New Year’s Resolutions: Improve Financially

Earlier this week I made a list of New Year’s Resolutions.  This is the second installment of several that will be detailing my goals. This one is probably one of the most personal of goals but, in keeping with keeping myself accountable, here’s number two.

Goal number two: Improve Financially

This year we will reduce (and maybe even eliminate!) our debt, increase our emergency and long-term savings and begin to invest more wisely (and I don’t mean in the stock market).

Debt

This year I think we’ll finally be able to nip that last tiny bit of debt in the bud. 2013 will feel amazing. Finally not owing anyone (except, perhaps, our mortgage lender) anything. We’ve already planned out our budget for 2012 all the way through December. After all the planning, we’ve discovered that 2012 will likely be a slightly boring year for the Autrys but that’s okay! Just bear with us for another 11 ½ months.

I’m really serious. If we decline invites to dinner, going out, movies, etc. it is not because we don’t love you! We’re just making ourselves poor so we can get this stuff off the books.

Save

I’ll just go ahead and say it: we’re really bad at saving.

This year, in addition to paying off our debt, we’ll be building our rainy day savings. It makes me all happy inside just knowing we’ll have that security of that fall back money. Just in case something were to happen, we won’t have to fall back on a credit card and get ourselves into more debt. It won’t be a lot but it will be enough for most emergencies we might get ourselves into. We’re also planning better for those unexpected…or, rather, infrequent (but NOT unexpected) things that come up.  Things like tires, scheduled maintenance on the car, home repairs, vet bills, etc. I’m sure our financial advisor is doing a little happy dance because he’s been trying to get us to do this for years. Instead, we’ve lived by the Dave Ramsey $1,000 in the bank theory. While it is great for probably 90% of the population, it has not been working for us. And he’s been telling us this for 2 years. Well, I suppose he finally got it through my hard head that I must save for these things in addition to my $1,000 emergency fund. Kudos, Justin King. Your persistence finally made it through my thick skull.

Invest

Screw the stock market.

When I say invest, I mean invest in us. In our things. In our home and in ourselves.

We have lived in our home for over 2 years and we’ve not put a dime of improvement money into it.  Mainly for lack of planning.  When we bought our house our realtor told us how important it was to constantly make improvements to your house, however big or small they may be. This will help us avoid costly last-minute improvements in the event that we sell our house in the future. This year we have budgeted money to specifically invest in the improvement in our home.

We might be really boring this year but our house is going to start going through some major DIY overhauls! Most of them will be done ourselves for very little money but we do plan on spending nearly our entire budget on redoing our floors. Our floors completely disgust me. Read in the next few days for the improvements we plan on making.

Maybe our house will look like this when we’re done. You think? ha! 🙂

Well, that’s it for number two. What do you think? Do you have any 2012 financial goals?

Money=Time=Money=Time

Time. It’s a lot like money. And, time is money, right?

When I get a raise or a bonus at work, I always think, “Awesome! Now I can…” and it can be a multitude of things. Build up our savings, buy new clothes, pay off this or that. But, inevitably, when money comes, something else comes along to eat it up. I mean, do you feel like you are that much “richer” than when you were 21? My salary has doubled since I was 21 and I feel no more rich than I was then. Funny how that happens, yea? You know…life?

Well, apparently, the same is true for time. As you know, I deleted my Facebook two weeks ago. I dreamt of the extra time I would have just to sit and read, catch up on some Netflix movies, clean my house and do my homework. Oh…to dream.

Instead of lazily spending time with my dogs, reading or watching movies, I barely squeezed in my Netflix DVDs while wrapping up some homework from last week along with chores of laundry, dishes and cooking. This school/career thing is taking up WAY more time than I had originally anticipated. I expected 5-10 hours a week…but it’s more like 15-30 hours a week. I spent my entire Sunday working on school/career-related things. Like…every.single.minute.

Well, hopefully in the next few weeks (come on August 22nd!!) things will slow down enough for me to actually get some relaxation time.  Today is go day for re-activating my Facebook.  I don’t plan on spending as much time as I have on it in the past.  I think these last two weeks, if anything, have taught me that I just don’t have time for Facebook!!  I’d rather be reading, blogging, schooling, CrossFitting, cooking, or spending time with F&F.

Some random “time” and “money” facts:

• There is a World of  Warcraft spell called “Time is Money.” No idea what it does, but it exists!
• Pink Floyd has a song called “Money” that is particularly notable for its unusual 7/4–4/4 time signature, its distinctive bassline and the seven-beat loop of money-related sound effects that opens the track.
• By taking 1 hour per day for independent study, 7 hours per week, 365 hours in a year, one can learn at the rate of a full-time student. In 3-5 years, the average person can become an expert in the topic of their choice, by spending only one hour per day.
• In the last 20 years, working time has increased by 15% and leisure time has decreased by 33%. (scary)
• The first paper notes were printed in denominations of 1 cent, 5 cents, 25 cents, and 50 cents in 1862.
• Martha Washington is the only woman whose portrait has appeared on a U.S. currency note. It appeared on the face of the $1 Silver Certificate of 1886 and 1891, and the back of the $1 Silver Certificate of 1896.
• Scientists have shown that, in theory, two distant parts of the Universe could be linked by a tunnel through space and time called a wormhole. A wormhole might work as a time machine. By making a round-trip journey through the tunnel, you could arrive home before you left.

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Thanks for reading!  ~*~JL~*~