Day 355 and allergy attacks

Sorry guys, but my allergies are absolutely making me miserable today so I'm going to skip making a big post about my goals for this year. Hope everyone is having a great weekend.

Day 354 and sharing my goals, part 1

Ok, here we go on sharing my goals for the new year. I'll list the goal and then I'll list some specific ways that I'm going to work towards meeting that goal (mini-goals).

Goal #1: Continue our journey towards financial peace.
Mini-goals:
A. Each month, do a budget and have a budget committee meeting BEFORE the end of the preceding month.
B. Decide at the budget meeting how many times we will eat out in the upcoming month and stick to it!
C. Continue with the blog, it keeps us accountable. Part of doing the blog is to share our positive stuff and our failures/struggles.
D. Brainstorm ways to rebuild the baby EF (again! LOL).
E. In order to avoid eating out (other than pre-scheduled times), plan menus. To go along with this, have some "easy" foods available for those days when nothing goes right and we just need something easy to throw together.


That is all I can think of for this goal right now. If I think of more, I'll come back and add it (and let you know on that day's post). Tomorrow, we'll discuss goal #2.

Day 353 and Happy New Year!

Wow, January 1st! There's just something about a new year, isn't there? It is such a good time to set new goals for yourself or try something new. It's easy to overwhelm yourself with those goals and overdo it too. Serenity asked me on Tuesday if I was making any New Year's Resolutions. I told her that I hadn't really thought about it. She thought I might should since the new year was almost here. LOL. I was sick so I wasn't thinking a whole lot about anything, especially not New Year's resolutions. Of course, I have to be very careful of any New Year's resolutions that I come up with and post on here because then I'll be accountable. LOL! But seriously, I would like to think first about some of the goals that I set for myself in 2008 and how we did.

Our first goal set last year was obviously to become more financially healthy. We have made incredible strides and had some pretty scary setbacks in that one. But we're still plugging along. Obviously, any goals I set for this year will include more of that.

I started the blog to hold ourselves accountable for our financial decisions and to give myself a way to talk about our journey. The one year blogiversary is coming up this month!

I set out to do better with keeping up with all my child care receipts, etc. I have done very well with that. Not perfect, but that's okay. I don't have to be perfect.

I have talked about trying to get healthier. Of all my goals, this one probably was the one that I had the last success with. Nothing I can do about that now except keep trying.

Over the next few days, I'll be talking about some of my goals for the upcoming year and how I hope to meet them.

Happy New Year, everyone!

Days 351 and 352 and SICK AGAIN

Tom and I were both sick yesterday with a stomach bug. I was still feeling really bad and running a pretty high fever last night so I closed down for today (I only had one child scheduled). Tom still wasn't feeling the greatest, but he went to work anyway. I am feeling much better this morning, thank goodness. I just cannot believe that I had two stomach bugs within a little over 2 weeks. Good grief!

Well, today is the last day of 2008. It's been an exciting year for our family. We have made some very positive changes in our life. This morning, I added up what we've spent out of the emergency fund since we started it in mid-January. $3483!!!! WOW! If you'd told me a year ago we'd ever manage to even do an emergency fund, I am not sure I'd have believed it was possible. That total is not counting the fact that we spent almost all of our Christmas money to fix the van and pay off our auto part bill. We are back to square one on the EF and it's time to start again.

Hope you all have a safe and wonderful New Year's Eve and New Year's Day.

Day 350 and back to work today

Well, I was back to work today. I had three kids so it was a fairly easy day and the weather was great so we got to spend time outside which was wonderful. The whole week should be light, then my two new kids should start next Monday.

For some unknown reason, I am absolutely wiped out tonight so I can't think of anything more to say. I'll try to do better tomorrow!

Days 347, 348, and 349 and scared

Something scary happened on Christmas eve that I haven't mentioned yet. I'm almost scared to talk about it because talking about it might make it real. Tom's dad being hospitalized kind of pushed this other issue aside for a while, but the worry is back.

The crappy economy has hit us right between the eyes. On Christmas eve, Tom's job handed out letters notifying everyone that they were being cut down to 4 days/32 hours a week, effective this next week. This is going to severely affect our debt repayment plan and even though I'm trying really hard not to be worried and scared, well, I am. So, just asking for prayers there.

We did get the van back and with our Christmas money and the tiny bit in the EF, we paid off the mechanic and paid off all we owe to the auto parts store. So at least that's one less bill to be worrying about right now. Wasn't really what we had hoped to spend our Christmas money on, but it was a blessing to have the money and be able to pay that all off.