Everything's Coming Up Green

Archive for the ‘Goal setting’ Category

I am supposed to be keeping you updated on our grocery expenses. I have not done so well as of late. So here is the update for January. We have one week left in February so I will wait on that.

In January I spent 182.24 and saved $10.65 which leaves us $67.76 under budget. Ya, there was only one week in there that I used coupons. I was quite tired especially coming off the holidays. We are tracking well for February and will come in well under budget this month as well. I look forward to sharing it with you. I am considering reducing our budget to $200 a month. I’d like to spend even less. Hopefully by the end of next month we will be moved out to my parents’ house in the country. I will start out combining both our budgets for the month and after a couple of months will review if we can reduce the combined budget. Part of my contribution to the house will be doing most of the grocery shopping. My mom is a teacher in the city 35 minutes away and her school is a test school with longer hours. She often doesn’t have the time to shop and never has the time to shop sales with coupons. I am very excited to bless them in this way! I will also be making the majority of the meals so that will save money as well. How are you doing with your budget thus far? Are you right on track or have you blown it? It’s only February so it’s not too late! Keep trying, you will get there!

   So I shared with you last month our 2010 financial goals and today I would like to share my personal and Blog goals. I am really excited about this year’s goals for myself and this blog! I know it’s a little late. I actually had these written the middle of last month and forgot to post it. I think I was trying to find a picture to go with and I have decided to forget the picture and just post.

 Here are my Personal Goals:

Get back to my pre-Emma weight plus 9lbs.

 I can’t say for sure how much this will be until a couple weeks after baby girl is born. I will update this once the baby is born. I gained 50lbs with Emma and was able to lose all but the last 15lbs before I got pregnant again. I did lose an additional 3lbs before I started gaining weight with this baby which helped to keep the weight gain down this time. Obviously I am not done with this pregnancy so I don’t have a total weight gain but I will say that 2 weeks from term the gain is significantly less. On a shorter term I would like to be at my pre-pregnancy weight before the beginning of June (Which is whenwe go on vacation for a week with Joel’s family-think swimsuit, yikes). We’ll see how farfetched this goal is.

Read a book a month.

At this point I don’t care if it is fiction or non-fiction; I just want to get back into the rhythm of reading. Beings that it is now February and I didn’t get a book read in January, I am now already behind and need to get myself caught up. I am planning on making a list of books I would like to read very soon. When I do I will share it with you!

 Help with my parents/grandparents’ garden.

 With moving out to the “farm” to live with my parents/ grandparents I’ll be able to help keep up the garden this year. Though I love gardening I haven’t had one of my own yet. The first house we lived in was a rental and our current house has no back yard and a stamp of a front yard. My parents don’t garden but my grandparents do, however they are both getting older and can’t keep up with the yard and the garden like they used to (they are green thumbs and like to stay active so they generally take care of the outside). I look forward to helping them and giving them relief while allowing them to work on it as they are able. Obviously this will take effect when we actually move out to the farm and spring arrives for planting.

Go on at least 2 dates a month.

Date night for us doesn’t have to be overly amazing. We just like spending time together. We went several months without going on a date and it was rough. We could feel the strain of not having alone couple time. I also plan to start stay at home mini date nights as well. What can I say, I like spending time with my man and I’ll come up with any excuse to do it.

 Now on to my Blogging Goals:

 Post weekly grocery spending and savings.

Joel and I have put together a very nice Excel spread sheet to track my Grocery spending and savings. This way I can keep track and not only make sure that I stay under budget, but I can also know exactly how much I have left over at the end of the month and either roll it into next month’s budget, put it into savings or put it towards debt. Our budget is $250 a month or $65.50 a week. I will have a breakdown of the last month and what I have spent thus far this month coming really soon, like hopefully by the end of the week.

Post monthly financial goal updates.

 I really want to keep accountable with our financial goals and what better way to do that than to put them out there for all of you to read. Then they will also stay fresh in my mind and I will hopefully be diligent to be working on them throughout each month. I would love it if you all jumped on board with me and we can all keep each other accountable. Post 3-4 days a week. I say 3-4 days a week but in my mind I am really shooting for 5-6 days a week. I set the goal slightly lower because I am notorious for biting off more than I can chew and with a baby nearly here, well, I’m just trying to be realistic.

Increase traffic on this site.

 I am starting already to link with other blogs to get our name out there. I will also be looking into networking online over the next couple of months.

    There you have it folks. Hopefully you all will keep me accountable. I plan on updating you each month on how I’m doing on meeting and completing my goals.