Day 369 and update on goals for new years

Goal #1: Continue our journey towards financial peace.

The baby EF is up to $165 as of yesterday. I need to get a budget ready for February (My goal is to do that by this coming Friday so we have time to have our meeting before January's over). We have eaten out a couple of unplanned times, but for the most part, we've been eating at home. I'm not going to be too hard on ourselves about it, we just have to be careful.

Goal #2: Get more organized in my home and business.

Well, I'm still working on this. It's a process of building new habits, which is hard. Flylady has started sending out a to-do list for the next day. I've been printing it off and trying my best to do it. I do better in the morning routine than I do with the evening routing. So my goal for this next week is to continue to do well on the morning routine and work on establishing a good evening routine.

Goal #3: Have a more positive attitude.

As you may have guessed from my post yesterday, I'm having a hard time with this. LOL. Seriously, I'm trying, but not always doing that great. I did finally make a joy journal. I had an empty folder with paper in it, I think I made it at VBS one year to be a prayer journal and never used it. So I am going to use it as my joy journal. So on my daily to-do lists, I'll add: record something in the joy journal. That way when I"m feeling down or grumpy, I can read the Joy Journal and give myself a lift.

I'm going to try to make Saturdays my "update" day for the goals for this year so I can keep everyone apprised of how it's going.

Thanks for reading!

Day 368 and the grumps

Do you ever just get the grumps? Where you are moody and snippy and mean for no apparent reason? Where you're saying things that you know you're going to regret but you blurt them out anyway? That's how I've felt today. I've snapped poor Tom's head right off his neck several times. Good thing I married someone with the patience of a saint. Sigh. I have no reason for feeling this way today. I just do.

Anyway, on a more positive note. Tasha got her driver's permit today! Go Tasha!

Hope everyone has a nice weekend. I plan to update how I'm doing on my New Year's goals this weekend. Then next week I start my new classes.

Day 367 and why I started this blog

I thought I would talk tonight about why I started this blog in the first place. A year ago, when we started the Financial Peace class for the second time, I had all these thoughts cluttering my head. Thoughts about getting out of debt, getting caught up on all or our bills, wondering if we could do it. Wondering how to do it. So I decided to start a blog. For one thing, it gave me a way to express what I was feeling and thinking and for another, it gave me some accountability partners out in the world. It's been good for me to write it and it's been very uplifting to have people share with me that I have inspired them.

We had already been through the Financial Peace class with not much success. A few months before we started the class, we had re-committed ourselves to the principles and we were already doing better, but still struggling. A year after our second FPU class started, we are doing even better, but still struggling. So I continue to write and share and hope and pray.

I hope this made at least a little bit of sense. I took a muscle relaxer for my back earlier and I think I might sound a little loopy. LOL.

Day 366 and one year ago

So today is my one year "blogiversary". Hmmm..you suppose blogiversary is in the dictionary yet? LOL. I heard recently that bootylicious is. Anyway, I digress.

One year ago, I started this blog as a way to keep us accountable on our journey to being debt free. It has worked pretty well. As of today, we have paid off over $11,000 in debt. God is really blessing us. It's been really good for me to write about this stuff and share our struggles and our victories.

The last couple of weeks, I have been sharing my goals for the new year. My final goal is to get healthier. I want to lose weight, of course, but really, I just want to feel better. So I am going to establish a plan to help with that. I am considering starting a separate blog for my weight loss journey since the blogging has been so helpful for the financial situation. I'll keep you posted on what I decide on that. In the next few days, I am going to be establishing a plan to work on getting healthier and sharing it with you. I'll also update you on how the other goals for the new year are going.

Day 365 and late night

I had a club meeting tonight that lasted until 10:00 and so I'm late getting this done. We had a baby shower for a couple of the members and we were all having such a good time visiting that we looked up and it was almost 10:00!

Tasha tried for her permit today and didn't make it so Tom's going to take her back on Friday when he's off to try again. There is a newer law that says they have to have their permit for 6 months before they can even try for their license so Tasha really wanted to get her permit today so she could try for her license on her 16th birthday.

Tomorrow I am going to finish up sharing my goals for this year.

Day 364 and another new child started today

Well, the interview I had last week for the drop-in morning boy paid off. He started today. He'll be coming three days this week. The mom paid me and I put that money straight into the EF. With what I put in last week from my drop-in little girl and when Tom got paid, it brings the EF up to $145. So, that's a start.

I don't think that I mentioned that the color on our printer died (again) last week. You may remember me mentioning that it was acting up several months ago, but it started working again. Well, it quit again last week. Staples happened to have a really nice one on sale for less than $50 and I had a $3 coupon from turning in an ink cartridge (hey, $3 is $3. LOL). So I ordered it and it came today. It has a fax machine too, which I'm really excited about, assuming I can get it to work better than the last printer/fax that we had several years ago. LOL. I'm just glad that a really nice one was on sale for a good price and we had the money to get it. That was a real blessing.

Tomorrow, I take Tasha to try for her driver's permit. I don't know if I'm ready for that.

Day 363 and a nice surprise today

Tom's dad called this afternoon and they had got a new TV and they offered us their old one, which is larger and nicer than the one we have in our living room. So naturally, we said yes. We went and picked it up and brought it back. While I was gone to church tonight, Tom got everything hooked up and working. Then when I got home, I programmed the Dish remote to work on the TV (mostly, we never could get the captions to work from the Dish remote?). Anyway, we are really excited about our new TV!