Tag Archives: goals

2014 Goals – Massive Fail

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I made a few goals for 2014, almost none of which worked out.  Oh well, I wasn’t expecting to pick up and move either!

Health Goals

Massive Fail here.

  • I gained 20lbs instead of losing 15: FAIL.
  •  I started out the year exercising, but then we moved, and I haven’t gotten back into it other than trying to make 10k steps per day via my Fitbit: FAIL
  • Eating 3 servings of fruits or veggies day?  Nope: FAIL  I’m lucky to get one at dinner…

Financial Goals

Technically failure, but only because we sold our house and lost that asset, although it may have been close if we hadn’t sold the house.

  • Pay off all non-mortgage debt that carries interest.  Everything but the car (at 0% interest) is paid off: SUCCESS
  • Get to 650k Net Worth.  We are sitting about 550k, which without the house is really darn good. If we hadn’t sold the house, we’d have been above 650k based on Zillow’s current estimate of our old house.  FAIL
  • Increase our assets to 1.2 million.  Without the house, we’re down over half a million.  We might have made it to 1.2 million with the house.  FAIL

Household/Parenting Goals

  • Get rid of diapers – we have stopped using her cloth diapers – they don’t fit her any more, so we’ve had to move to pull-ups for at night.  At least we’re completely out of diapers during the day with very few accidents!  I have a feeling we’ll not be buying any more pull ups though, we’re starting to have a couple of nights where she wakes up dry. We’re also not really pushing diaperless at night because of the moving. I’m gonna call this one a (technical) SUCCESS
  • Get rid of another 365 things in 365 days.  We got rid of way more, both via donations and taking things to the dump.  I am already starting a list of things to get rid of once it’s out of storage: SUCCESS
  • Finish the tile in our basement project.  I paid someone to do this, but it was done ($750 including painting!) to show the house:  SUCCESS

The good thing is that we’ve made a serious commitment to saving more for our early retirement this year.  I’ve increased my salary, we’ve upped our contributions to max out our 403(b)s in 2015, as well as contributing to an HSA and hopefully two Roths next year.  Our retirement accounts have increased significantly (from $337,687.88 in January to $423,630.36 at the beginning of December), even if our Net Worth didn’t.

Early next year, I’ll be posting my goals to fail at for 2015.  Have a happy and safe New Year!

Update on Health Goals

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January is over, and I wanted to update on how my health goals are going.

I’ve not gained any weight (and lost 1.7lbs), but I’ve changed my calorie intake and my exercise.  I’ve gotten up at 5:30am for 16 days in a row now to exercise for 30 minutes in the morning before everyone else wakes up.

I’ve been doing P90x3 and enjoying most of it.  I’m on the 3rd week of block 1, and next week starts the transition week.  I’ve never stuck with anything so long before – except maybe half-marathon training.  I like being able to roll out of bed, get dressed and exercise before my shower and not have to worry about it later in the day when I’m more tired and more likely to say screw it.  It’s over and done with, and I have a decent idea of how many calories I have to “eat back” throughout the day.

I’ve increased my calorie intake to closer to my TDEE and will slowly increase it until I get to my TDEE of 1900 calories.  I’ve basically been starving myself, and I want to get my metabolism back to where it should be, so my primary goal at the moment is to maintain my weight while increasing my calories every week.  I’m up at 1600 calories/day, and still maintaining or losing.  It’ll be a long process, but I’ll be able to not eat like a bird again.

I’m not doing as well at eating a fruit or veggie every day – although I’d say I’m at about 90% compliance – we have salads almost every night for dinner, which gets me 2-3 servings of veggies (mostly lettuce).  I had an apple on each of Saturday and Sunday – mostly mindless munching of apple slices – which I should take advantage of.

How are your goals coming along?

How I’m Going to Meet my Household/Parenting Goals

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Goals

  • Get rid of diapers!
  • Get rid of another 365 things in 365 days
  • Finish the tile in our basement project

Getting Rid of Diapers

Daughter Person has been potty trained for #1 for the last 6 months, and has gone over a month with no accidents outside of sleeping (nap/bedtime).  She’s even doing pretty good with the naps as long as we can get to her when she’s just waking up and convince her to use the potty.  We tried a few nights to let her sleep without a diaper, but she soaks herself and doesn’t wake up, so I don’t think we’re there yet.  We’ll let her decide when she wants to sleep without a diaper.

#2 is going to be our nemesis.  She used to try #2 in the potty – about 25% of the time, now she’s just refusing to use it and uses her undies instead.  At this point, we’ve tried bribing, cajoling, shaming, and begging.  We’ve moved on to the “have it your way kid, we’ll just let you walk around in it for a few minutes” phase.  She *loves* Pixar’s “Cars”, and I spent way more than I probably should have to create a “goodie bag” of Cars things she can pick from if she does #2 on the potty.  She gets shown this bag at least daily, and it still hasn’t helped – she hasn’t been able to pick one single thing from it in almost a month.

Night time is the only time we’re using diapers, and I’m getting a few of the older ones ready to re-sell to a friend who’s due in April (she asked if she could buy them from us, so I’m giving her a reduced price).  Pretty soon, we’ll have 5 diapers (out of the approximately 32 we started with).  Hopefully, by the time she’s 4, she’ll be able to stay dry at night too!

365 Less Things

I’m continuing this year with trying to rid our house of another 365 things.  I’ve already made a bit of a start.  But I’m going through the storage closets in the basement and in our crawl space.  Dad might let me into his office to see about getting rid of more things.  Our TV room has a lot of furniture in it that we want to get rid of and replace with one entertainment center, so there is a lot of opportunity there.   My goal is to pick one room a month to purge – clothes, toys, knick knacks, etc.  Daughter Person’s room is this month.  The donation box is overflowing with old books and toys.  I’m finally getting rid of the 24 month clothes she still has floating around, and some diapering things that we don’t need any more.  Much of it is going into a box to offer to my expecting friend – she gets first rights of refusal, but she’s having a boy, so not many of the clothes are suitable.

Finish the Basement Project

I have promised Dad that the basement will be finished this year (I would like to have it done before summer, but that might be pushing it)!  I’ve already scraped out the carpet glue inside the closets that have already been cleared of carpet, so we can store things in them until it comes time to do the tile.  I’ve gotten rid of several things that were taking up space via freecycle.  I have to move a few things around so Dad can remove the rest of the carpet, and I can get started on getting up more carpet glue.

I plan to work in the basement at least 2-3 hours per week, depending on how tired I am.  It’s not exactly a safe place for Daughter Person, so we can’t really let her play down there while we work 🙁

How I’m Going to Meet My Financial Goals

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Our financial goals are pretty modest, mostly to account for the fact that we’re not completely in control of two of them – the market has a lot to say about it.

Our Goals

  • Pay off all non-mortgage debt that carries interest
  • Get to 650k in Net Worth, with a stretch goal of 700k
  • Increase our assets to 1.2 million (conservative to account for market fluctuations)

Pay off Debt

Our goal this year is to pay off all non-mortgage debt that carries interest.  We’re on track to have my student loans paid off around July.  Then, the only debt we’ll have is the car loan at 0% interest and the mortgage at 4.125% interest.  We’re still waffling on killing the car loan this year – we can do it – but because it’s 0%, we’d rather that extra money work for us.  The current plan is to set aside $2500/mth to pay off non-mortgage debt (principal and interest).

Once the student loans are paid off, the plan is to put 20% of my salary and 17.5% of Dad’s salary towards our 401(k) and 403(b) plans (the percentages that get us just over the legal maximum not counting any bonuses).  That won’t max us out for this year, but it will give us our new “normal” after-tax income for 2015, and once we get those numbers, we’ll allocate the rest of that $2500/mth to either a Roth, beefing up the emergency fund (my preference), a taxable investment account, or the car loan.  We don’t want to go hog-wild and try to contribute an almost combined $35k in 6 months leaving us without what we need for “normal” spending.  But, if the contribution limits change in 2015, we’ll be increasing our contributions along with it – both of our retirement plans have a “contribute the legal max” button that we plan on using for 2015.

650k Net Worth/Assets of 1.2million

We added almost 150k to our net worth in 2013, and almost 200k to our assets. A good bit of that was the market run-up, and I don’t expect that to continue in 2014, but I do expect to increase our net worth and assets by contributing substantially more to our retirement accounts, and paying off debt.  If the stock market starts running up again, I may revise our goal, but gaining 100k in one year will make us happy.

We’re also dependent on our housing market to stay stable (or grow), and while it’s been stable and growing for the last 3 years, I’m just hoping it stays stable.  The DC area has a “special” housing bubble in that so many people are moving in and out of the area, that housing has remained relatively stable – even through 2007-2009.  Values did drop, but not as sharply as other areas of the country.  I’m counting on that protective “bubble” to remain throughout 2014.

How I’m Going to Meet my Health Goals

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Just setting goals is not sufficient for me – they’re too abstract.  I also have to put behind them a task list that gives me “something to do” that will let me reach those goals.  Here, I’m going to talk about my health goals in more detail and what I’m going to do to reach them.  I’m focusing on creating “habits” rather than just doing something once and forgetting about it.  Ultimately, I want to be healthier, hopefully fix my back issues (resulting from pregnancy, not weight, so not sure I can do this) and eat better to be a better role model for Daughter Person.

Goals

  • Lose 15 lbs, with a stretch goal of 20 lbs
  • Exercise at least 3 times per week for at least 20 minutes each time
  • Eat at least 3 servings of fruits or vegetables per day – potato based foods do not count as a veggie

Losing Weight

Since I know that BMI is a poor indicator of my health, I’m focusing more on body fat percentage and how I feel than my exact weight.  I’m just hoping that the weight will follow.  My current body fat percentage is 42.2%, and pre-pregnancy, it was pretty consistently about 36%, and that was still a bit too high for me.  I’d like to shoot for 30%, which is at the higher end of the “healthy” range.  I don’t know what that will look like weight wise for me, but I’m hoping it means I can fit into smaller jeans 🙂

Losing weight is about 80% what you eat rather than what exercise you do.  You can lose weight without doing any exercise at all (been there, done that), but there are consequences, such as lost muscle tone and reduced metabolism.  And losing muscle mass is not ideal for me since I want to have a higher lean/fat ratio.  So, I’m doing a combination of reducing calories and exercising (see next goal).

I’ve joined My Fitness Pal, and I’m focusing on logging my food daily.  I’ve even set up a gympact for it – I have to record at least 3 meals per day before midnight for 5 days per week, or I lose $5/day.  MFP has me at 1200 calories per day,  which is low.  I’ve tried raising it to what would be “normal” for my weight, but I just gained weight over the last 4 weeks.  I know 1200 calories will make me lose weight.  BUT, I have to eat back any exercise calories I “earn”.  I have a fitbit, which accounts for my non-exercising calorie burn – I usually get 2-300 extra calories per day from that.

Exercising More

I started this at the end of last year.  I’m waking up early every other day to exercise in my living room.  I started with 20-30 minutes videos, but I’ve found I prefer the 1hour long videos.  Because I’m waking up before Daughter Person (and thus guessing at when she’s going to wake up), I’m shooting for at least 20 minutes for each workout.  I know I’m waking up early enough to fit that in, and possibly a whole hour.  I’ve been doing random DVDs I happen to have around, most are circuit training, so they’re working both cardio and muscles.  Any calories I burn here will go into MFP and I get to “eat them back”.  A heart rate monitor is on its way to me so I can get a pretty accurate measurement of the number of calories burned.

Eating Better

I’m a horrible eater.  I rarely eat fruit, and green things are generally “yucky” tasting to me.  I avoid all bitter foods, which means spinach, kale, and pretty much anything leafy green.  I do eat butter lettuce (green or red leaf) as long as it’s got some dressing on it.  My mom was not a great cook growing up, and I’ve since learned many things I thought I didn’t like, I didn’t like because of the way my mom prepared them.  Dad has introduced me to several vegetables that I will now eat – squash being the biggest one.  Daughter Person eats more things than I do – she *loves* fruit, I can’t stand the fibrous strands in almost all fruit.  I do eat apples – as long as they’re Honeycrisp, Pink Ladies or a similarly hard crisp apple. No wonder I thought I didn’t like apples when you compare the more common red delicious apples with the pink ladies!  Luckily, Pink Lady apples are a “storage” apple, and can hang around and stay fresh for a *long* time – like 4-5 months long in the fridge.  My goal is to increase how many fruits and vegetables I eat.  I’m likely to stick with the ones I know I like, but Dad has agreed to help me cook things in different ways to see if something else is enjoyable (I’ve heard roasted broccoli is good for people who don’t like bitter tastes).

My plan is to have a salad with dinner – which is one serving of vegetables (probably 2 given how much lettuce I put in mine), and have one serving of vegetables with dinner.  Then either a vegetable or fruit for lunch.  That gets me 3 servings per day.  And I hope to slowly increase that number throughout the year, but 3 is a starting point.

Have you mapped out how you plan to meet your goals for the year?

Looking Forward to 2014

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With 2014 here, I wanted to evaluate my goals for the upcoming year.  And actually write them down this year.  I’ve split my goals into three categories, and three goals in each category.

Health Goals

I’m overweight – borderline obese (although you wouldn’t know it by looking at me, I’m one of the people BMI just does NOT work for), and I’d like to get close to a “normal” weight, which for me is between 115 (hah!) and 154 lbs.  I’ve never been 115 in my adult life, and even 150 is hard for me to maintain for longer than about a month.  I also look like I’m terminally ill below about 145. 15lbs isn’t going to get me to “healthy”, but it’s a start.  I’m more focused on my body fat percentage and jeans size than actual weight.

  • Lose 15 lbs, with a stretch goal of 20 lbs
  • Exercise at least 3 times per week for at least 20 minutes each time
  • Eat at least 3 servings of fruits or vegetables per day – potato based foods do not count as a veggie

Financial Goals

I know I mentioned wanting to pay off all non-mortgage debt this year, and we could likely do it, but with our car payment at 0%, we’re going to pay the student loans down, then increase our retirement contributions to the maximum allowed (and maybe qualify for a Roth?).  It will slow down our car repayment, but since it’s not “costing” us anything, I’d rather put the money to work for us.

  • Pay off all non-mortgage debt that carries interest
  • Get to 650k in Net Worth, with a stretch goal of 700k
  • Increase our assets to 1.2 million (conservative to account for market fluctuations)

Household/Parenting Goals

These are random goals around the house that I want to complete this year.  These are the big ones, although I have smaller ones in mind already.

  • Get rid of diapers!
  • Get rid of another 365 things in 365 days
  • Finish the tile in our basement project