2015 Goals Update #11

I hope y’all had an amazing Thanksgiving! Do y’all have any fun Thanksgiving traditions? I’m the wife of a hunter so as soon as all the feasting is done, guess where my hubs runs off to? Yep, the woods with a rifle on his back ready to bring me back dinner. 🙂 

Me, Christy Wright (the host of the Business Boutique conference), and Kim from Thrifty Little Mom at Business Boutique in Nashville, TN. 

Blogging

I found two other charities to donate some of my blog earnings to…Catholic Charities USA – they have an incredible commitment to helping those living in poverty here in the US. The other mission that I’m supporting is the Blessed is She community. I love that these ladies are committed to helping bring other women closer to Jesus as I know they have made a tremendous difference in my life spiritually. 

And Business Boutique was awwwwwwesome! I had such a great time and getting hear to Dave Ramsey speak live, in person was incredible! If you’re a woman in business, you need to attend next year because you’ll leave amped up and ready to take your business to the next level. 🙂 

Okay on to my Income Report!  

My total income after expenses was….$1,631.56! 

Here are my blogging goals specifics:

• Finish creating my pinning schedule and strategy.  ( Done. ) 
• Create my Facebook sharing strategy. (Done )
• Keep pageviews at 200,000 and increase to 500,000 by the end of the year. (You can read how I more than doubled my pageviews here.) (My pvs in November were: 280,682. (not including today’s numbers) — I probably won’t reach my goal of 500,000 by the end of December but at least I’ve managed to grow! 🙂 .)
• Professional blog design. (Worked with Pixel Me Designs) (Done)
• Find three brands to establish a working relationship with for underwritten posts. (Done!)
• Complete media kit by April 1^st. (Done) 
• Complete Business Plan by April 30th. (Done) 
• Finish my next book by my birthday (March 29^th) and publish by June on Amazon. (Done – Grab it here.*)
• Increase my minimum writing goal from 500 words per post to 700 words per post. (Done.)
• Keep editorial calendar with at least two weeks months of posts, written and scheduled & a month out with planned posts. (Done. )
• Attend one blog conference. (Done – I’ve actually attended two! 🙂 )
• Research and implement better SEO tactics and improve search engine traffic on my site. (Done)
• Bring Alexa Global rating below 100,000 and U.S. rating below 15,000. (My Global went up but my US ranking went down. 🙁 Global is currently: 163,023 and U.S. is currently: 36,973)

These two…Collin absolutely loves his little sister. 

Personal

“Hey babe, we’ve got to go to my company’s holiday party thing this weekend.”

Y’all know what I heard when my hubs said that to me? Free date night and a meal that I don’t have to cook with the added benefit of being able to get dressed up. 🙂 It was such a great reminder of how important it is for our marriage that we take the time to have a little time to ourselves where we can have a conversation that doesn’t involve us yelling over the noise of our children and crazy dog. 

Sadly, I didn’t capture our classy-looking selves on camera. Boo. 🙁

Here are my personal goals specifics:

• Begin working out using the Tupler Technique to fix my diastasis. (I am following the workouts in Lose Your Mummy Tummy *) (Work-in-progress.)
• Spend 30 minutes every day in active play with the boys (walking the neighborhood, playing hide-n-seek, “monster”, or other games they want to play). (Other than everyone being sick we’ve been doing this regularly.)
• Write in gratitude journal every day. (I am using Money Saving Mom’s gratitude journal, Choose Gratitude * – amazing!) (Done.)
• Read daily Bible reading and journal about the scriptures read every day. (Done.) 
• Schedule a paid date night and paid family night/event once a quarter. (Date night done.)
• Increase daily water intake to full eight glasses of water a day and continue detox regimen with lemon essential oil. (Done for this month!)
• Spend thirty minutes to one hour two times a week working with Conner on preschool learning activities. Spend same time working with Collin on tot school activities. (Done.)
• Drastically reduce the amount of personal time spent on Facebook, by leaving groups and un-liking pages that just clog up my newsfeed. Use the News Feed Eradicator extension for Chrome to keep me from being sucked into Facebook’s “should-have-left-it-in-high-school” drama. (Made this one happen consistently!)

Our little Miss Charlotte…

Financial

Our budget was shot to hell in a handbasket this month again. It seems like everyone in our house was sick and it even resulted in a couple of visits to the ER — no worries, everyone is alright but we didn’t realize that when they sent us our new insurance cards this summer that our ER co-pay had gone up from a $100 a visit to $300 a visit. 

Then to top it off, both Conner and I had to make unexpected trips to the dentist. Conner climbed up on the bathroom counter and when he decided to jump down, he hit the toilet and cracked his tooth so bad that the nerve was exposed. So the tooth had to be pulled. #boys.

Then I was having some serous sensitivity on one of my molars. It got so bad that I thought I must have an abbess or something (I’m a freak about clean teeth so this was really freaking me out), but after some x-rays it turns out that the beast of a cold we all keep passing around had caused my sinuses to swell so bad they were actually pushing down on the nerve ending for that molar. 

Yeah, that wasn’t fun forking out that kind of money. But, thankfully, once again our slush fund came to our rescue.

Here’s a random photo from Halloween I forgot to share last month…

Here are our financial specifics:

• Pay off student loans by December 31^st. Total balance at the beginning of the year: $20,106.81 (DONE!!!!!!!! )
• Contribute the max allowed percentage to hubs’ 401(k) plan and continue contributing $30 a week to my Roth IRA. Will increase my contribution amount if goal of paying off student loans is met before the end of the year. We will be decreasing the amount contributed to our emergency fund in order to build up our retirement funds. (Done.)
• Go back to carrying cash only for all purchases. (We fell off the wagon this month with this one. )
• Plan and implement a spending freeze. (I still haven’t been able to get my hubs to agree to a date yet for this….)
• Set aside $10 every week towards our Christmas fund for a debt-free Christmas (it will be our third one!). (Done! We have enough Swagbucks* earnings to pay for Christmas this year). 
• Complete Financial Peace University by December 31st. (Nope, hasn’t happened….) 

Reading List 

I only read one book this month due to all the craziness…but it was a good one! 🙂

Parenting the Wholehearted Child by Jeannie Cunnion * – I needed this book because y’all, parenting is h-a-r-d. It’s especially hard when you’re trying to figure out how to be the perfect parent….which I keep trying to do, but the reality is that I’ll never be perfect and that’s okay. This book gives such amazing wisdom for raising children of God and how we can stop trying to be perfect because we’re saved by Jesus. 

Have you grabbed my book, Real Life on a Budget yet? If not you can grab it here. 🙂 

What big accomplishments have you mastered so far this year? Share them below – I’d love to cheer you on!