I've never posted much about my goals on here before, probably because I didn't want to own up to not doing them! But now that I'm writing them on my white board and actually remembering to attempt them (doyee), I'm going to ramp up the accountability one more notch and post them on here too. I am not thrilled about this, haha.
I fell into a bit of a financial pit in September, so most of this month's goals are about digging myself out. (Exciting! not)
- I'm trying out this very simple weekly budget print-out and using Spend and Bills accounts because, even if I subtract my bills and expenses from my bank account, I inevitably wind up coming up short at the end of the month. So I'm going to try transferring all of my set expenses to a separate account and paying them from there, so that I can't even consider that money an option for random spending. As of today, I've transferred the money, so step one complete!
- I need to watch paying for doctor's appointments in checks, because a.) they don't always get cashed right away and then I forget about them and b.) they often wind up taking away from my next paycheck and then I'm like, "Wait, where did my money go?"
- I really need to curtail the shopping for at least the first half of October. Although my shopping budget now is set at $170 (and I have a hard time staying under that), I want to try to stay closer to $100 this month since I'm in the piiiit.
- As I mentioned here, I've been feeling overwhelmed and mentally cluttered. Like, media overload. I'm on the computer and various devices all day at work, and then I go home and wind up playing on my phone while "watching" TV. Enter the cat coloring books! Relaxing is usually super low among my priorities, hence why I'm making it a goal.
- I just want to keep plugging away at this damn Game of Thrones book! Finishing it will feel like an accomplishment, haha.
- Oh, and I have my physical at the end of the month and need to ask about a flu shot.
I feel pretty dumb about my financial irresponsibility, but then again, I've never been a great budgeter. Rather than beating myself up, I'm trying to look at it like the chickens simply coming to roost. I need to just focus on these new methods (like the Spend and Bill accounts) and try to be more disciplined.
I mentioned my September goals here. Here's how they went:
- I did ATTEMPT to come up with a weekly spending budget, and I was pretty good about it... until Chicago (oops).
- So I didn't quite get $400 into savings, but hey, $300 is much better than $0!
- I really need to go to a framing store for some help in completing my goal of framing a few prints. Picking through the selection at Home Goods just didn't yield results.
- CHECK! Reading two chapters of GoT was just the tiny "how can I NOT do this?" goal I needed to get over the hurdle of starting the book. Now I'm over 200 pages in!
Do you guys find it helpful to set goals? What are you working on in October?
Linking up with Writes Like a Girl and My So-Called Chaos!