Category Archives: Goals

Thursday Plans

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::Matt and I choice Jeremiah 29:11 as our verse at wedding… For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future”

My plans for this summer has significantly changed and are total different than what I thought they would be even five months ago. I am excited to see all the things that happen and all the memories made this summer.  Today I thought I would give you an update on just about everything!

Today is my last day before Summer Break!  Kindergarten promotion is tomorrow. And due to our childcare situation, I am using parental leave for next week of workdays and the first three workdays in August!
 Lily is really enjoying her legal internship with Egger. She was informed right before starting that the attorney was leaving the company. This made for a very stressful weekend. However, she is two weeks in with more experience that she had even hoped for. She also has several opportunities to consider!  I also think this has confirmed that she really does want to be in the law field.
 Kendall is looking forward to Catawba College in the fall. She will be entering as a junior with two years planned to finish her degree.  She has received enough scholarships to cover her tuition and  books until she completes her degree.
.Zach is super excited for football and is already attempting to gain weight!  He has decided to attend classes for welding along with high school.
 Haley will finish her nursing degree in August and we plan to join her to celebrate!
I am looking for a busy and fun filled adventure this summer!

May In Review

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May has been a super busy and exciting month! I am exhausted! Kendall graduated on Friday night!  Zach is officially a junior and I have four days left of this school year!  I will include a copy of my summer goals at the end of this blog post simply because it will make it easier for me to stay accountable.

Groceries- Goal $800 per month.  We spent $653.50  for the month of May.  This is a huge accomplishment!  I am hoping to stay at or below budget for all three months this summer as this will allow me to restock without spending a fortunate.

Gas- Goal is $400.  Total spent was $492.54 for gas  this month. Gas prices are currently the highest they have EVER been. We have seen the price drop below $4. a gallon in the last four days. I hope this is a trend that will continue.

Blogging-The goal will be 15 posts per month.  I am really proud of this number and feel like I have finally found a new routine that works for me.

Debit-   The goal for 2026 will be to pay off the Home Depot Credit card without interest.  We have several months with large credit card payments now thur September. I am working on paying this off and not adding to our overall debit.  I will be sharing how things are going at the end of the summer. I will be making the first huge payment on this card the first week in June.  I am even more optimistic at this point that we can do this!

No Spend Days- Goal for 10 no spend days a month. Not even going to suggest that I have a clue about this. I will try very hard to keep up with this!

Health/Exercise-I am no hanging out between 171 and 175.  Still here, still the same. I have a doctors appointment and am going to ask about increasing my dosage as well as stopping a prescription medicine.  I have not needed a shot in my knee in over a year! This is a huge accomplishment!

Foster Care- Matt and I completed everything needed for our application on March 31, the actual application was not submitted until May 5 or 6th as of last Wednesday May 27th, we have been approved as licensed foster parents in the state of North Carolina.

Summer Goals

1. Make and order 8 photo books.
2.  Read a total of 8 books.
3. Make and freeze 12 baked ziti’s
4. Make and freeze 6 million dollar spaghetti pies
5. Make and freeze 6 pans of chicken enchiladas.
6. Either walk or exercise 3 times a week for at least 8 weeks
7. Make and freeze 6 taco pastas
8. Make and freeze 6 chicken, broccoli rice casseroles.
9. Make at least 50 meatballs and freeze

Summer Goals

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It occurred to me that I need to start planning or at least thinking about the summer and what goals I want to work toward.  I counted up, I will have 10 weeks this summer.  I know that for at least 2 of those weeks we are on vacations so I am going to set goals based on 8 weeks.
1. Make and order 8 photo books.
2.  Read a total of 8 books.
3. Make and freeze 12 baked ziti’s
4. Make and freeze 6 million dollar spaghetti pies
5. Make and freeze 6 pans of chicken enchiladas.
6. Either walk or exercise 3 times a week for at least 8 weeks
7. Make and freeze 6 taco pastas
8. Make and freeze 6 chicken, broccoli rice casseroles.
9. Make at least 50 meatballs and freeze
The one sad thing about this list is it is going to be expensive to purchase the ingredients but I know how the convivence makes it so nice. Now that this is written out  I am accountable.

Weekend in Review – Playing Catch

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This was a rare weekend.  We had absolutely nothing on the agenda for Saturday until Zach’s truck started acting up and then the car stopped at Tractor Supply on Tuesday.  Matt and Zach prioritized get one or both vehicles back to running.  I decided this would be a good time to tackle a couple of projects that I have literally been putting off for months.

First up the camper! We arrived home from Disney in December and unloaded the luggage and everything we needed out of it. Haley and David spent several nights in it at the end of December as well. It was not nasty but needed to have all the sheets/bedding washed and a good vacuum never hurt anything. I ended up have eight total loads of laundry including E’s bed and various blankets that were hung on the line. This was a huge cost savings as we are looking at probably 10 hours of drying time!  I did get the blankets put away and E’s bed made but the camper beds still need to be made up.

After making such good progress on Saturday, I was inspired today!  I decided to tackle the filing cabinet and three other bins of stuff that I moved out of the office to turn into a bedroom. I had tax papers from 2013 that needed to be shredded and lots of organizing. I ended up spending around 5 hours on this project but I am happy to say that I was able to get everything sorted and organized my desk feels amazing right now! And the cherry on top is the fact that I was able to reduce things down to more manageable and that is my word of the year!

Word of the Year

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Fun fact is that I have never made a “New Year’s Resolution”.  I have in the past and even made a couple of goals for this year.  But I am have been thinking and figured it would be a good time to try something new. I am going to chose a word to focus on this year.

REDUCE

This might seem strange but I need to spend some time and energy reducing things in several areas of my life.

First up is my pantry.  Kendall will graduate from high school this year.  She is already deciding on a college and then in two additional years she will be off on her own adult adventure. Zach at the same time will be graduating high school and staring his adult adventure.  I am guessing that within 3 years we will have an empty nest. That means we will probably need less than 1/4 of the pantry that we currently have. In reality, if we don’t consume and use up most of the “non favorite” items now then they may be here forever.  The pantry challenge is going to help with this idea. I am also planning on not purchasing any meat unless I find a deal I can’t pass up until June. I definitely want to empty out and turn off our chest freezer and move the convivence freezer out of our bedroom. This should definitely help reduce the clutter in my room as well.

Along the same lines, I am currently storing items in our pantry, the laundry room and our shower room. I would like to reduce this to having all the food in the pantry, using the laundry room as a storage area for paper products and then laundry items. This would leave the shower room for self care needs. In reality, I need to sort through all the items in the shower room and decide which ones can be thrown away, sold or simply need to be thrown away. This would also allow me to clean out the bathroom cabinets as well. Overall, I want to reduce the number of items that we keep on hand to a maximum of 6 months with most items reduced to three months. This will translate to a year supply for two people much easier than now.

Next on the reducing list is the number of clothes that I am keeping. I need to have a really good closet purge and reduce the items that I am holding on to. That is definitely something that will be waiting till the summer.

I have already shared plans to reduce our debit and spending this year as well. The overall goal is to be debt free except the mortgage in 5 years and totally debit free in 8 to 10 years.  Neither Matt nor I will be or can really increase our incomes at this point so REDUCE is definitely a must.

REDUCING Clutter and REDUCING my Stress yeap Reduce is a good word for this year.

Friday Financial Update

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So this is the much promised post about the big financial change that we have made.  I have hinted at this post on several occasions but did not want to share until everything was complete and final. The reason for this post is very personal, I want to be able to read this in the future, see my rationale and also determine if it worked or not.

We have refinanced the house and rolled the HELOC into it. First the facts, this is a 15 year mortgage with an interest rate of 6.25%. the anticipated maturity date is December 2040. Our age would be 68.

Next, why we choose to re-finance at this time. There are two main reasons that we looked at refinancing now. The first of which is that we or at least I have started to seriously look at and begin to plan for retirement. My top priority going into retirement is to be debt-free. I do not want to have any payments such as mortgage or car. The auto part is really something that I can’t control as much as the mortgage/HELCO.  I knew going in the HELOC was 30 years and my initial plan was to begin making double payments when we pay off the Tahoe in October 26.  The second reason for considering and seriously looking at a re-fi now is that the HELCO was an adjustable rate.  I don’t recall reading this so maybe I missed it. I realized this (my mistake) because the HELCO was a fixed rate for 12 months and then became adjustable. My realization occurred with the notice that it would increase to over 7%.

The problem…. our mortgage was refinanced during COVID at a rate of 2.75%. This has been the one down side and thing that made the decision to re-fi difficulty for me. But when you compare the fact that the HELCO was already high and had the possibility of going even higher then even math said we should re-fi.

We ended up including some cash out when we decided to re-finance in order to reduce our overall debit load and to make paying everything much easier and quicker.  As I mentioned above the interest rate is 6.25% which is less than any credit card at this point.  We will begin making payments on January 1 2026 and begin to make an extra  principal only payment November 2026 which should reduce our term to 8 years or 2034 and our age to 62.

5 Things Friday

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1. Lily purchased a new car. I was emotional support only!

2. I am trying to start and keep a routine of spending time first thing in the morning, out in the garden. Yesterday, I spent and our harvesting and tying up the tomatoes. This morning I spent another hour, trying to get our volunteer tomato and watermelon bed organized and productive.

3. Our pool is finally open. That means that Kendall and Zach are both working. They both are eager to make money this summer, so they picking up extra shifts. Zach worked every day but Wednesday this week and Kendall worked every day but Thursday. Kendall is also picking up extra shifts at the YMCA as well.

4. My end of school gift to myself was to have the house cleaned on Wednesday. I am so excited and will be trying to keep things clean as we go now.

5. In July we have vacation plans for 2 of the weeks. So I am working to get things prepared ahead for the school year. The garden is also very time consuming at this point as well. I am not going to make official goals for the summer but do plan to try and get meal both frozen and canned every week when we are home.

5 Things Friday

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1. Today is “Good Friday.”  Some would consider this a “holy” day but to me, it was the start of my salvation. Jesus’s death on the cross is not holy, it was needed. It was the way to claim me as his own. I am not celebrating that; I am celebrating his resurrection!
2. I have a full week off of work next week!  I have a list of things I want to accomplish but I am doubtful they will all happen!
3. I need to stock our fridge and pantries for the last 7 weeks of school. This means a trip to Costco, as well as hopefully Bragin’s by the Bin.  I would love to head to the outlets in Mebane for an entire day but this is definitely a want.
4. I need to do a final push to get our freezers clean out and organized so that I can stock them up this summer. Currently, I would like to get a batch of pear sauce made from all the frozen pears. I have found that we prefer canned pears, so this is the preservation method of the future.  I would also like to use most of the frozen tomatoes to make a batch of salsa since we have 3 jars to last until at least the end of July.
5. I have a passport appointment on Monday, and I also have scheduled the house to be cleaned that day.
All good plans stick around to see what happens!

 

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.