January Goals - How Did We Do?

It was a month of many things. We flew back from Portland on January first, squeezed in a ski trip before school started, got caught in a snowstorm in Lake Tahoe, I went to Tokyo, then LA, we tried to ski again & got rained out. Our pool pump broke & almost caused a fire in the house. M has been on a new "diet" to deal with truly terrible allergies & hives as a result. The new diet means multiple meals each day & has slowed down any freezer or pantry challenges, as well as just finding cooking challenging in general these days.

I set really aggressive goals for myself in January, so here's how I did!


1) Financial:

• Stick to the budget - Eh, no. We were over on dining out (M brought the wrong gift card to one dinner) & then way over on groceries. M had to start doing a keto diet due to allergies, so we had to buy a tremendous amount of different things for that. Our utilities were higher than expected as well. 
• Update our "pay off our house model" once our bonus & equity clears & we see how much we can pay off from that. - M hasn't put his equity in, and has a specific price he wants out of his stock before that happens. I have updated without that, but want to do more thinking about our next steps, and my job. 
• Come up with a new way to reduce what we need/spend on an ongoing basis. - I decided I'll get back into doing our taxes this year, which should save us around $600. In previous years, we were dealing with rental income or the sale of our rental house. This year is quite a bit easier. 
• Make $300 in side hustle money - I made just $50, mostly because I couldn't list eBay items due to my travel schedule (don't want to be trying to manage sales, postage, etc while out of the country). 
• Track all unplanned money, and divert to saving goals - Yes, and it was $740! We put it towards the boys college accounts. 

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

• Go skiing with the kids - Yes, we had two ski days.
• Be more present with the kids & M - play games, minimize computer time, exercise together, etc.. I need to do better with this. I've been back on the computer working in the evenings, & want to change that.  
• Have two dates with M - We had one semi date, where the kids were both gone for a few hours. 

3) Fitness/health - lose 15 pounds 

• Eat 5 servings of fruit & vegetables/day - I was at 3.93. I do not do well when I'm in Tokyo, & need to figure out how to do better in London. 
• Run 8 times
• 31 workouts  - I managed 28/31 workouts. Considering my work travel schedule, I'm pretty happy with this. 
• 1450 or less average daily calories - 1468, and I didn't lose any weight. I'll likely have to drop this next  month if I want to see progress. 
• Complete 1,000 minutes of cardio - 975/1000. So close! 
• Complete 12 strength workouts. -  7/12
• Complete 9 stretching workouts. - 3/9 
• Complete 10 meditations - 5/10. I'm not sure why this goal is listed in two places, & with two numbers to boot. ;-) 

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

• Work from home 2x - yes, done. 
• Meditate 12 times at work - 4/12 times. I was traveling a lot, which made this tricky. 
• Work out 6 times at lunch (this can be a casual walk or something else to break up my day) - 3/6.
• Finalize sabbatical date, and dates for trips I'll take during my sabbatical - Date is finalized, & I have a list of trips, but no dates. 
• Stop using electronics by 7:30 each evening - this was mostly a fail. I need to turn this into family or reading time. 

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

• One social thing (lunch with a friend, hike, etc) - I had lunch with one acquaintance & one person I'd never met before, so considering this a win. 
• Volunteer one time - I haven't found a good, flexible volunteer opportunity. I did find something in March, but need to keep looking for something that I can do "on demand", when my schedule allows. 
• Write/journal at least 4x, or for a total of 3 hours - I journaled 7 times. I've been saying that I want to start writing again for awhile, so it was good to see progress. 
• Brainstorm ideas for homemade Christmas project - I have a few ideas in the hopper. 
• Work on photo books. Decide on tool, start uploading photos & begin with 2018 photo book. - I deleted a few thousand digital photos, went through a huge stack of physical photos, & I'd call that work more of the decluttering & organization required to move on to actually dealing with my photo books. 
• Read one non-fiction book, from the giant pile! - Yes, done! I read a book called "Oola", which I enjoyed & need to think more about. It's about creating balance in your life. 

It's quite a mixed bag. Although I didn't fully accomplish everything, I actually feel like I made a lot of progress towards goals. What about you? How did you do with your January goals?