I didn’t do a goals update for June because I was terrible about making progress towards my goals in June. July was a much better month. My first goal of not acquiring any new debt other than student loans is still being met. This one is pretty easy to meet. I made some progress towards my goal of losing 20 pounds. After gaining 8 pounds earlier this year I’m now back to my original weight. I’ll now need to lose 20 pounds in six months rather than a year. This is doable but I’m going to have to put a lot more effort into it. I did make good progress on improving my blog. I started the Frugal Blog Network and I was featured twice on the Smart Spending blog at MSN.com.
Goals
Don't Wait Until You Retire
There are a lot of things I want to accomplish that I don’t get done. I tell myself that this is due to the time constraints imposed on me by school and my job but that isn’t entirely true. A recent post at My Money Blog, “The Depressing Truth About Early Retirement” helped me realize what I already knew. The post describes how early retirees have many things they want to accomplish thatthey don’t get done. This makes them realize that it isn’t the job holding them back but a lack of motivation, organization, or discipline.
I have to admit those factors are what is holding me back. If I can’t get things done now, why would it be any different when I’m retired? I can’t accomplish everything I want to while working but I can accomplish some things. Right now I’m not getting much done at all. I need to focus on getting some things accomplished now so I can continue and expand on that when I retire and have more time. I’m considering a semi-retirement of sorts that would allow me to get stuff done and still earn money. This would consist of working half the year and ratcheting up my frugality the rest of the year. My future living plans that I was going to post about yesterday will be a key element in making the semi-retirement feasible. I promise I’ll post about that on Monday.
May Goal Review
I’m still on track with my goal of not incurring any new debt other than student loan debt. My other goals aren’t going so well. I lost 3 pounds in May which means I now need to lose 25 pounds over the rest of the year. My original goal was to lose 20 pounds but I gained 8 pounds before I started losing any making this goal a little bit harder. I also am not doing as well on my blog as I would like. Whether I’m actually improving my blog content is somewhat subjective but looking at my subscriber and traffic data it doesn’t appear that I’m attracting any new readers. If I provide better content that should change. I’m also about to implement another change which should help improve this blog. I’m not doing great on my goals so far but there is still plenty of time to get them accomplished I just have to not procrastinate.
I’m Getting Fat
More accurately, I’m getting fatter. One of my goals for this year was to lose 20 pounds. I weighed myself earlier this week and I’ve gained eight pounds since the beginning of the year. Now I’ve got to lose 28 pounds. My main problem has been eating too much fast food and junk food. I’m cutting back on that now and I need to start exercising also. I’ve been successful at losing weight in the past. I know what I need to do I just have to start doing it.
Making a Challenge Challenging
There are various bloggers out there who have no spending challenges. The typical no spend challenge isn’t very challenging for me though. I don’t have any desire to buy most things that aren’t allowed in a no spend challenge. The only tangible items I’ve bought this year besides food are detergent, toilet paper, and books. These were all necessary and I didn’t spend much money on them. The books were bought used for school and I’ll sell them again when I’m done with them. Entertainment is where I’ve been spending way too much money and I need to challenge myself to spend much less there next month. This will be complicated because I just started dating someone and I put dates in the entertainment category. She doesn’t expect me to spend a lot of money on her but when you first start dating you don’t want to be too cheap. Also my best friend is coming back to town after being out of town for a month and a half. We will be spending some money while hanging out and catching up. My goal for the month is just to spend less than my average monthly entertainment expenditure. This shouldn’t be too hard since my entertainment spending has been very high this year due to a vacation and excessive gambling.
There is also a May Grocery Challenge at Give Me Back My Five Bucks that I’m going to participate in. My goal will be to spend $50 in groceries for the month. This is what I usually budget but I’ve been going way over the past couple months. I’ve also been eating out too much. To make this challenge more challenging I’m not going to eat out unless it is on a date or with family or friends. I will try to keep those occasions reasonably limited. I won’t invite my friend or girlfriend out to eat just because I want to eat a meal out. These conditions should make this challenge challenging to keep.