January 2014 Goal Recap

One month is in the books, and I'm happy to report that I did pretty well in regards to my New Years Resolutions...

... but I'm not even sure if I like my goals anymore.

My wife and I have done some soul searching, looked at where we are in our lives, and what we want to do, and decided that we want to work abroad after we're through with grad school at the end of the summer 2015. We're juggling a bunch of ideas in the air like do we try to buy a house now then rent it out while we're abroad? Do we buy the house after we go abroad? What kind of work will we do? Are we willing to put some of our goals on hold indefinitely in order to do this? How long will we be gone? Where do we even want to go?! DOES SANTA EVEN GO TO OTHER COUNTRIES OR IS IT JUST AMERICA!? YOU HAVE TO TELL ME.

Anyway, my brain is going crazy. We're meeting with a loan officer today to see if we can even afford the houses were interested which will (hopefully) give us some much needed clarity. I'm also planning on meeting with some career advisors at George Mason University (my school) to see if they have any insight. We'll make a decision sometime in the next 10 years, so you have my permission to hold your breath.

Without further ado, here's how I did on the goals.

FINANCES: Save $3,000 cash for a vacation before September 2014. Save $24,000 cash for a house by January 2015.

I think I said that we needed to save about $2,350/month to hit this goal and we saved $4,018! BOOYAH! I get paid bi-weekly which normally means I only get paid twice a month. Every so often I get a third paycheck and we have a fun month. This was one of those months WHICH was very timely (and I didn't actually know it was gonna happen) as Whole 30 cost more than expected and we weren't going to hit the $2,350 target. Next month, we may get our tax refund back which would give us an even bigger cushion going forward into the summer months which are typically more expensive for us. (wedding season y'all)

FITNESS: Do 15 pull-ups in a row before next Christmas and complete a Tough Mudder by August.

Ummm. Can we skip going over this goal? I did 6 pull-ups last time I tried that out. I freaking hate them. FAIL. I haven't been to the gym very much in January as I was spending a lot of time cooking, being sick, and wrapping up some finals. Excuses, excuses. I'm going to aim for 9 pull-ups by the end of February.

Also, I haven't even registered for the Tough Mudder, but I haven't NOT done a Tough Mudder either. Let's call it a draw.

CREATIVITY: Average 2 blog posts a month by end of the year and complete at least 3 "projects" before next year.

I had 8 posts. At this rate, in two more months I can quit this whole blog thing. I also knocked out 2 projects, which I'll blog about later if my darling wife deems me worthy and takes some photos. Once I reach these goals, I'll set some new ones.

CAREER: Become a GS-13 by September.

Little bit of background, I am a federal government employee and I am on the General Schedule (GS) pay scale. I am currently a GS-12 (it's a little bit like a rank in the military) and I will be up for a promotion to a GS-13 in September. In order to get there, I have to pass a written test, write some essays, and get interviewed by a board of people I'm gonna have to charm the pants off. I can always become a GS-13 after September, but I can't be one before then because you have to have "time-in-grade". This means I have to be a GS-12 for at least a year before I am eligible for promotion. September is my anniversary date. Anyway, as I get closer to the date, I have to start scheduling the training to prepare for the tests and the interview. I'll probably sweat through my suit and tie when the day comes which, unfortunately, is not very flattering.

SPIRITUAL: Find a church by March and volunteer at Habitat for Humanity by the end of the year.

When I started this post, I was feeling pretty good about myself based on the fact I saved so much more money than expected. Now I feel awful. I didn't even GO to church once this past month. So no, I didn't find a church. I think I may have driven past a few on Sundays.

I did do some research into volunteering in DC with Habitat for Humanity. Definitely seems doable for me and something that would be rewarding.

WHOLE 30: Complete the Whole 30 Challenge

UMMMMMMM YEAH. I FRIGGIN' DID THAT. I plan on doing a wrap up post talking about it, but it was seriously life changing. I recommend it to everyone.

Whole 30: The Cost of Healthy Eating

One of my biggest hang-ups about starting the Whole 30 challenge, and eating a Paleo diet in general, was how much this "real" food costs. Have you all been in a Whole Foods lately? Just count on everything being at least 50% more expensive than what you're used to paying.

Since I've been tracking what we've been spending the last three years, both in grocery stores and restaurants, I have a good grasp on our historical spending habits. I'll show you what we've been spending,  but before you condemn us for how much we spend on food, the cost of living in northern Virginia (less than 10 miles out of Washington DC) is ridiculous. Prices on average are about 20% higher than Richmond (a nearby city about two hours south), and maybe 30-40% higher than non-metropolitan areas. Bottom Line: GET US OUT OF HERE.

Anyway, I created the following tables from my old Excel spreadsheets, they show the monthly cost of food for my wife and I:

WE'RE TERRIBLE. WHAT THE #&@$ HAPPENED!?

Well, I have a variety of excuses lined up for you:

1. We got a little lazy, there's no denying that. We clearly went out to eat more.
2. We both started grad school which meant our free nights to make dinner dwindled away.
3. We started buying healthier food at the grocery store, ditching places like Giant or Harris Teeter in favor of Whole Foods and Mom's. We also went to restaurants that served healthier food. 
4. Lifestyle Inflation. We made more money so we thought we'd spend more money. Makes sense right?

So the burning question: how much did Whole 30 cost us for the month?

$1,027.30 or approx $500/person.

$69.09 at a restaurant (which I got food poisoning from) and $958.19 at the store. It ended up being about $500/person which, admittedly, is pretty terrible considering we cooked all but one of our meals. However, there's a lot we could do to bring that cost down.

1. For starters, before we even went to the store once, we said that money wasn't going to be the reason we failed Whole 30. We wanted to make it as easy as we could to get through the challenge so we didn't really meal plan for then one or two meals in advance. This means we weren't really shopping for deals.
2. We also never cooked in bulk. We usually made just enough for dinner that night and lunch the next day. This sort of ties back in to shopping for deals.
3. We shopped Whole Foods versus Trader Joes which was our biggest mistake. Whole Foods prices are so much higher based on their ridiculous overhead. I'm tired of paying their prices just so they can make everything look pretty on the inside of their store. 
4. We didn't participate in a crop share. There are many services in our area where local farmers will directly ship produce to your front door. You end up getting great deals. We'd actually done this in the past, and loved it, but at the time we were throwing a lot of produce away. We wouldn't be doing that on this diet.

Of course, there are more ways to save money then those four things I listed. In fact, I read one article where a guy was recommending to a) eat less and b) do your own hunting. (UGH. Really?) All in all, I think we could bring the cost down significantly, and we plan on doing Whole 30 again this year. My goal for when we do it again, $400/person. I think this is very achievable.

If you haven't yet done Whole 30, I hope you can use this information to your advantage. Just make sure you adjust my cost of Whole 30 based on your Cost of Living to get a better ballpark figure.

WHAT AM I SPENDING MY MONEY ON!?!

You might already know how important it is to stay on top of your finances but if you don't, let me just rehash a few of my favorite reasons:

• It's depressing as hell to have debt collectors call you about outstanding credit card bills.
• Knowing what you spend your money on is an eye-opener. It can show you the kind of person you are.
• Life is easier when you know what you can afford and can afford what you want.

When I got married a few years ago, one of our priorities was to figure out what were doing with our money. It was immediately overwhelming to us to be staring at what seemed like an insurmountable pile of student loans and car payments.

But we've come a long, long way in a short time, and it was so much easier than I thought it would be. We are now debt free. 

The first thing you should do, even before setting a budget for food or clothes, is track your spending (aka expenditures). To get you on your way, you can start with this: AOAT's Personal Budget Spreadsheet. The link should pull up a Google document  that you will be able to download as an Microsoft Excel file to your computer. It will look like this when you open it:

The file can be used as a free budget template to track your expenses each month. I arbitrarily filled in some numbers to use as an example of what a budget could like each month, and the formulas should work out so that you won't have to do any calculations by hand. Take a look and familiarize yourself with it.

Now that you have the spreadsheet, you gotta put your data in. What I mean is that you'll need to enter in your expenses and incomes. This will help you track every penny that comes in and every one that goes out. I want to stress that I do this every month and it is the single most important thing you can do to stay on top of your financial situation.

If you're just starting out, I recommend tracking your expenses for a month and then setting a budget based off of your current spending habits. It's going to take a few months for you to get an idea of what an accurate budget is, so don't even try for the first month. God forbid your food budget is too little...

Source: mediapickle.me, "Dog Gone Budget".