Layout:
Home > Archive: December, 2020

Archive for December, 2020

2021 Goals?

December 17th, 2020 at 09:14 pm

As we are getting closer to ending this hellish year and starting fresh with 2021, I have been thinking about what my financial goals should be in the new year.

I know I want to get out of credit card debt.

I know I want to complete a $5000 savings challenge. (This would probably be conucurrent with getting out of debt.)

I know I want to increase my 403b contributions.

I know we want to continue monthly contributions to our church.

But other than that, I don't know what we want to do or accomplish. Even those are vague. We need to sit down and flush out our financial goals. We can't achieve them if we don't define them.

Goals are always so hard for me because I feel pulled in so many different directions. I want to get out of debt. I want to save for short term goals. I want to save for long term goals. I want to give generously. But there never seems to be enough money to do it all. 

Last year, I had 20 financial goals for 2020. It was too many! We met about 65% (13 out of 20), but it was too much to keep track of and to try to meet them all. This year, I know I want to pare down my goals and focus in on what is the most important to us.

I'm looking forward to seeing everybody's goals and hoping maybe they can inspire mine.

Time Flies

December 7th, 2020 at 08:29 pm

I can't believe it's been over a month since my last post. Time certainly flies during the holiday season.

Not too much has gone on financially in the past month. We are just chugging away.

Our debt has actually stayed pretty stagnant. Most of our debt payment has been divereted to Christmas. However stagnant is better than increasing, but not as good as decreasing.

We had a nice Thanksgiving with family and are looking forward to Christmas.

Because 2020 has been such a difficult year, I was able to persuade my husband to allow me to decorate for Christmas extra early this year! He likes to wait until after Thanksgiving, but to me, the earlier the better! With the exception of our real tree, my house was all decorated by Veteran's day. 

The day after Thanksgiving, we drove up to the mountains and, for the first time in my life, cut down a tree. The daughter really wanted to do that so we did and had a great time. The husband picked out the tree and then the daughter cut it down almost all by herself. It was a great day.

Like many people, Christmas is my FAVORITE time of year. I love the cheer, the happiness, the excitement, and celebrating the birth of our Lord and savior. We decorate our whole house: bedrooms, bathrooms, inside and outside. This year we put up 10 Christmas trees. Every year we have a huge open house style Christmas party where anywhere from 75 -100 people come throughout the day. Due to Covid we are not having it this year and I'm so sad about it. I do believe the sacrifice is totally worth it, but it still breaks my heart. As we are all so busy there are some people I see only once a year at our party. Oh well, hopefully we can have a blowout shindig next year!