Category: Just me being me

Financial Goals: Tips I’ll be Following This Year

Did you know that almost 65% of American’s make New Year’s Resolutions? (source) Yup. And the top five categories for New Year’s Resolutions are: Health (39.2%), Self Improvement (31.64%), Money (29.81%), Love (16.51%), and Career (13.69%).

I’m still working on my 2020 goals, but one of them is absolutely going to be to improve my finances.

I came across a really interesting article in US News & World Report called “Make the 2020s Your Best Financial Decade” and pulled out some of my favorite tips for you (you can find the full article here):

Set Clear Financial Goals

The article suggests that you decide on a key goal or two for the next decade and then break the goal down into steps. For our family, one of my big financial goals is to save more for retirement (which is also one of their suggested goals). When Travis left his last job and started his own business, we rolled over his 401k but then didn’t add to it since we were waiting to see how the business was doing. For our joint retirement account, we have a small amount automatically come out of our checking account on a monthly basis.

Well, for 2020 we decided to bump it up! I already had a meeting with our financial planner and we decided to increase our monthly savings. We started an automatic payment into Travis’ retirement account and we also doubled our automatic payment into our joint retirement account. As for my retirement account, I qualify for a 401k at my new company in June and I will absolutely start adding money there as soon as I am able to. While unfortunately we are not able to top out our annual retirement savings accounts, by adding a little more when we can it will certainly help!

Minimize the Costs of Unimportant Items

The article states that you should try to minimize any expenses that don’t really matter to you and gives the example of buying the store-brand in household supplies. For us, I’ve noticed a huge change when we shop at Aldi rather than our other grocery store. Sure, there are some things that Aldi doesn’t carry, making it necessary to also do a Martin’s run, but for the majority of the items we can save big. I’m making it a goal for us to do the absolute majority of our grocery shopping at Aldi throughout the year.

Learn How to Cook at Home

Everyone knows that eating food you make at home is much less expensive than going out all the time. And we do eat dinner at home the majority of the time on weekdays, only going out on weekends. One thing that really helps me is getting our Home Chef subscription. We had been doing Home Chef about once a month to mix things up. It’s like a compromise between making our own food and going out to eat, because the menus are so diverse and its fun for me to try making new recipes. I’m going to start using Home Chef more in 2020.

Another area for improvement for me is to pack my lunches more often. My big temptation is going out for lunch since I work right in Baltimore and there are so many yummy food options near my office. One of my goals for 2020 is to pack my lunch 4x a week. If a lunch averages $10 – 15, this could take me from spending $50 – 75 per week to just $10 – 15 per week. Based on an average savings of $50 a week, that is an annual savings of $2,600!

Question Every Subscription

The article points out that you might not need a Netflix subscription if you already have Amazon prime. Or you may not need a gym membership if you typically exercise outside. While I won’t be getting rid of our Netflix, Amazon, or gym subscriptions, there are other annual payments that need a closer look.

I recently got rid of my FabFitFun quarterly subscription, and Jack’s Highlights High Five magazine because we realized we could easily cut them. I’m also considering whether I need my Amazon Kindle Unlimited subscription, our Amazon Free Time subscription for Jack’s Kindle, or my magazine subscription to Magnolia magazine. By being more choosy with our subscriptions we currently have, it also helps me to decide if it’s really necessary to add additional subscriptions to our monthly bills.

Are you planning to make any small financial changes this year/decade?

Goals Review: A Look Back at 2019

When it comes to annual resolutions, I just say no. Instead of lofty resolutions, I make goals. As in attainable things that make me feel good about myself.

For 2019, I broke my goals into a set of Health goals and a set of Happiness goals. Now that the year has come to a close, I’m holding myself accountable with a transparent review of how I did on each of them.

Health Goal #1: Go to the gym 9x a month and mix it up with new gym classes.

How did I do: Not great

I certainly did NOT go to the gym 9x a month each month of the year. However, in the spring I did a 6-week bootcamp where I worked out 3x a week and I surprisingly loved it. It was awfully expensive though and quite time consuming too. I started my new job in June and was waiting until I felt acclimated to add going to the gym back into my schedule… and that never actually happened. Oops.

Health Goal #2: Sign up and run 5k and 10k races that look fun. Extra credit for running with friends and family!

How did I do: Great

I ran two 10k’s this year, the Sole of the City 10k in April and the Wayfarers Annapolis 10k in June. Jack (and Travis) ran the kid’s fun run at the Frederick Running Festival in May. We also did a charity 5k walk as a family in October. As for 2020, I’m already signed up for the Sole of the City 10k in April and on the hunt for more kid’s runs.

Health Goal #3 and #4: My Soda Fast and Packing my Lunch

How did I do: There is a lot of room for improvement…

I was getting a little crazy with drinking soda for a bit, so I reduced my consumption to just the occasional soda as a treat. However, I fell off the wagon a bit when I started my new job because they have Coke available everywhere for us. I’m back to just enjoying it every so often again and trying to make myself drink more water instead.

When I made my packing my lunch goal, I was working from home 2 days a week and at an office the other 3 days. I wanted to pack lunch at least one day a week. Well, since June I’ve been working in an office 4-5 days a week and I certainly have room for improvement on this goal. There are SO MANY yummy places to eat within walking distance of my new office, so I’ve only been packing my lunch about one day a week (yes, I know that was my initial goal). This is definitely one that needs to carry over to 2020.

Happiness Goal #1: Travel More

How did I do: CRUSHED IT!

As a family we went to Great Wolf Lodge in February, Harrisonburg for my sister’s wedding in May, Philadelphia in August, and Ocean City a few times over the summer. Travis and I also had our super romantic trip to Kauai in May, which was absolutely amazing. On my own, I’ve done a few weekends at my besties house in Annapolis and a work trip to Atlantic City in September.

Happiness Goal #2: Have more dates with my husband

How did I do: Eh… lots of room for improvement

Well, we did have an entire week of dates in Hawaii in May… so I’m going to count that. Other than that week, we had one weekend overnight for my birthday in September. And I think that was about it. This is going on the list again for 2020.

Happiness Goal #3: Learn something new

How did I do: GREAT

I’ve picked up a ton of library books this year and have enjoyed reading in my new, improved sunroom and also on my daily metro rides. Jack and I also joined my family for a session of making pottery on the wheel and then glazing our finished piece. I did the bootcamp at my gym, which was totally outside of my comfort zone. I also visited the AR Workshop in Annapolis to make some fun painted/stenciled signs, an advent calendar, and even learned how to hand knit a chunky blanket. Which turned into me hand knitting MORE chunky blankets and a tree skirt!

Happiness Goal #4: Spend time with my friends.

How did I do: Pretty good

I wanted to be sure to make more friend dates, happy hours and sleepover party plans this year and did pretty well. I also got a small group together in September to go to a local wine festival for my birthday. I had ‘friend dates’ at the AR workshops and also put more one-on-one dinners on my calendar.

2019: Thrive

In addition to my health and happiness goals for the year, I also picked a *word* of the year. For two years in a row, I went with Balance. But for 2019 my word was Thrive. So many times I felt like I was just going through the motions to get everything done, but for 2019 I wanted to focus on THRIVING!

When I wrote and published my goals post I had no idea that my work life was about to blow up. Just a week or so later my awesome boss was gone and my whole department went through a reorganization. A job that I had planned to be at for a decade or more suddenly turned into something that made me miserable.

And you know what… I thrived.

I decided to use the reorganization as an opportunity and ended up finding a new job that was a much better fit. Once again, I love going to work each day and I enjoy the people I work with. Without that work explosion, I probably would have stayed there forever… but it was just the kick in the pants I needed to take my career in a different direction!

Next up is putting together my 2020 goals. I have some thoughts, but I’m letting them marinate a bit before typing something up.

Loving Right Now: Dollface

{Pssst, my Loving Right Now posts aren’t paid or sponsored or anything. They are just stuff that I’m totally digging now and thought you would like too. You can check out my previous posts here}

So the one show I wanted to watch before I cancelled my Hulu subscription was Dollface. I’d seen a few advertisements on Instagram and I thought it looked kind of funny. It was also only 10 episodes and they were 30 minute each, so I felt like it was the perfect binging size for me.

Here, check it out:

I wasn’t really sure if I liked it after the first episode, but I pushed on. And I really did end up liking the series. Well, there was one Wizard of Oz themed episode that was kind of cringy, but the rest of it was pretty darn funny.

So now I want to know… did you watch it?