February 2015 – Goals in Review

Another month of 2015 done, so it is once again time to review the goals I have for the year and see how I’m doing…  These reviews are a little wordy sometimes, so sorry about that… but it really helps me to see all the goals in one place and review them all…

Financial Goals

1. Budget: Another budget was made.  And, as I discussed in the review of the budget that I did earlier this week, we stuck to it better than in January, but still lots of room for improvement.  Baby steps.  We made a budget for March, and will try to improve upon the sticking to it.

2. Savings (or planned spending):  The Wedding Fund was fully funded by the end of January.  We have switched gears and with the delay in my fiance’s schooling, we started contributing to the Home Reno Fund now.  I updated my status bars on the right side of my blog on the weekend, and swapped them from percentages to monetary values… It’s just easier to see and use.  I say this was mostly successful.  I think we are a bit behind on savings, but it may just be a matter of designating existing money to these funds…

3. RRSP:  I still haven’t done any increases to my RRSP contributions.  However, I did find some money that was in a pension from a past employer which I am transferring over to my RRSP.  This month when I do my taxes, I will get an update on my RRSP contribution room and will update my goal for this.  I am changing this goal to a monetary value, and will be updating it once I get that found money transferred over.

4. TFSA:  I have done zero contribution on this.  The ultimate goal is to max this out, so I’ve updated the status bar to reflect how much of the maximum ($36,500) I have ever contributed.  I’m still keeping my goal of 12%, which would be $4380, so I’ll round that up to a goal $4400.  At this point, that means that I only have to add $2400 this year.  That is stupid small.  I should really make this higher, but we’ll start with that for now.

5. Emergency Fund:  No progress since last month, but with my new budget format this month, and the work I am doing on designating purposes to the money that I have in my various accounts, I think that I will be able to say that there has been progress by the end of this month.

Professional Goals

1. Exam:  I posted my study schedule last week.  So progress has been made.  I’m already behind, but at least I’ve started now… that’s something…

2. Productivity:  I said I had made progress in January, but I haven’t progressed any further… in fact, I feel a bit like I have gone backwards… I am regularly arriving at work after 8:30 am now, and am having a hard time staying focused.  And I am definitely not making myself a daily task list like I had said I would.  Time to buckle down.

3. Work Related Reading:  Done zero.  Nada.  Nothing.  Though, following my study plan, I will have read at least 1 text book and 5 online references by the end of March.  I think that will count for catching up.  Then one text book for April is already planned in the study plan.  I’ll need to sort out the rest of the year after that.

Health & Fitness Goals

1. Weight Loss: At my last weigh in (Monday morning), I was down 7.8 lbs from my post-Christmas weight.  I am very happy with that progress, but I’m pretty sure that I was just dehydrated after all my sports on the weekend, so I will need to step it up if I am to make my 15 lbs goal by my wedding in August.

2. 10k in under 1 hour: I did go for a 6 km run this month with a pace that would get me under 60 minutes.  So I hopefully will be able to do the April race at that pace, or somewhere near it.  My running partner and I haven’t actually practiced a full 10k yet… we had planned to… but some of those nasty cold bugs that have been hitting this year caused our plans to get slightly derailed.  I have also realized that I have very little motivation in the morning when I am not meeting my running partner… the snooze button gets pressed a LOT!

3.  1/2 marathon in 2 hours:  I still haven’t registered for a 1/2 marathon yet, and I mentioned in my last goals review that I had laid out a fitness training plan, but I still haven’t got motivated enough to post it on here… and I have pretty much not been following it anyway.  Maybe it is time to post the training plan so I can be more accountable…

4. Exercise 3 times a week:  Success!  With all my other fitness goals and my team sports, this one is almost too easy…

5. Weekly Meal Plan:  This one is pretty good.  I make a plan on Sunday night or Monday morning for the whole week.  We mostly follow it, but there are always things that come up, or one meal ends up with more leftovers than we can handle, so we skip one of the planned meals… or delay it until the weekend.  (I typically leave the Saturday/Sunday meals open because our plans change at the last minute on the weekends.)

6. 7 drinks per week:  This is definitely a challenge, but I feel like I improved with this in February.  I had one week where I only had 1 drink… but I was sick all that week, so I basically slept and drank hot lemon honey drinks… And this past week, I’m pretty sure I stuck to only 6 drinks, though some may have been extra large ones… All of the other weeks I’m pretty sure I’ve gone over 7, but it’s been close, and I’ve been way more conscious of it, which I guess is part of the idea.

Miscellaneous Goals

1. Decluttering Tasks: I am about a month behind… and I’m only 2 months in to the year.  More catch-up is required.  Maybe this weekend?

2. Garden Plan: The deadline to start planting is coming up pretty quick, so I should get a move on for this one…

3. Wedding Planning:  Oh man… I still haven’t actually made a schedule or to-do list yet… We did meet with our photographers last week though.  So maybe that’s progress… And apparently not all the “Save the Dates” actually made it to people… some got lost in the mail?  Questionable… So I think we will have to follow up on that… And get our invites made… Ugh… overwhelming… I love lists, and planning, so I don’t know why I’m having so much trouble with this one.

Overall February Result: B+

Yeah, maybe I’m being a little generous with my grade for myself, but there is no point beating myself up.  Going through the goals and realizing I haven’t made much progress to blog about is motivation enough.  Might as well celebrate the little victories.

How have your goals progressed this month?  What sort of grade would you give yourself?

Advertisement