John and I are big goal-setters. We set goals all throughout the year, but still love the idea of a fresh start on New Year’s Day.
This year, we have a few individual goals and some that we’re working on together. Since it’s still technically the holiday’s and I’m finishing up my new book, let’s dive straight in.
Happy Thanksgiving Eve, everyone!
I’ve been thinking recently a lot about the “why” behind doing what I do. For any new readers, I am a wife and mom to two toddler girls, I work full-time, I freelance write and I blog. Not to mention cleaning the house, running errands and all that. To be honest, I don’t feel like it’s too much, but I do have very little downtime. When I’m home, I’m normally doing something productive (I count playing with my kids as productive, haha) except after 9:00 pm. Then, I watch a show with John and we go to sleep. I really love my life, but the busyness of it all recently got me asking “Why?
Hi everyone! How is everyone’s week going? It’s Friday, so that’s a good sign 😉
My week has been great! A week full of work with a little bit of fun mixed in (a trip to The Fresh Market for pumpkins, fresh coffee and dessert!) – nothing better. Tomorrow I’m working from home and plan on relaxing this weekend with my family. My girls have been so tired all week after daycare, so I haven’t seen too much of them and I want to make up for it this weekend with lots of quality time. Cami, my 3-year-old, has actually been asking to “go rest” when she gets home from daycare, and she usually ends up falling asleep for the night 🙁 This is at roughly 6pm, by the way. (Perhaps this is why she wakes for the day at 5am, haha.)
Today I wanted to elaborate a little bit more on my “Life Update” post from earlier this week regarding my goal of increasing my freelancing and blogging income to $10K a month within one year.
Well guys, I’ve completed Crystal Paine’s Make Over Your Mornings course as of today. The course is NOT just about getting up earlier, though I will say that I AM waking up earlier than normal (by choice). The course is about prioritizing your day, allowing yourself time to relax, setting goals for yourself and accomplishing them bit by bit, creating an effective to-do list and more!
First of all, I loved the course. But, I’m a long-time reader of Money Saving Mom and I love Crystal Paine! One of the main reasons I bought the course was because you get a peak into her life! The course is 14 days, and all 14 days include a chapter to read, a task out of a workbook and a video from Crystal (my favorite part!).Continue Reading
I haven’t posted my goals in a while, but with June I have a few specific goals in mind that I wanted to share. In May, I didn’t accomplish too much since we vacationed to Arizona for 9 days. I had taken time off work the week prior and the entire time we were gone, so June is all about getting back into the swing of things! Surprisingly, my income for May was still high due to the fact that most of that work was completed in April. For June, I don’t expect my income to be high at all due to not working much in May and quitting one of my freelance writing jobs that I’ve had for nearly three years.
Ok, so my husband and I have this great (or not-so-great) idea…
We were chatting the other day about life and our dreams on one of the beautiful drives we take here in North Carolina. We both agree that we’re happiest when we’re on the road, traveling, seeing places, exploring new areas, etc. Adventures are exciting and (to us) are what make life worth living. I had recently come across this awesome blog about a couple who live on a sailboat almost full-time. They also have three little girls ages 3 and under. Yup, reread that. Three little girls 3 and under…on a sailboat. I mentioned to John on that drive how it would be really cool to live in an RV for a year or so and travel all across the US. I didn’t think he would agree to this idea, but he actually thought it would be really fun and when we got home he started looking at the cost of used RVs and all the different types.
And so an idea was born…
Being completely honest, I’m big on setting New Year’s resolutions but not that big on keeping them. Normally, our goals are huge – get married, buy a house, save $10K, get pregnant, etc. I can happily say that we normally accomplish these goals, but gosh – I don’t want anything big to happen in 2015! I want to be content and lay low this next year.
Starting with 2011, here’s how our past four years have looked in a nutshell:
2011: Got engaged, got married, got pregnant, started living off one income, bought a house
2012: Moved into house, had a baby, got pregnant again
2013: John started a new job, we had another baby, I had my best year yet freelancing
2014: Moved across the country from AZ to NC
I’m going to be honest – I actually highly debated skipping this month’s income recap as it wasn’t the greatest. But, I want to look back and see how far we’ve come so here goes…
First, let’s take a look back at my November goals. Income goals were $3000 for John and $1800 for me but before I get into what we hit, I’m going to recap our other goals.
One of the reasons we moved to North Carolina was for more affordable housing prices. If you compare a $200K house in Arizona to a $200K house here, you do get more for your money in the sense that you get more land and probably more square footage, but other than that it’s basically the same. The neighborhoods aren’t the nicest in both places, but they’re also not the worst. Where we live, I feel like there are sooo many more “nice” neighborhoods than average ones. I used to think I would be really happy in a small, very inexpensive little home on a lot of land. While that is still true, I’m not going to lie…I kind of want one of those really nice houses in my dream neighborhood (!!).
October is going to be hard to beat. We surpassed our income goals by $1,578 and if I’m being honest, I don’t think we’re going to be able to do that again (though I sure hope we can!). November is the start of the holiday season and typically people would much rather spend their excess money on shopping, traveling and dining than they would on a home repair or remodel. We will continue to do everything in our power to bring in business, though, and try our hardest to beat our goals!