Category Archives: Goals

5 Things Friday

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  1. The weather has absolute beautiful with highs in the 70s and lows in the 40s.  I have decided to turn off the heating and air unit in order to save money. In the past I can typically turn this off the first of April but even if I need to turn it back on then we are still saving money!
  2. Zach has been having baseball games or practice 5 days a week which means that our evening are even more pushed and busy.  I am learning that for away games we need to have a food option with us and home games we can typically eat at home if something is ready.  Unfortunately, this was an expensive lesson as we ended up spending $65 on a game day for food and entry.
  3. I am hoping that we are able to complete some outside upgrades and maintenace this weekend as we have 5 weeks till our typical last frost date.  I am planning on continuing with my weekly garden updates on Sunday.
  4. Zach’s truck sold this week.  I have decided that we will not be on the lookout for another vehicle until the end of May.
  5. The pantry challenge is starting to work. I heard from kids yesterday that “there is nothing to eat at home”   In reality we have plenty of food but things have to be prepared and made ahead. I have plans to also do some of this prep work this weekend.

Year In Review 2024/ 2025 Plans

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As I sat this morning and tried to get my head around the numbers for the year, I was also shocked to find that I have been blogging for 13 years. I was able to go back and review all 13 years!  The realization that this blog is for me more than anyone else also strengthens my resolve to continue to make this a point of accountability for myself if nothing else.  I do also know that my children enjoying stalking it to see pictures from years past so I will continue for that reason as well.  On a personal level this has been a very long and difficult year.  I have spent quite a bit of time at Baptist hospital for my mother with both appointments and 3 hospital stays. I was given a written reprimand at work in addition to the normal fun of teenagers. Matt and I have both increased our income. We currently have 2 car payments We are eating out at least once weekly as a family and this will likely not change whatsoever in the near future.

Now let’s look at some of the numbers

Emergency Fund- We are currently looking at our baby emergency fund sitting at $500.  It has occurred in the month of December.  I want to set a goal for 2025 to have this amount doubled to $1000.  My action step will be to transfer my monthly gas allowance into the account to help boast it consistently.

Groceries- The goal was $975 a month.  We have spent a total of 9766.65 or $813 a month on average!  This is huge!  I am so proud of us for reducing this number and staying within budget 9 of 12 month.  I will set the goal for 2025 at $820.  I do plan to participate in the Pantry Challenge to help reduce and maintain our spending level for January, February and possibly March.

Gas- Our current goal is $500 a month. We spent a total of 5000 a month for gas with an average of $410 a month.  We have had 4 trips to Florida this year so I am not at all surprised.  I am going to leave the goal of $500 a month and continue to monitor it.

Blogging- For many of the past years, my goal has been 15 per month. I did not hit this goal one single time this year. I have 111 blog post or an average of 9 post per month. For 2025- the goal will be 10 post per month.

Debit- We have made huge financial changes and did a bit of remodeling this year.  We did take out a HELOC on the house to help cover some expenses as some of the items needed to be done sooner rather than later. I also consolidated debt to the HELOC due to the lower interest rate.  Our current debt is   $265411 which includes both vehicles and Mortage payments. It has been several years since I set a  debt reduction goal, so for 2025 I want to reduce the amount to 200 hundred thousand.  This is a lofty goal but it can only make things easier.

Five Things

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  1. This has been a better week for me. I have been able to enjoy work and am actually staying somewhat caught up.  I hope to continue this routine as the first of this school year has been rough and I am glad to not dread coming to work.
  2. We are headed to Florida for Thanksgiving. We have travel alot more years than we have stayed at home on Thanksgiving. My only disappointment is the temperature in Florida are suppose to be in the 70s , I was hoping for 80s.
  3. Thanksgiving is late this year, the last week of November so I have decided to go ahead and decorate!   I hope by the end of the weekend to have all the decorations that I am going to use both inside and outside in place.
  4. Zach has already started practice for Baseball in the Spring,  He is continuing to swim.  This means that staying at home all evenings was short lived but much enjoyed. I am glad that he finishes baseball around 4:45 instead of 5:45.
  5. I think we have settled our plans for Christmas/ New Years so now I definitely need to get my plans together for the beach next year!

Upcoming Adventures!

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I am catching me breath and looking forward to some upcoming adventures.

This week Matt is on a business trip to Austria.  Because of the time difference, he is six hours in the future, communication will be very limited.  It should be interesting to say the least.

I have 3 trips planned to Florida before the end of the year!  Lots of Disney fun!

Zach has three more football games and then will start swimming.

Kendall is working every Saturday and will start swimming October 30th. She has finished her first set of college classes with high A’s and is starting to think about life in the future. She also will be visiting Florida 3 times in three months!

Lily’s current plan is to return home in January and finish her degree and decide her next big adventure.

We were able to finish up several home improvement projects this weekend, but I thought I would share what is next.

First hopefully in the near future, the back deck gazebo will be complete, and we can decide on furniture and start enjoying it more.

Matt is planning to add several additional electrical outlets to add to our home renovations from the summer. After the additional outlets, hopefully permanent lighting on the outside will be the last project of the year.

We are done gardening for the year, I know that we need to fertilize beds, add a couple of arches and a major repair on one bed but that can all wait til the Spring.  I am going to do some serious planning this winter and plan to add some landscaping as well.

Matt will likely have at least one additional surgery for skin cancer and Mom has an ablation scheduled as well.

What adventures do you have planned?

 

5 Things Friday!

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Bonus this is my 4th BLOG post this week!  Maybe I can continue!

1. The list of home renovations/updates is shrinking but it feels like we will never finish!   Left to finish
1. paint master bathroom
2.. build shelves in the master bathroom, move items to shelves and relocate metal shelves from the bedroom.
3..Electrical wiring for both front and back
4. After the deck is rebuilt, purchase a new grill.
5. built a covered area to run the generator from.

2. I really enjoyed getting the extra help with the cleaning last week. I am planning to hire another cleaner once the master bathroom is complete. My goal is that this will put me back on a level field and I will be able to maintain the house. This is likely going to become a treat for me maybe every 3 or 6 months depending on my own schedule.

3.  The weather is absolutely gorgeous!  I will likely be opening the window probably during the next week or so.

4. We are heavily into football season.  Zach is currently playing JV, his games are on Thursday night.  Matt, Kendall and Zach are all enjoying attending home varsity games as well.

5. Next week is full of new adventures, the plan is for Kendall to take her driving test and get her provisional license. Zach to get his driving permit!  We also will be traveling to Alabama to attend our niece’s wedding.

 

Summer Goal!

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I finally feel like an adult!  Yes I am 52 years old with 5 kids and grandkids but I finally did something that is very adult. We purchased a new car without a hassle or worry about whether we can afford it?

Let me give you the back story.   Lily was accepted into the Disney College Program. She will be at Disney working and taking college classes from Aug to January 2nd.  She purchased her 2007 PT Cruiser about 5 years ago. It is a cute little car and perfect for driving around in Lexington and the surrounding area.   I would not feel comfortable with her driving even 30 minutes to and from work each day. Kendall is turning 16 this summer and will need a car to drive in Lexington and the surrounding area.  So after some prayer and discussion, between Matt and I we decided that it would work best if I purchased a new car.  Kendall purchased Lily’s car for fair market value, this money became a down payment for my Equinox .  LIly will be paying $50 a month for the Equinox until she gets a real job and can make a real car payment.

I have known about the need to purchase a new car for several months and even put it on my list of goals for the summer.

But life happens and the timeline to purchase a car has become very urgent.    On Monday, I found and purchased a 2022 Nissan Rogue.  This was a fairly easy process.

Second goal for the summer has been met.

Saving on Saturday- Pantry Challenge

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Each year #threeriverschallenge (a youtube channel I LOVE) host a pantry challenge for the months of January and February.  I usually attempt to participate in January only.  This year I have decided that we will attempt to participate in both January and February.   To be completely honest, we did not start the challenge until January 3rd because of our travels.  I did run to the store on Wednesday 1/3 to grab milk and cream cheese, spending a total of $10.  My goal for the challenge is spend less than $150 over the next two month not including my subscribe and save from Amazon.  I did start to prepare the kids on the way home but to be honest we are so fully stocked right now it will take a good couple of weeks if not a month for anyone to notice that I am not buying new items.

I have gone thru my subscribe and save on Amazon, reducing my scheduled delivery from 25 items to 5 items for a total of $72.97.   I will do this again in February as well.  I am hopeful that we have enough lunch grab and go items to make it but I may need to keep some of those in the subscribe and save.   My plan is to set aside $500 each month for the purchase of a side of beef.  The remaining monies will be used for medical debit from last year.

This past week, I focused on simple easy meals. Wednesday night, I made pepper steak in the crock pot and also made some rice.  Thursday night we had tomato soup and grilled cheese.  We used sour dough bread from the freezer for our sandwiches. Friday was spaghetti and meatballs.

As I was thinking on Friday, I remembered that we have 4 more whole chickens in the chest freezer outside.  I sent Lily down to find one and start it defrosting in a sink of cold water.  I came home and used the instant pot to cook the entire chicken. Last night I separated the meat and bones.  The bones and skin were thrown in a crockpot with water to make a delicious batch of broth.   This morning I started the cut up chicken, 2 onions and 7 cups of potatoes in a huge stock pot on the stove. I am making a batch of my Dad’s chicken stew   this is really a labor of love, as it requires almost 4 hours of cooking. My plan is chicken stew for lunch and dinner. I will also be freezing at least one additional if not two additional meals. I am hopefully for a couple of lunch as well but we will see.

My plan is to discuss the pantry challenge each week in one of two ways. If it is as simple as what we are eating with very little to no spending I will include in Monday menu planning. If something requires a bit of explanation then I will do a separate post likely on Saturday.

Are you participating?

August in Review

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August is sort of a sad month. I have to end my summer break and head back to work. This year we decided to add some last-minute fun and headed to Florida to visit Haley and David for a 5-day trip. It was just what we needed!  September is a month of change with football and pool closing and the ending of the summer garden.

Groceries- Budget = $975.   $775.74   Goal met! My freezers are full! We have lots and lots of prepared food!   I am going to change this goal for September until December to $475 a month to help reduce our overall debit. I will also be buying only items we need but buying a re-stocking amount.

Auto/ Gas. Goal -= $600.  Goal not Met!  We have spent $651.19 this month. This was mainly our trip to Florida. No regrets. I am expecting that this amount be reduced by half to $300 a month with Matt’s driving cut down my more than half. However, I will not change the official goal until December.

Blogging- 15 post per month.  12 post this month.  Trying to live in the moment and enjoy more than posting. I am better in August but need to step up my game!

Exercise-  5 days of exercise makes this an ok month.  I am going to try and continue walking one day a week.

Summer Goals- These were established in June so this will be a good way to keep up with where I am at.  I will say that we ended up cleaning and organizing both Matt’s building and the dinning room closet.  I did not meet all these goals but I am proud of what I accomplished!

  1. Get 100 dinner meals and an assortment of other food items prepared for simple cook and eat meals.   Goal reached! Now to enjoy the hard work.
  2. Organize the office and shred any paperwork that is no longer current and relevant.  I need to go through and shred the items in the top drawer but otherwise this is almost complete. Still have one more drawer to shred!
  3. Redo our master spreadsheet.   No progress
  4. Organize and delete pictures from my phone in order to free up space.- Goal met! Next I need to work on my photo books.
  5. Earn a $50 gift card from Fetch.  I am almost 75% there!  This is taking a long long time. I am going to continue to save for this $50 goal!

I have a few things on my to do list for September but will share as they happen!

Summer Goals

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Today was my last day of summer break.  I actually used a sick day today because Zach had dental work done this morning.  After today, I am working full time at the schools.  I established these goals in June.  I am actually impressed and pleased with everything that we got accomplished this summer.

  1. Get 100 dinner meals and an assortment of other food items prepared for simple cook and eat meals.   I have 87 “homemade meals” in addition to cans of supper and several other items that we can combine for dinner. GOAL MET!
  2. Organize the office and shred any paperwork that is no longer current and relevant.  I need to go through and shred the items in the top drawer but otherwise this is almost complete.  I did not get to work on this but I am very pleased with where we are!
  3. Redo our master spreadsheet.   No progress. Not Met!
  4. Organize and delete pictures from my phone in order to free up space.- Actually finished up this today. My phone is down to 350 pictures, I now need to order photo books from the ipad.
  5. Earn a $50 gift card from Fetch.  I am almost 75% there!  Sitting at 30000 points so not met.

July in Review

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July is one of my favorite times of the year.  I have the entire month of summer break!  Ad of today, I have 17 days left until I return to work.  I do have some fun plans for August, but I also have alot of task that need to be completed before I return to school. I have just started with massive food perseveration from the garden.  This year has also been different due to Matt losing his job the last day of June.

Groceries- Budget = $975.   $1090.77   Goal not met!  I am working to stock the freezer for the school year. My thought is that everything will even out in a couple of months.

Auto/ Gas. Goal -= $600.  Goal Met!  We have spent $359.02 this month. Matt and I are both driving less. This does include our trip to Oak Island and also the trip to Atlanta.

Blogging- 15 post per month.  10 post this month.  Trying to live in the moment and enjoy more than posting. I will be better in August.

Exercise-  7 days of exercise makes this the best month this year! We also have a YMCA membership through Lily so I am going to hope to continue this trend.

Summer Goals- These were established in June so this will be a good way to keep up with where I am at.  I will say that we ended up cleaning and organizing both Matt’s building and the dinning room closet.  Next up is painting the living room.

  1. Get 100 dinner meals and an assortment of other food items prepared for simple cook and eat meals.   I currently have 52 dinner meal. Not sure I will hit 100 but I am going to be close.
  2. Organize the office and shred any paperwork that is no longer current and relevant.  I need to go through and shred the items in the top drawer but otherwise this is almost complete.
  3. Redo our master spreadsheet.   No progress
  4. Organize and delete pictures from my phone in order to free up space.- I may need to make this a yearly goal.
  5. Earn a $50 gift card from Fetch.  I am almost 75% there!  Slowly but surely this is working.

August here we come!