Comments on: It’s New Year’s Resolutions time! Whatcha got this year?

By: J. Money

J. Money — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 16:37:31 +0000

Nice! Isn’t that amazing? That you can think you weren’t doing that well, but when you go back to check everything you surprise yourself with some AWESOMENESS? That’s the power of tracking, baby! Very very important in financial management, at least to me. I had the opposite problem before this blog – I thought I was doing GREAT until I sat down to go over all the numbers… turns out I was leaking like $200-$300 a month. Not the worst in the world, but def. not a smart trajectory!

Keep it up my friend – I have nothing but faith in you :)

By: Brian

Brian — Sun, 01 Jan 2012 21:01:53 +0000

Just finished crunching some numbers and it turns out we paid $20,774.55 towards our debts, which is roughly 45% of our income from the year 2011. This number is rather surprising to me, I initially felt like we hadn’t maid much progress, but who knew!

For 2012, I would like to flip the script a little bit. My goal is to max out the IRA ($5K) and fully fund our emergency fund ($6K) and put an additional $3K into savings. Also we want to pay off an additional $10,500 of debt, leaving us with no debts other than one of the cars (other already paid off).

Besides that, there’s the usual eat better, exercise more, take more time for ourselves, etc, etc. Happy new year everyone, hope it’s a good one.

By: J. Money

J. Money — Fri, 30 Dec 2011 17:26:05 +0000

Hahahahha… you win for the dopest answers ;) Here’s to success, baby!

By: KJJ

KJJ — Fri, 30 Dec 2011 14:25:30 +0000

2011 Resolution was to be awesome. Nailed it! LOL
2012 Resolution is to max my Roth IRA. And to celebrate all of Elizabeth Taylor’s wedding anniversaries.

By: J. Money

J. Money — Fri, 30 Dec 2011 06:16:22 +0000

@Jessica @ Faith Permeating Life – Yeah, I think you’re right – it’s great for finding out about our patterns :) It’s on my list!
@Stephanie – Thanks! We’re super excited to be parents :) And great goals too, each of them seem SUPER do-able! Keep me updated on them all, okay? Glad you’re back signed up too :)
@Beth Anne – Awwww, all of those would be awesome, but ESP the last one :) I hope so much you can do it! I have faith in you, Ms. Catholic Couponer, haha… GREAT blog name btw, I like it :)
@Liz Martin – Thanks Liz! That means a lot. I’ve been a HUGE fan of Kiplinger since day 1 of getting my finances in order :) To have a small part in your organization is just crazy exciting to me…. glad you enjoyed my mohawk article! haha… it’s def. different ;) Looking forward to connecting more with you and the team.
@Hank – I know what you mean, I used to be the same way too. Then I cut down to like 1 or 2 goals only and it’s sooooo much easier! Esp if it’s one BIG one and then 1 or 2 small-to-medium ones along with it. The more connected they all are (like with my money and time one) the easier I find it is to be accomplished too as it goes together… kinda like going to the gym and eating healthily too. Which both I suck at, haha… if you want me to, I can text you every morning at 5 am to see how your goals are going? ;)

By: Hank

Hank — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 22:50:37 +0000

Congrats on the success and the new goals, man. That’s awesome! A part of me dreads even bothering to make any resolutions though because I personally have such a horrible time sticking with them. I find myself letting them all go before January is even over.

By: Liz Martin

Liz Martin — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 21:09:09 +0000

Hi J$! Happy holidays and CONGRATULATIONS on the baby, how exciting! I saw your guest post on our site today, it’s great! I really enjoyed reading it. Hopefully you can write more for us soon.
-Liz

By: Beth Anne

Beth Anne — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 08:20:36 +0000

Great goals! Congrats on the baby!

I’m really bad at doing new years resolutions. Since I’ve been blogging and reading blogs I’m really thinking about getting on board with this. I’m also thinking about creating my “bucket list” on my blog and seeing if I can get any of it done. Anyway my goals:

1) Get a decent living-wage paying job
2) Start making a dent on paying off debt
3) Start feeling better about my life :)

By: Stephanie

Stephanie — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 05:19:46 +0000

Wow, so I guess I should have gone back further after accidentally deleting your blog from my feed… I totally missed the post about the baby! Congrats!!!!!!

I just got done making the 2012 budget spreadsheet, and my main goal is to stick to a 33% increase in IRA contributions (that’s a 33% increase from the previous contribution amount, not from my overall income), and hopefully save at least $5k for a downpayment on a new (to me at least!) car.

Non-finance resolutions include going to the gym 3 times a week – I stuck to that until mid-October this year, and have been to the gym twice since then…oops! And hopefully fix up our laundry room, which is a complete mess but could easily be completely overhauled for $500 or so… I guess that’s technically a finance-related resolution since it involves money, but it’s money we already have available to us, it’s more a matter of motivating myself to actually get it done! :-P

By: Jessica @ Faith Permeating Life

Jessica @ Faith Permeating Life — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 03:42:39 +0000

@ J. Money
The time-tracking sheet is intended to show you the larger patterns in how you work–like, whether you tend to move frequently between different types of work or do one kind of work for hours at a time (which is how I work, so I have to make myself take breaks so my brain doesn’t get fried). And you can see at a glance how long you spent on each of your different projects (or checking e-mail, or whatever). I also used it to mark how often I was interrupted because I have a particular coworker that interrupts me all the time–I got interrupted maybe 3 times total during the week he was on vacation, and then 3-4 times a day when he got back! Like I said, I just tracked my work for a month and that was enough to give me a lot of insights. It’s worth trying, anyway :)