Update on January 2018 Goals

January Goals:

• Pay off my Capital One card
• Do not go out for dinner more than 3 times
• Pack our lunches for work
• Continue to Simplify/Declutter/Minimize Our Home & Possessions

We have done extremely well on our January goals! We have worked very hard and sacrificed a lot but it has paid off. The first goal on the list was to pay off one of our credit cards. We started the month with $745.01 on my capital one credit card and we have paid it off completely. This was just the first of many but it is a success and we will celebrate every one of them, no matter how small.

The second goal was not to go out to eat more than three times. We can check this one off too. Ivy and I went out for sushi for her birthday. Michael got take-out on the way home from work one night. The little girls were sick and it made life easier. We all went out to a sandwich shop one night. I had to work that weekend and then we ran errands afterward so going out for dinner made sense. We tried to pick inexpensive places for the two nights that we went out unplanned.

We have done better at packing our lunches and having breakfast items available. We were a long way from perfect though. There is room for improvement but at least we tried. We managed to pack lunch about half of the time. We did much better with breakfast. We ate breakfast at home or took easy items with us most days.

We played the minimalism game and will finish with it in a couple of days. I’m proud of us for continuing with it. We are enjoying the small benefits of the items gone already. There is still a long way to go around here. The idea that we want to live out of suitcases or backpacks in a few years time is hilarious when staring at the amount of stuff in our house. We are only buying items that are necessary to our daily life and slowly editing the unnecessary items out of our home. We will save money by not buying excess stuff which will help with our other goals too. We will be continuing to work on this throughout 2018.

I will be posting our February goals and plan tomorrow. I hope that by sharing every step with you that we inspire others to make a plan toward their goals. Are you working on anything big or even just big to you this year? Have you found anything that helps keep you motivated? Drop me a comment. I’d love to hear about it!