Thursday, April 8, 2010

March Firm Determinations Update

At the beginning of 2010 I made a few Firm Determinations. I am very excited about my progress in some areas, and just a little disappointed about my lack of progress in others. Here is how I’ve done with my Financial, Health, Faith, and Blog FD’s.

Finances
Save $5000 towards student loan repayment by May – We have saved $4096.00 towards this goal. That’s 82% towards our goal!
Increase Emergency Fund by one month’s living expenses by May – We have saved $2726.70 towards this goal, which is more than one month’s living expenses for us. Consider this officially checked off the list.
Open a Roth IRA with retirement money in Money Market Account – We are still looking into this. I have the option of opening one up with the same people who do our company’s 401K so I’m going to set up a meeting within the next few months.
Reevaluate goals in May 2010 – this is one FD we are looking forward too!

Health
Run/log 600 miles – I logged 2 miles this month. Yikes. I guess it is an improvement over last month, which didn’t see any miles. It looks like I need to reevaluate this FD.
Ride my new bike to work 24 times – I rode my bike one time in March, which is short of the 2 times a month I need for this FD. Maybe April will be the first successful month.
Do back exercises/stretches 3 times a week – I’m still only doing this about once a week. Sigh.
Try one new meatless meal a month –Here is a picture of the surprisingly yummy black bean taco I had for dinner last week. Mr. DFx40 wasn’t excited about meatless tacos so I had to take my portion of the beans out before I added his beef.


Faith
Volunteer to lead college small group once a month – I volunteered to lead 7 of the 8 times we met.
Spend time with children from bus ministry once a month –This has been more difficult to fulfill lately. We had to make the very sad decision to stop volunteering on Wednesday nights. Maybe I’ll talk more about this later, but I’m still pretty upset, so I’m not going to go into it now.
Spend 3 hours a week reading and studying my bible – I count 30 minutes each for our Sunday and Tuesday college bible study and Sunday small group bible study in this. It is actually more like an hour for each, but I can’t make it that easy! I ended up averaging only 2 hours each week this month.

Blog
Post a new article once a week – I barely met this goal this month. I think I need to work on a schedule instead of whenever I get around to it.
Track all of my input/output and share it once a month – I successfully tracked everything in a spreadsheet, but I think there is way too much information to share, and I don’t see the benefit. I’m rethinking the last half of this FD.

Once again I fell short in some areas and excelled in others. It may take me all year to have a completely successful month. Maybe it’s the warm sunny days we’ve been having, but I am very optimistic for April.

What about you…how have you progressed towards fulfilling your Firm Determinations? Have you reevaluated or modified your goals?

No comments:

Post a Comment