New Year...New Goals

Happy 2009!

My ultimate goal is to finish the journey out of debt and to be in a place where we can begin to accumulate wealth and have the life we dream of when we retire.
That means that my New Year's resolutions should get me closer to that ultimate goal. I'm tempted, like many others, this year to make resolutions like "losing ten pounds" or "finally getting organized". These are good resolutions, but where I think they fall short, at least for me, is how they fit in with the big picture. For me, this year should bring us closer to the end goal and that means "frugal living" is the keyphrase for the year. I'm thinking if I expand on the habits I've already created and get a few new ones that we'll be that much closer to the end goal at the beginning of 2010.

I'm not knocking the "lose 10 pounds" or "get organized" resolutions either. God knows I could use two or THREE of each of those. Frugal living, I believe, would incorporate both of those resolutions and still. Being frugal, including my eating, should help me to lose a few pounds. And to get the most of our resources and budget, then being organized is a key component. Another key component to gaining on my resolution (and ultimately our goals) is accountability. I am accountable each month for our spending and saving by looking at how the budget went. That was a great motivator and worked wonders for us last year. That's another reason that I started this blog. To know that I am accountable each week, even if it's just on paper(or monitor? lol) for having done something to get us closer to our goals could be a big motivator for me.

Seeing patterns from week to week, month to month can be a key component to getting more organized and I guess I can also report pounds lost as I report on other tasks day to day as well.

Most of the blogs that I read day to day also blog day to day. I don't think I can do that. I do well on some days just to get my email read and read other people's blogs. I have to keep in mind that I can't do everything and a frugal use of computer time will allow me to be frugal elsewhere too! What I am sure I can do is an entry once a week. I may be able to blog more than once a week and I will shoot for three or four times a week. However, since this is really an experiment in accountability (and expression) I have to save some of my "free" time for projects to blog about! haha