JANUARY???" LOL!!!) This is not the end of the earth, we will still be able to eat, wear clothes and sleep in our warm bed :) As for the grocery budget, using cash has really kept me from going over. My weekly grocery budget is $30, and the average per week this month is $30.54.

Goal: Put some money into savings each week.
We put money into savings just the first 2 weeks of January. As it turns out, we were not as close to meeting the insurance deductible for Baby George as I thought, so last week instead of putting the weekly amount into savings, it went into the medical fund to go towards the deductible. This week the paycheck simply was not big enough to get that far in the budget - Daniel took a sick day last Monday, and the rest of the week was extremely slow, so it was a very little paycheck.

And that's our progress and success for January!!

**Weeks like this week, when the paycheck feels so very teeny-tiny, are just reminders of several things:

~To be so very thankful that Daniel has a job. Many, many people that we know personally do not have jobs right now and are searching high and low for one. Daniel's job may not always be booming with 40 hours plus overtime, but we have been and continue to be blessed in that he has a job.

~The importance of an emergency fund/savings account and putting money in it! This one week of "slim pickin's" won't throw us off to the point of having to use from our emergency fund, but there have been times in the past when his work was very slow for multiple weeks and we did have to dip into our emergency fund to pay the bills.**

How are you doing with your financial goals? Still trying to get your head above the water? Perhaps you're DEBT FREE and saving for something specific? I'd love to hear how it's going for you :)

This post is linked to Life As MOM's Frugal Friday.