December End of the Month Review 2018

December Goals

• Finish Paying off Credit Card #9
• Blogmas
• Really Enjoy the Christmas Season

Sadly, We didn’t make our goal of paying off credit card #9 by the end of the month. We will carry a balance of $500 over into the new year. We set a pretty large goal because we wanted to challenge ourselves. However, it was not a well-thought-out goal. My husband doesn’t work around the holidays. He was off for five days for Christmas and will be off for four days for New Year’s Day. We didn’t take the fact that he was going to have multiple short checks into consideration. On the upside, we did make progress this month. We paid off $1,362 on credit card #9 which is impressive. I’m trying not to be too hard on myself.

Blogmas was a bust too. I got sick toward the beginning of the month and blogmas was put on the back-burner. I was considering trying to catch up the missing posts but I felt like it defeated the purpose of doing it to begin with. I’m trying not to beat myself up too much for that one too. I’m making some major plans for blogging in 2019 and I’m really focusing on that.

Besides being sick, I really enjoyed the Christmas season. This was the first year in five years that I was off work for both Christmas Eve and Christmas day. The holidays can be rough for all of us healthcare workers. I was able to spend time with family. My Dad had a Christmas Eve party. I took a trip to Indiana to visit extended family. It was nice to see people who I don’t get to see often. I loved getting to spend more time with my husband while he had so much time off work. My kids loved getting to see him more too. Christmas break is still going on for the kids and we are enjoying spending so much time with them.

We had some unexpected things happen this month that could majorly impact our lives that I want to fill you in on. Michael, my husband, had to go to urgent care because he hurt his back. He has lower back pain from time to time but this was different. He has some appointments in January to figure out more about it. We have insurance but the co-pays on urgent care, going to the doctor in January, and any imaging, labs, or medications could impact our current financial goals. He may need to miss work occasionally which would lower his income. Depending on what is wrong, this could have very minor or life-changing implications. We really will not know anything for a few weeks. I will fill you in as I know more.

Our other important information is about our daughters. Our oldest will be going into a new schooling option so she can finish her remaining high school credits faster. She will still graduate at the same time but she will be able to take college courses during her senior year. She will be doing these classes online at home. She will still be part of the public school system but with increased flexibility. She wants to be an artist and recently began accepting commissions. This will give her more time for her art and allow her to work at her own speed.

Isabella (turned 9 years old this month) has always picked things up extremely fast. She potty trained in days. She began reading at three. She is a curious child and incredibly sensitive. They began telling me that she was ahead of the class and doing well in Kindergarten. By second grade, she was way ahead of average children her age. She is currently in third grade. She always finishes her homework at school after finishing her classwork. We were recently told that she is gifted. We always had a feeling but thought that she may just be a diligent student. She has begun to state that she is getting bored. She loves learning and we are afraid that she may lose that drive if she continues to not be challenged. We were planning to homeschool when we left to travel. Beginning homeschooling earlier is an option. We haven’t made a decision yet about next school year but we are exploring all the options. She wants to finish this year where she is. Her school has online math and English courses that are appropriate for her. She is currently doing sixth-grade work in both. I will share our plan once we have everything figured out.

December has been quite a month. How was your month? Leave me a comment below to tell me all about it.