November Goals Check In

It's the home stretch of November, and I'm feeling pretty good about our progress. It's never perfect, but we've definitely accomplished a few things.

1) Financial - 

• Meet with a financial planner - Nope. We have a few more details to work out about our longer term plans before we meet with someone to get input. 
• Finalize our 2018 budget. Really! - Yes! We may need to tweak throughout the year, but we are ready to start with this budget. 
• Finalize our 2018 travel plans (2nd half of the year) - this is dependent on other people (my parents/sister), so I have open questions to them on a few dates. 
• Make progress on list of house projects (i.e. prioritize a couple that are not dependent on other projects, and work on budget & timeline for those) - we've prioritized the biggest projects that we want to immediately tackle (a deck for our vacation house, as the existing deck needs to be replaced & solar). 
• Find one alternative cost cutting option - I was pretty creative in my re-use of things like foil, plastic bags, etc. I'll continue to reduce our consumables as much as possible. 
• Sell another $100 of items on either eBay or my local Facebook swap site. If nothing sells, donate & get rid of the clutter. - I sold $122 worth of stuff between eBay & Craigslist. 
• Finalize our long term financial working doc, and share with M. Take a day off & have a financial review meeting, align, adjust the plan, etc. - Made some progress, but didn't achieve the day to review. 
• Get our gas bill down to $60 for the month. We have one trip that we're unsure if we can make with the electric car (soccer tournament), but other than that, we should be able to stick to just the electric car for the majority of our commuting.  - sadly, no. We refilled all of our tanks due to a variety of one time events. (Our car got rear-ended, had to drive to a shop 30 miles away multiple times, a soccer tournament, etc.) We did use the electric car whenever feasibly possible, so I'd estimate we cut 50% off of what our gas bill would have been. 

2) Family - Spend more time together as a family!

• Plan our Thanksgiving menu, and have the kids help with the planning, shopping, prep & cooking. - Done! It was a success!
• Have a family game night.  - We had a foosball tournament. :-) 
• Finish Christmas shopping & planning - all done!
• More decluttering & organizing in our new house (would like to get the boys closet shelving installed, so they can put away/organize all of their games & toys) - We organized all of the toys & games. We haven't bought the shelving yet, but made the best of the area we had & it looks so much better. 

3) Fitness/health - Lose 2 pounds in November

• Eat five servings of fruit & vegetables (combined) per day - Assuming I get 6 servings today, I'll close out November with 4/day. It's progress, & I'll take it! :-) 
• Complete 1000 minutes of cardio - I hit 775 minutes, which is okay. I'd like to have broken into the 800s, but it didn't happen. 
• Complete 6 strength workouts. - I completed 3 strength workouts. 
• Complete 6 stretching workouts - and, zero stretching workouts. No wonder my back is sore. 
• Register for & complete a Turkey Trot - yes!
• Run 20 miles in November. - I didn't actively track, but I'd put it at around 12 miles. 

4) Work/career - Improve my work life balance.

• Keep better perspective at work/reduce stress  - this is a really hard time of the year for my job. I'm doing "okay". At which I would define "okay" as, better than some years, but hard compared to the rest of the year. 
• Work from home 2x this month. - yes, done!
• Plan a spa day. I have a gift card from work that I received over a year ago. Find a day I can make this happen, & take the day off, & relax! - I have the day picked, & just need to call to book. 
• Brainstorm how I would spend my time if I wasn't working. Really think creatively about what this would mean, what the challenges would be, etc. - haven't made progress on this. 
• Spend no gas on my work commute. Electric car only!  - yes!

5) Personal/creative - Spend more time on myself/creative pursuits.

• Try a new recipe using my new crockpot - I did try a new recipe (three, actually), but no crockpot was involved. 
• Do something social at least once per month. - met a friend for a hike.
• Volunteer a minimum of 1x/month. - I've requested a volunteer opportunity for next month, through the school. 
• Write at least 6 blog posts. (Including one on mileage maximizing strategies, per request :-)).- Yes! I think it was 20 posts. Woohoo!

I think that's it from my side - what about you? How are you doing towards your 2017 goals?