The other day I was revisiting my 2011 goals and I realized I hadn’t made as much progress as I was hoping for. However, in light of the events this year, I’m still able to pat myself on the back and say, “Good job. But you can do better.”

Let’s start with a quick venting session:

1. I didn’t work nearly as much the first three months of this year as I normally do. This is partly due to my position as a substitute teacher, but also due to me being picky about where I sub. I’ve become a bit spoiled.
2. I took 4 months off to finish my teaching credential knowing I couldn’t work those months and really didn’t have a great financial plan in place to make up for the lost income. Dumb!
3. My goals changed a bit – I decided (with prompting from Mr. LH) to pay off our car sooner than later. A lot of extra payments have been applied over the last two months. This is great, but I hadn’t planned for this.
4. I received an unexpected tax bill from ’09. Ouch is all I can say about that!

Now for a clean slate:

1. I’m close to paying off my car loan, have a tax bill to work off, and student loans I need to tackle. Total amount to tackle: $35,000.
2. My savings account is looking a bit skimpy. My new, realistic goal, is $7,200 saved for the year. (SMART goals are on the way to accomplish this).
3. Blog goals: Ramp up my readership to 375 visitors per day. I’ve been neglecting my blog a bit due to school, but I’m done in 3.5 weeks. And yes, I’m counting down the days: 16 more.
4. Bike goal: I didn’t hit my 1,000 mile mark. So, I’m going to set a more attainable goal of 600 miles. I’m also working on a bike blog as well. But that’s another story.

As I formulate a plan to pay down my remaining debt and save some of my income, I’ll report quarterly.

What goals are you reviewing or reevaluating? What makes them SMART?

I’ve been a little absent from my blog lately, but it’s for a good reason; I’m finishing up my credential this semester and dedicating myself to completing it! I’m just about at the half way point, whoo hoo! Okay, enough of the exclamatory sentences. I realize I’m a little behind on updating my quarterly goals, but better late than never in my book. So here goes -

Finances

Goal: To save an additional $9,000 in savings this year.

Status: Well, I’m a bit behind on this one. I haven’t done the calculations, but based on a ballpark figure, I’ve only saved about $3,000 or 1/3 the goal. But I have a good excuse for this pitiful figure.

Good News: I took a chunk of my savings and paid down my car. Instead of owing $4,600 on  my Honda, I only owe $2,822 now. My goal has been redirected to getting the car paid off within the next few months and saving the monthly payment of $322 thereafter. Basically, my focus has changed.

Biking

Goal: To bike 1,000 miles this year.

Status: I’ve made it to the 1/2 way mark at 500 miles.

Good news: I’ve been averaging about 15 – 18 miles a week so if this continues I should add another 150 miles before the year’s end.

Work

Goal: I didn’t make one of these this year since I was completing my credential program. However, my goal for 2012 is to get a teaching job.

Status: Well, there was a slight chance I would have a job by the end of the year that fell through (I sort of factored this in). Believe me, I hustled and schmoozed, but the timing just didn’t work out.

Good news: Instead, I’ve accepted a long-term sub position for someone I know who is going out on maternity leave. She is trying to take January through June off (if her finances and school district will allow it), so that would give me work for the remainder of the school year. I guess beggar’s can’t be choosers – I’m going to end up with a position for almost 6 months while I send in resumes to just about every school district in California.

Blog

Goal: I really didn’t make any concrete blog goals either this year. However, I’ll have more time to focus on this by December. New goal – increase readership by 1,000 visitors a month.

Status: If my Word Press stats are any indication, I’ve increased my daily visitors by about 50-70 people a day. If I can keep this up, I shouldn’t have a problem increasing by 1,000 per month.

Good News: I’ve been lucky to have such a great support network through the Yakezie with members guest posting for me each week. That has really been helpful.

My end of the year status will be fairly tepid as well as it’s a little difficult to make giant leaps and bounds on my finance goals when I’m not generating much income. However, keeping my goals lofty makes me reach a little more towards progress than expecting less of myself.

How are your annual goals so far?

A while ago, a mutual friend of ours admitted that he had ruined his credit and wanted to begin rebuilding it through obtaining a secure credit card. I advised him on opening up a secure credit card because  most banks keep the amount of the credit line, for instance $500, in a savings account as collateral for extending credit to a person who is a less than credit worthy. A secure credit card is similar to a  prepaid Visa gift card, but it’s reported to the credit bureaus as an actual credit card which helps build a positive payment history, providing on-time payments are made.

To my astonishment, he was declined a secure credit card through a large financial institution. His credit was so poor, the bank wouldn’t extend him the line of credit even with depositing the total amount of the credit line into a bank account. He was flummoxed and wasn’t sure what to do next. Knowing that his credit was so poor, I did a little investigating and realized that his next best hope would be to approach his own bank, a credit union, to see if they could help him out. It turns out that they were able extend a credit card to him, and it wasn’t even a secure one at that.

Would this help anyone who’s credit is in shambles? It depends, but a few tips to follow if you’ve had this happen to you:

• Approach your own bank about a secured credit card. They might be able to work something out with you if you’ve been a customer for a while and have a good banking history.
• Open a bank account at a credit union, and then apply for a credit card – credit unions are sometimes more accommodating.
• Forgo the credit card altogether and fix your finances!

My third point is important; if your credit is really terrible, it might be better to work on the negative existing accounts than to open yet another one, even if it is a secure credit card account. In his case, it might have been better to not open another account just for the plain fact that he’s having difficulty managing his money and his credit. As you can imagine what happened next….he maxed out his card and is now back to his old habit of making minimum payments and not seeing the balances drop. Unfortunately, some people need to experience great pain before changing their ways, even after a friendly lecture on personal finance!

Do you know of someone who was turned down on a secure credit card offer? What would you recommend to a friend struggling to get their finances in order?

This past year, my husband and I have been making a diligent effort to eat at home more, be more frugal and careful with our extraneous spending, and cut back on frivolous wants. I’m seeing progress in our overall budget. According to my QuickBook’s expense and income bar graph, we’ve spent much less this year than last, even though we didn’t make as much money. We’re moving in the right direction because of these following strategies:

• Grocery shopping at the 99-cent store. We are able to purchase soft drinks, Gatorade, and some bread and canned items for much less than at the grocery store.
• Reducing our driving. Recently, with the colder weather, I’ve been a little lazy about riding my bike, however I am still saving some gas by riding a few days a week to run errands or go to school or work.
• Reducing our wants. This is the first year that my husband has made an effort to reduce his wants;  he hasn’t gone out and purchased a new cell phone, he hasn’t wanted to purchase any electronics this year, and he has put his flat-panel television screen on hold indefinitely.

However, this weekend alone we spent over $50 on eating out, and the food wasn’t even that great. Actually, the food was pretty crappy! I analyzed how this happened by asking myself why we chose to eat out and consume greasy, horribly prepared food. The answer was simple: my husband, who works at home, wanted to get out of the house. He was feeling cooped up.  Our solution to this problem was to go out and eat! We could have chosen something more active, like a bike ride through the park, or a visit to a museum. But the cooler weather and time of day, evening, limited our activities down to going out to eat. That’s all we could come up with (and I was hungry!)

I realize that to really stick to our budget, and continue reducing our overall cost of dining out, I need to come up with some creative and fun activities that don’t revolve around food. So, I’m making a list to help me remember what options we have to solve our home-bound problem:

• Bike riding in the park with gloves, hat, and scarf. My husband enjoys this activity, as long as it isn’t too cold or too dark out.
• Getty Museum. This is one of our local, free museums. This is primarily a daytime activity, but early evening could work as well.
• Roller Skating. There’s a roller rink not too far from our house that my husband has been dying to check out. The prices aren’t too terribly steep, I think it would cost less than eating out and be way more fun.
• Board Games. We packed all of our board games when we thought we were moving to a less expensive living arrangement. However, I think I know where they are, so I can easily unpack them.
• Candy Cane Lane Cruising. This is seasonal, but a neighborhood only a few miles away from me is known for decking out their houses in Christmas lights. Between now and New Year’s this might be a great weekend activity.
• Playing Pool. Not too far from our house is a large pool hall. I’m guessing that a few rounds of pool and a couple of beers wouldn’t be that costly.

I’m stumped at this point. This is our problem, thinking of things to do at night that are inexpensive and nearby. With the holiday season near, we have a few holiday parties to attend, so that will get us out over the next several weeks. But after the holidays are over, we’ll be back to racking our brains for inexpensive, fun activities.

What activities entertain you and your loved ones in the evening that take place out of the house? Am I clearly missing some things from my list?

Windfalls in My Pocketbook

A couple of days ago, GetRichSlowly.org wrote an article about how saving large amounts on items, like refinancing a mortgage, can really add up to savings in your bank account. I guess my mailbox was listening, though it really wasn’t something I saved money on, because a large check I’ve been waiting on finally arrived. I knew that it was coming, but it was so late that I had kind of put it out of my mind. I had already budgeted all of our expenses for this month without that check. This means that 2/3 of this check will be deposited into our savings account.

On a side note, one of the pitfalls of owning your own business is being dependent on clients to pay their invoices in a timely manner. Sometimes, especially if the client is new, we will require a deposit to begin the project. However, some of our long term customers, who are in good standing, pay the bill in full when the project is complete. This year, because the economy has been so depressed, it is taking even our good clients a little longer to pay their bills, making us shuffle a little more than usual.

But back to savings, I have been really good with the 10% rule this week, my new goal for this year. A few smaller invoices have rolled in and I have promptly transferred 10% of the total to my savings account. Thank goodness for the ease of the internet, with a few clicks of the mouse, I can schedule a transfer within in minutes. With the new windfall, I will be able to stick more than 10% of it into savings, closer to 2/3 will be shoved in there. The other 1/3 will be set aside, perhaps for a used work truck that my husband would like to purchase, this hasn’t been completely thought out yet.

The 10% rule has been easy to follow so far because the invoices have been under $500. So each saved amount totaled somewhere between $50 and $15. Small enough amounts that don’t make a difference in our total spending, but do make a difference in our savings when I add them up. This week I have another large check coming in, the 10% rule should also apply to it as well, but it will be a more significant figure, more like $470. This kind of amount I will notice removed from our regular checking account, our main account that we use for everyday purchases and bills. However, because I have budgeted our monthly bills and the income we have coming in this month, that 10% shouldn’t affect our monthly spending. I should even be able to pay down our line of credit by $400 – $500 this month as well.

The trick to all of this is budgeting, click here for my most recent budget outlined.