Updated 2018 Goals

Meet Milo, the newest furry addition to our house.  If you follow me on other social media, you've definitely already seen him at least a time or two....or probably more!

Hey everyone!

So, I'm setting a few new goals for myself.  I haven't really checked in with my goals for 2018 for a while, so I was just looking over those and have some updates!

Here's what I had said in January (the last time I posted - ugh.  I actually had a few drafts from various other times this year that never got posted....but I'll touch on those later on!):



Work on my Etsy shop and selling some more stuff through there.

This honestly hasn't happened.  I've had a lot of other things going on, but after Christmas, I didn't get any requests other than a few blankets I made for a friend.  I really didn't work too much on advertising anything because I was quite honestly pretty burnt out from all of the things I made around Christmas time.  I'm thinking about picking up on trying to make some things to sell as we go into fall, but we'll see.  It's possible that I'll just take down the Etsy shop altogether and just make things if people request them.  Nothing is for sure yet!

Try to start saving money for the long term (literally have never had enough to have a savings account - might not make this goal this year, but I want to at least try again)

I really haven't been able to put any money back, as expected at this point, since my expenses and income both are the same, and my budget is already as pared back as it usually gets.  I am thinking about doing a "no spend month" where you don't spend money on anything other than bills and necessities, just to see how that goes.  I already know I go over budget on ordering out and picking up random snacks on the road, so that is the only stuff I can think that I'd have to cut out for a no spend month, but I think it could be eye-opening.

Work with Orion more - includes looking into some new and different things for us to try from the ground.

Again, I haven't gotten into this yet.  I had planned to a few months ago, as I got some exciting/nerve-wracking news from his vet in April, but there just hasn't been time recently.  I'm looking at laying out a schedule of certain days a week that I think I might be able to set aside an hour or two to go do things at the barn so that I can really dive in.  I've also gathered materials to start reading up on some things I can do with him to at least get us started, if not things to carry us further than that.  There is a lot of work that will have to go into us both in order to do the things I'm aspiring to do.

Keep refining my budget and meal planning.

This sort of goes hand in hand with starting a savings account/padding my checking account.  I have worked on my budget a lot.  I'm normally on it almost every day anyway, and that's the way it's been for the past few years since I've been on my own and not living with family.  I've re-designed my spreadsheet a bit so that I can more easily keep track of what money I'm "saving".  As for the meal-planning part, I've slacked on that recently, which is exactly why I've been spending too much on eating out or ordering delivery.  I've started to plan that a bit better the past week or so, and if I do the no spend month I mentioned above, I'll have to get back into that hard-core since I won't be "allowed" to order out.

Make more time for family.

Another one I need to work on more.  I've attempted to put together dinner plans for some family members to come over, but it's so hard to get everyone on the same page!  Plus, since the budget is fairly strict, it's difficult to plan to buy enough food to have more than a couple people over at a time.  I've been thinking more about doing a pot luck kind of thing sometime in the near future for friends and family so that I can just make a few things and everyone else can provide the rest.  I did reconnect with some family members at a family reunion a few weeks ago that made me really happy - I had missed them, but I hadn't realized just how much I'd missed them until we were all hanging out together.

Pay off most, if not all, of my credit card debt.

This is definitely still a work-in-progress.  Not being able to save money also means not being able to put a whole lot of extra onto my credit card payments, but one thing I've successfully done for most of the year is not use my credit cards for much of anything, so at least nothing other than interest is being added on each month.  That part in my mind is a success, and the rest will come eventually.

Now, for the additional things I've thought of:

I want to write on the blog at least once a week.  It's going to take some effort, and I'm not sure how successful it'll be....I'm completely out of the habit of writing.  But I've been reading some of the blogs I used to read, and its starting to inspire me.  (The one I'm working on right now is one I've been saving up the email notifications for, and I haven't read it since December last year, so I have plenty of reading material...

That leads me to the next goal...

I want to read more (in general: blogs, books, articles, etc.).  If you follow me on Goodreads and go look at my profile, I think I have like 5 books I'm currently reading. *insert eye roll emoji here*  I've been pretty ADD when it comes to books lately.  I don't spend enough time reading to really get into things, and then I lose interest and start something else, but I've been keeping the ones I'm working on listed on there because I really do want to get back into them and finish them at some point, so that's how I'm trying to stay on track.  That's something I'm going to try to have done by the end of the year.  I actually set a goal on Goodreads earlier in the year to read 20 books in 2018.  I think I've currently only finished two; so, that's something to work on too.

Last....

I want to do more fun things locally.  Or at least, somewhat locally.  Darryl and I recently took a week off work together.  I'll write more about it later, but basically, we knew we wouldn't have the money to take a big vacation, so we did a bunch of simple day stuff that didn't cost too much - we went to the game farm one day, a WV Black Bears game in Morgantown another day, and took a tour of the Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum (the old Weston State Hospital for those unaware of what that is) another day.  I've been trying to keep up on other things going on around our town in neighboring counties and towns, and there are things coming up that have become a tradition for us to go to, and it's just hit me recently just how much our little area has to offer.  There's tons!  I could honestly dedicate a whole post just to that, so that might be something to come later too.  But I'd like to focus on diving into some more local events since we typically don't travel very much.

Looking at my list of goals from the beginning of the year, I realize how caught up I've been in day-to-day problems and have really lost sight of some of the bigger picture...not all of it, mind you, but I need to get re-focused on some things I had wanted to accomplish.  I also think that while setting money-related goals is great and is definitely necessary, I didn't set enough goals to do things that I just simply enjoy - this is where the new goals come in.  I'm not always great at balancing work, finances, and play.  Usually the play part is what suffers.  Maybe by the end of the year if I focus on these goals, I'll have gotten a little better at that balance!