2015…. here we come!!!
Well the time is here – the New Year! And it just doesn’t feel right to start the year without some sort of goal or two.
I mean, let’s see there’s the usual goals most everyone has some form of with their resolutions, if they are the type to make resolutions. My list of those is as follows:
- Eat better
- Eat less
- Exercise more
- Save more
- Spend less.
Okay, Thanks for reading, See you next year!
Hahaha kidding… But the save more/spend less might be the ones you’re interested in, so how can we tweak them to be something attainable and fit our lifestyle?
I mean we didn’t have any specific financial goals in 2014, besides survival… In retrospect, on New Year’s Day 2014 we didn’t even know who Mr Money Mustache was!
So, we have been racking our brains, thinking about what to aim for this year… what can we do better? What can we do differently? Mrs. SSC is a HUGE fan of setting monthly goals, it seems like every month she is thinking of something to try… To be perfectly honest, I bet in her head she also has lists of daily and weekly goals. Fortunately, I just get brought in when the monthly goals come up. More fortunately, she says setting a goal for an entire year just seems too daunting, and a month seems like a more manageable chunk of time. We do pretty well at sticking to monthly goals. For instance, there are usually 1-3 months we’ll go on a spending diet and try to keep the credit card under an amount say 25% less than usual. Or, there was the non-finance related push-ups month challenge of doing a pushup for each day of the month. Except she started at 10, so day one was 11 pushups then, 12, and eventually got to 41 pushups in a day. These aren’t all in a row, but by the end we could do about 15-25 in a row before we collapsed on the floor, taking a breather before knocking the rest out. But, let’s get back to some financial goals and get out of the “crazy things we do to keep life interesting” goals.
We’re proposing a few different goals, and we’ll start with a monthly, a quarterly and a yearly goal. (I know, I said Mrs. SSC doesn’t like yearly goals, but this one was even her idea)
Monthly Goal:
January 2015 – 50% LESS TV!! Gah!! We’re not big into TV but enough that it’s distracting from other hobbies and I have a banjo to finish remember? How is this financial you ask? I don’t know, but we could stretch and say “It’s a primer for cutting the cord altogether. As soon as those idiots figure out football that’s NOT $300 per/season to stream, the cable is getting cut”! Until then, a weaning period seems appropriate. Plus it has to use less electricity, right? (eyeroll)
Quarterly Goal:
Q1 2015 – Only purchase consumables (food, diapers, etc…). Seems reasonable enough.
Yearly Goal:
Save $150,000! This seems like a stretch goal to me, but Mrs. SSC says it should be achievable.
Can we do it? I hope so… I mean, “Hell yeah we can do it!”
Happy New year’s everyone!
Do you have any goals different from ours, or do yours fall in the first 5 categories I mentioned? Let us know, we’d love to hear about them!
Michelle
December 31, 2014These all sound like great goals! I hope 2015 is a successful year for you.
We also would like to start watching less TV. We waste too much time on that!
Tawcan
December 31, 2014I like setting monthly goals too so I can measure our progress. Watching less TV will be a good change, funny you wrote this as I just wrote a blog post on the topic of TV. Save $150k will be huge! Is that amount only considering the money you saved or does it growth from investments count too?
Mrs SSC
December 31, 2014Watching less TV is just so hard 🙂 I’ll have to check out you post on TV. I really would like to just get rid of TV, but Mr. SSC won’t let me since he loves his NFL football. The $150 is a stretch and it will be difficult, but it includes maxing out 401ks for both of us, and college savings for the kids – which we are being very aggressive on, since in a couple of years we are hoping to have them fully funded before we retire. Luckily, we both work at companies with large bonuses – and we hope to just invest those bonuses as soon as they hit our accounts, which (hopefully) is about 20% of our goal.
Mr. Captain Cash
January 1, 2015We cut cable a couple months ago and it was one of the best decisions we have made to date. It is a bit of an adjustment at first but there are plenty of sites online where one can stream live football or hockey. Saving $150,000 is really impressive. If you guys are able to achieve that during 2015 it’ll definitely decrease the amount of time until your slowly sipping coffee 🙂
Mrs SSC
January 2, 2015Really? Mr. SSC told me the only way to get football online was to pay for it! Maybe I’ll have to get him to look back into it. Yeah, now that I’ve made that our savings goal, I’m wondering if I was too ambitious…
Mrs. Maroon
January 3, 2015Very nice goals!! I appreciate your efforts for only consumables in the first quarter. I think that sounds wonderful! No more junk – especially since we have half way started a kitchen clean out this morning. So far, our goals are still floating in my head. Someday very soon they will make out. Cheers to the new year!!
Mrs SSC
January 4, 2015I’m doing a kitchen clean-out too… bring all the leftover junkfood and such into my office. I know I’ll find takers there!
canadianbudgetbinder
January 4, 2015Lots of great goals here. Good luck with your financial journey through 2015! Mr.CBB
Mrs SSC
January 4, 2015Thanks! Good luck on your goals also!
Emily @ Simple Cheap Mom
January 6, 2015$150,000 of savings is amazing! It’s a great goal even if you do come up a little short, I think you guys will be able to do it though!
Oh, and I can do half a pushup.
May @ Messy Money
January 7, 2015Good luck with your goals and all the best for 2015. We cut cable and went to netflix – and it has made TV worse for me – probably my lack of self control. Now I power through whole series in a few days of marathon watching. Sigh. For football you might look into Kodi/Xbmc – some of my friends are starting to use Android devices and football might be an option on those. Can’t say for sure though…
Mrs SSC
January 8, 2015Thanks for the football suggestions – I’ll mention them to Mr. SSC. So far we’ve survived the first week of less TV. We made a chart for the fridge – For joint shows we both like we are allowed 30 shows/hours this month, then Mr SSC is allowed another 30 hours of his own shows (I don’t watch TV without Mr SSC). For our joint shows, we are on track, but I think Mr. SSC is going to run out of his time by the 20th.