9 Month Goals Update

by Jeff on September 3, 2010

I think I’ll do yearly goals updates every 3 months.  It will help be get on track and make sure that none of my goals falls too far out of my mind.  Keeping things in my mind will hopefully keep me focused on them and allow me to complete them.  If you’re wondering what my goals were/are check here, and if you’re looking for previous progress, check out how I was doing at the 6 month mark.

2010 Money Goals

  1. Pay Off Credit Cards – This has been a goal for quite a while, but I’m getting traction now.  Balance as of Jan 2010: $6,026

Finally! After YEARS of hollow “pay off my credit cards” goal setting, I’ve done it.  If you want to read about it, click here.

  1. Have 3 Months of Living Expenses in the bank – I’ve wrestled with this for a while, because of my frequent travel to/from my office.  If I lose my job (not likely) I’ll also lose ~$500 of work-related monthly expenses.  So, the question becomes, do I go for the lower amount of expenses or higher?  I think I’ll try to split the difference and make it half way. Goal $4,800 – $6,600
  • Although I’m trying for this, I’m not too sure if I’ll be able to hit the minimum (actually, I’m fairly positive I won’t, unless something changes).  While it’s only September and no one knows for sure what can happen, I’m fairly sure I won’t have 4 spare G’s just lying around between now & the end of the year.  I do know I wont have nothing in the living expenses bank, but I’m fairly sure I wont have this much either.  Goal will probably be partially completed.  Still will be a win in my mind though, because I have never had money for living expenses in the bank.
  1. Get Total Debt Level Below $37,500. As of Jan 2010, it was sitting at ~55,400 (This was after I bought my truck, but before I had to make the first payment).  This will be a tough goal to reach, but I think I can do it.
  • This is going to be very doable, but will be a pretty heavy lift.  Due to the amount of commuting I do, my plans are sometimes thwarted by weather related road closures.  However, holiday season is also coming up, these holidays give me paid days off at my regular job, and I typically use those days off to work at my 2nd job.  At current standing, I’m at about 40,541. This is only 3k away from where I want to be!
  1. Pay off Small Student Loan – This loan is just annoying.  It’s $3,073 and I think it’s next on the hit list after my credit cards.
  • Last month I made my first large payment to this loan, and I’m hoping to have this one knocked out during the first week of October.

2010 Health Goals

  1. Join the Gym – I made a decision last fall that I wasn’t going to join the Gym until my credit cards were paid off, and I though that it was going to happen sooner than it has, but Oh well.  If I can get 4 months in at the gym, I’ll be a happy camper in December
  • I joined the gym!  Although this was a fairly easy goal simply requiring me to part with some money every month, it took me almost 6 weeks to join ( I had planned on joining right after my last update).
  1. Go to gym 4/5x per week.  ’Nuff Said.
  • This one has proven to be much more difficult.  I’ve been going about 3x per week, and I feel like there’s always more time that I could go.  Hopefully I’ll be able to bump this one up soon.

2010 Environment Goals

  1. Walk to do my errands more around town.  I typically walk for about half of the errands that I have to run around town, but I’d like to get that closer to walking all the time.
  • I’ve been walking a lot to do my errands.  Complete for now, but the year is not over.  Could get much harder when the snow comes.
  1. Learn more about my compost heap and figure out how to make it work better.
  • Little to no progress on this.  However, I have found out you can compost a lot more than I originally thought you could.

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Weekly Links – Carnival of PF Edition

by Jeff on September 2, 2010

Greetings readers.  I’ve got big news for the blog.  This coming Monday (September 6) I’ll be hosting the Carnival of Personal Finance.  It’s tentatively titled the Labor Day edition.  Thinking the theme would be some great labor leaders or incidents in labor history.  Not sure though.  I may call it the 110 days to Christmas Carnival.

Yakezie Posts

Financial Ramifications of Marriage at 20s money – Interesting topic but Kevin does a good job of talking through the possible reasons why people seem poorer when they first get married

How to pay off debt when your income is irregular at Single Guy Money – Great post for freelancers and others who are between jobs or earn an irregular income.

12 ways to survive (and thrive) at the outlet center at Money Beagle.  Beagle has some great tips here  for people who dislike shopping/can’t tolerate crowds, etc.  There are good deals at outlet malls, you just have to mentally prepare to go to them.

Great Introductions this week at Yakezie.com From last week, We’ve had Flexo from Consumerism Commentary,  Jason at One Money Design, Craig at Free From Broke, Kevin at Invest it Wisely and Evan at My Journey to Millions.  For those interested, the name contains the story on yakezie.com and the site name has a link to the website.

Red from the Girl with the Red Balloon has posted her goals for September.  I don’t have any yet, but it looks like she’s got some pretty solid goals.  Good luck red.

the NINJA from PDITF (Punch Debt in the Face) has a great post on money in marriage.  Ninja’s blog is usually chock full of humor, but this post took a turn down topical road.  It was a good read.

Also, sorry for the lack of posts lately.  I have forgotten to put something up on friday for a few weeks now, but things have been hectic and I’ve got a huge article that I’m trying to finish and use it as a guest post somewhere.  It’s been good to write, but it’s not done because I just keep expanding it.

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Debt Free Budget

September 1, 2010
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photo credit: familymwr The other day, I was looking at my cash flow so far for the year.  I’ve had a fairly great run so far this year, but it does not seem like I’ve got much to show for it other than a new truck and a place to stay every month.  Then I [...]

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August 2010 Monthly Review

August 30, 2010

This was an interesting month for me budget wise.  I spent much more than I normally because of my recent vacation and I think this will cause me to have spent more than I took in this month for the first time since December, 2009.  I was able to trim back quite a few categories [...]

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What’s made you feel the worst?

August 27, 2010

Today, I decided that I was going to do something different today. I noticed that when I eat specific things, I have a tendency to feel like absolute crap afterwords for an hour or two.  This happens when I eat too much pizza or something like that.  You know the feeling, where it sits in [...]

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Weekly Links: Flat Tire Edition

August 26, 2010

This week, a friend needed to borrow my truck to use it to do some work.  I didn’t mind, because it would mean putting less miles on it than I would have, and could help me with my goal of not spending a lot of money this week.   When it was returned, I was notified of [...]

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Wednesday Money Check-Up

August 25, 2010

I swiped this from My Pretty Pennies (who has an awesome blog, btw) and thought the Monday Money Check-Up was a good idea.  I dont know if I’ll do it every week, but I figured this would be something interesting to do every once in a while. 1. The most I’ve spent this week (so far) was [...]

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How much fun should you have while in debt

August 23, 2010

I have been working on getting out of debt for the last 13 months, during which I’ve been able to eliminate (and charge up again, and finally eliminate) my credit card debt, as well as a fair amount of student car loans.  During this time, quite a few changes have happened – I mostly finished [...]

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Weekly Links – 14er Edition

August 19, 2010
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For those of you that don’t live in the mountain west, you may not be familiar with this term.   My states occasionally friendly neighbor to the south, (where one eric from narrow bridge adventures happens to live) has 55 Mountain peaks over 14,000 feet high.  Many of these peaks are in the center of the state [...]

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My Life List

August 18, 2010

Earlier this week, J Money at Budgets are Sexy posted what he called his “Life List“.  It simply included things that he  would like to do if he had a bunch of spare cash laying around.  I thought this was a good idea, and I’ve decided that  I’d get one created as well.  ( I [...]

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