It got away from me.

Let me start by saying that I had another crazy whirlwind year. Life picked me up in a funnel and dumped me somewhere that I did not expect to be. Changed me, rearranged me and brought me to where I am now. As 2011 draws to a close, I am deep in thought about what I want out of 2012. I do not like resolutions, I prefer to set goals. I do, however, feel that I should explain a bit and update you on where I am now in my life. and why I disappeared off the face of the blogging earth.

2011 recapped and current status added.
-Budget took a hit. I completely stopped spending money on beauty, clothes, shoes, etc.
After discussing things with Mr. Man we decided to pull together 100% and start attacking debt with a fever. We have succeeded in cutting our debt load down by over 50%. We also had no savings, we now have a nice emergency fund. We went on vacation and paid for it with cash. I returned to couponing to save money and have done well with it. While we do use our credit cards we pay them in full each month and have not paid a dime of interest. We sit down at least once a month to have a 'State of the Union' meeting. we review where we are, what our current goal and focus is. We also reevaluate and shift if need be. Currently we are on a spending freeze until January 14 (Mr. Man's birthday) and then we will resume the spending freeze until Valentine's Day. We do this to draw us closer together for our common goal and to shift our focus to what we have done.
-In May, we lost our beloved Boston Terrier, Mi. We are still heartbroken about it. We did open our home to a new Boston Terrier, 2 year old Trixie, as well as a 1 year old Pit Bull, Seva and a 2 year old Shih Tzu, Maci. I think we will stop there for a bit and just donate money and supplies to the shelter. Doing those things helps to heal our very broken hearts.
-My health took a hit when I was diagnosed with some food intolerances but we have adjusted well with those and have taken to shopping with our Farmer's Market and have made some wonderful new friends because of that. Mr. Man and I quit smoking. That helped our budget and our health! Our one year mark is fast approaching.
- I returned to my love of reading. It is rare for me not to be reading something now. I MAKE myself take time to read. It has become a great stress reliever for me. I have set a goal to read 100 books in 2012! I cannot even begin to tell you how excited I am about it.

I am sure that I have bored you to no end with my ramblings but I also hope that you will join me this year and see how much things have changed. Before I let you go I want to share with you what my goals for the month are.

1. I want to get an addition $500 in savings
2. I want to pay off what little credit debt we have under $600
3. Bedroom cleaned and clutter cleared
4. Unwanted items taken to Goodwill.
5.  9 books read.

Leave me a comment and let me know what you are up to.

Tired but Inspired

I have to admit that lately I have been all over the place with my thinking and not being very successful with any of it. This weekend however, with the help of a very meaningful moment online (on YouTube, even)I am now inspired to make lots of changes and try things differently. I am excited for these things to begin and excited to share them all with you.  Since I am scatter-brained lately I will organize my thoughts for you by category that way you won’t have to deal with my ADD issues.

-House

My home is a wreck and tends to stay in a state of utter chaos.

·         Cluttered home=cluttered mind=cluttered life. In order to change this I am going to create a schedule and stick with it. The clutter may still be bad until late spring when I can have another yard sale and get rid of stuff.  There will also be things that I will donate. I will create a list and donate to those places on a bi-weekly basis until my house becomes a home.

·         Remodeling. UGH just UGH. This has been a battle since 2005 and so far only one room is about a quarter of the way done. Of course many factors are playing into this but what I can do I need to get done. Even if that means getting more than one room a quarter of the way done.

·         List all services that are needed and begin saving and scheduling them to come as I get the funds needed

-Finances

In April or May, depending on how things go, our home will be paid off. I have to admit that I will not miss writing that check out but that money will be rolled over to another place. Yes, my lovely friends, we are going to activate the debt snowball, ala Dave Ramsey.  I would like to see how many of our bills we can pay off and make disappear completely by this time next year in addition to our mortgage.

There are a few things that we need and I will save for those to pay for them in cash. In addition to that we also need to build our emergency fund back up. We had it built up in August when Mr. Man’s Truck (Semi) got struck by lightning and that saved us then. Now it has dwindled to almost nothing thanks to upset after upset.

This I will come back to with our plan because it is a source of major stress and drama here.

-Weight Loss

 I need to lose 34-39 lbs. I want to wear clothes I already own and not have to spend money on more. There is a huge difference in buying clothes because you have to versus because you want to.  My plan is probably a little different at the moment than it would normally be because of finances but I am still going to try like everything to get this weight off in 6 months or about that (My Birthday July 19^th)

In order to achieve this goal:

1.       Drink water, I can have 1 soda per day or only 1 when we go out for dinner (which is only on special occasions)

2.       Exercise 4 times a week on my wii. 1 hour of Walk It Out, 20 minutes of Zumba Fitness and 30 minutes of Wii Fit

3.       Snacking at work is a NO NO unless it is fruit or other healthy snacks

4.       Keep Moving!

If you haven't already guessed it by now I am a great and fabulous list maker. I can make lists until I am blue in the face I am not however good at checking things off of said lists.  It is a downfall of mine. I am lazy but there are times that I know for sure that if I could ever just get started I would be unstoppable.

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