2015 Goals in Review

I can’t believe that it is almost 2016 already.  2015 was a busy and exciting year for me.  I hope 2016 is a bit quieter, but I doubt it will be.  I already know of all sorts of exciting and fun things that are in the works, so I’m enjoying the down time this week.  (I have the week off work and am spending a lot of it at home, reading and puttering around my house.)

Anyway, I figure it is best to get my 2015 review done before the end of the year, so I’m going a bit off schedule of my regular Tuesday/Thursday posts (regular in that I’ve been trying for that schedule for about a month now…) and am posting my review today so that I can squeeze it in before the new year.

Last year, I started my blog off with 4 posts about the goals I had for 2015.  I did a bunch of somewhat mid-year reviews in August and September that pretty much covered everything… and I honestly haven’t done much since then to get any further on my goals, so if you read that, this won’t really contain anything new… and will be a quick summary of how I did with my 2015 goals.  I’ll talk about my new 2016 goals in another post, probably next week.

Financial Goals

First up, my financial goals.  In my initial financial goals post I made five goals.  I reviewed them all in August, but didn’t really make any major changes to them…

1. Budget:  I am really happy with how far we have come with our budgeting.  We keep track of our spending, and while we aren’t always super frugal, we have made good strides towards living a more frugal life.  The turning point for me was definitely finding the YNAB software.  I am a sucker for the built in graphs and reports.
2. Planned Spending:  I’m not sure if I should be proud of the accomplishment of saving up a bunch of money then spending it all… but we did it.  We had three big savings goals and though we haven’t actually spent all the education money yet, it’s there waiting to be spent.  If we add that all up we saved over $30,000 for our planned spending this year.  That’s pretty good savings.  Now we just need to put that towards more long term goals…
3. RRSP: I started the year with a vague goal for my RRSP contributions, and throughout the year I made changes to it… first to make it more concrete… and then when I reached that goal a few times, I increased it.  I’m happy to report that at this moment, my RRSP is over $50,000 so despite my low value when I did my review in August, I did manage to meet this goal!  YAY!
4. TFSA: Let’s just say this didn’t happen and move on, shall we?
5. Emergency Fund:  Originally this was a $10,000 goal, but with over spending in a few areas throughout the year, I decided to go smaller to start… and $3000 was the final goal… unfortunately, I only made it to $2500.  Better than nothing, but not there yet.

Professional Goals

Reading over my three original professional goals, they weren’t really specific enough, or very measurable…  (definitely not “SMART” goals), so it doesn’t surprise me that in my mid-year review, and even now, I don’t really feel that I’ve done well at these goals.

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Fall Fitness Plan

At the beginning of the month, I did a review of my health and fitness goals, and one of the things that came up from that review was that I wanted to put together another fitness challenge like the one I attempted to do in preparation for my wedding.  I actually had a lot of fun doing that one, when I actually did it… and it felt really good, so I spent some time making myself a new chart for the next month and a bit.

My schedule for work is going to be a bit chaotic, so I have attempted to take that in to account on the schedule.  I’m hoping that if I don’t “fail” because I scheduled something wrong with work, then I’m more likely to keep going… in theory, anyway…

My new chart starts today… But I slept in this morning (hence the lunchtime blog posting), so I missed my morning workout time, which means if I’m not going “fail” on day one, I’ll have to make some time tonight to do my exercises.  I made one change in exercises from my summer challenge, I got rid of the mountain climbers (I just don’t really like that exercise…) and replaced it with some leg raises.  Not sure if it will be as effective, but I’ll give it a try.

Health & Fitness and Misc. Goals Update

Last week I did an update on both my financial goals and my professional goals.  I had planned to have this post written to publish on Monday this week, but then I got sick… and all I managed to do all weekend was sit on my couch and watch Netflix.  Not super productive, but that’s about all my brain and body could handle.  Now that I’m all back to normal (or mostly), I figured I should finish up my goals review and update with my health & fitness goals and my miscellaneous goals.

Health & Fitness Goals

I had 6 goals originally when I made them back in December.  The first was to lose 15lbs by my wedding.  Well, my wedding has come and gone… and I definitely wasn’t down 15lbs from my post-Christmas weight, so that was a FAIL!  However, I did manage to get almost 10lbs down before the summer festivities started up… I don’t really want to put emphasis on weight, as I am constantly reminded that it is about feeling good and being healthy, not about the numbers on the scale, but I want to make myself a new goal of being back down to that 10lbs below post-Christmas 2014 before the end of this year.  I realize that means that I am putting my deadline right after one of the worst times for weight gain… but so be it.

Mission: Get Fit!

The countdown is on… According to my wedding website, I have 37 days until my wedding!

Time to up the ante, and get fit!  Or at least maintain my current status…

One of my original goals for the year was to lose 15 lbs before my wedding… as of my weigh-in this week, I’m almost back up to my Christmas weight… not good… Don’t worry, I don’t have the unrealistic expectation to lose 15 lbs in the next 37 days, however, I do want to see if I can at least feel like I put in a good last ditch effort to look and feel my best for the big day.

On one of her most recent “Fitness Friday” posts, Writer Style posted this 4 exercise challenge with squats, planks, push-ups and crunches (originally from catch 88).  I was intrigued… and perhaps inspired…

June 2015 – Goals in Review

HAPPY CANADA DAY!!!

Now, before I get started on this review, I have to admit that I’m getting a little tired of writing a review of all of my goals when there hasn’t been any progress on them… Or maybe I’m just tired of my goals… So… I’m going to change it up a bit here, and just review the goals that I’ve made progress on, or have something to report… Which isn’t much this month…

If you want to see a list of all my goals for 2015, you can check out my goals page.

Financial Goals

2. Savings/Planned Spending:
We got our new roof this month, so the home reno fund was successfully filled, and then drained… I’m sure we’ll get a new goal for the home reno fund soon enough, but until then we can concentrate on other savings…

May 2015 – Goals in Review

I can’t believe it is already June… I’m pretty sure I’ve said that at the beginning of all of my goals in review posts… It’s crazy how fast time seems to be flying by.

My goals posts always end up being really long, so I apologize in advance.  If you are just joining me on my journey to a better me, please check out my goals page for the list of my 2015 goals and links to the posts where I have explained them in detail.  But now, let’s get down to the review…

Burnt Kale Is Still Healthy, Right?

So, I’ve been in a little bit of a funk lately… once again… Definitely not moving forward in any of my goals… In fact moving backward in quite a few of them… I’ve totally fallen off the fitness train, and my half marathon is this weekend… Looks like I’ll be signing up for another one, just like the 10k.

I’m falling behind at work, and have definitely not been blogging with any regularity… I’m feeling the pressure of the wedding planning and a few other deadlines, both personal and work related a looming…

With the lack of fitness, and a bunch of unhealthy eating and drinking (I’m totally a stress eater), I’ve been feeling yucky and my weight has been going the wrong direction on the scale…

I’m away for work again this week, so I’m cooking in my hotel room, but I’m trying to make an effort to eat healthy.  I decided to try my hand at making kale chips…

I used this recipe for my inspiration, but I don’t have coconut oil with me up here, so I subbed olive oil.

I made two batches in the oven.  The first got a little overdone, so for the second batch I turned the oven down.  They turned out a bit better.  But burnt kale is still healthy, right? 😉

April 2015 – Goals in Review

I can’t believe that it is the last day of April.  Normally (as normal as 3 previous blog posts can be…), I post my goals in review once the new month starts, but I’m away for work right now, so it’s not likely that I’ll magically get anything accomplished, so might as well post my review early.

So here goes…

March 2015 – Goals in Review

I can’t believe March is already done… And Easter is this weekend. I am excited for the long weekend, but will probably spend most of it catching up on my studying… Lame, I know…

March was pretty much a failure on the goals front.  I didn’t do much on my goals this month… like nothing.  So this review won’t have much progress to report. I was definitely feeling the March “blahs”… Most goals are still at the same place where they were at the end of February, but none the less, here it is:

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…