There has been quite a lot going on this quarter and so I haven't been focusing on our goals as much as I probably should have been. But that's fine, sometimes life just takes over and you just have to go with it. That being said, we still managed to get quite a few things done.
Financial Fitness
The plan for this quarter was for us to have our four months savings to be 3/4 of the way there, for me to have made a full nine months of pension payments, and for me to have worked out a secondary form of income. That didn't exactly go to plan, especially on the savings front where we actually had to take money out of there to cover our bills. This was mainly due to me being ill so often that I haven't had a good earning year at all. It also meant that paying in my pension didn't exactly go to plan. However, in the end I was able to mostly catch up on this and only ended up missing one weeks payment, so I'm going to count that as a win. I'll make up for the lost week over the next couple of months and that should mean I'll still reach my end of year goal there.
As for the additional income, I have looked at possible things that I could do (mostly on the crafting front), which you can find more about here. I haven't had the chance to properly try out these ideas yet so that's something I'll need to do over the coming months. Changing my bank account to a more ethical bank was also something I had planned to do this quarter, but I just haven't had the chance to properly look into this yet. I have done some research into this, but I want to find out a little bit more before I make a decision on that.
So, what are the plans for next quarter. I want to carry on putting money into my pension so that I have paid a full year's worth for what I think will be the first time. I also want to practise the ideas I have for the secondary income to see if it is actually something I can do or if I need to start looking at other ideas. Then there's the more ethical bank. I want to have made a final decision about this, at the very least, and hopefully have actually moved my account to it by the end of the year. Finally there's our four months emergency fund. It's very unlikely that we'll be able to finish this this year now, but I would like for us to have gotten it back to half way there if we can. We have already started making changes to our spending and that has been helping us save a little more money so we do have a chance of reaching this new goal.
Sailing Around the World
I've been looking into electric motors for boats and there does seem to be quite a few companies that sell boats with electric motors or provide the motors that can be swapped with the diesel motors that are already there. There's still information that I need to find out more though, such as more about the different types of systems we can have, so that when we come to actually buying into this I'll know what I'm actually talking about....hopefully. And that's my plan for the next quarter, learn more. Unfortunately financially we probably won't be able to actually start having lessons this year like we had hoped, but we can add that to next year as this is a very long term goal.
Long-Distance Walking
In August we did a walk in the Brecon Beacons which we had wanted to do for a while. Even though it was only for one day it was still quite a long distance and a small part of doing this was to see how Ed's knees were doing and if they would be strong enough to do a long distance walk in the near future. The conclusion was that they aren't quite ready yet and need a little more time before we can sensibly do one of these walks. So I'm putting long distance walks on the back burner for now. We have a list of what we would like to do and I might research some of them now and then, but we won't be doing any any time soon.
Learning New Skills
We did actually manage to do some skateboarding this quarter and I did begin to feel more comfortable on the board, but no where near what I had wanted to do this time round. I'd love to be able to come up with an excuse, but the honest answer is that I've been lazy when it comes to this. I'd just rather stay indoors and have a slow morning on the days we both have time off. Or, if I am going out, it's to go for a walk instead. I'll try and change that this quarter and actually get out to do some more practising, ironically in the quarter that is probably going to have the worse weather. However, Ed should have more weekends off during this time as well, which will make it easier for us to do this together.
As for surfing, we did book that lesson that I had planned to book using the birthday gift Ed had given me and we really enjoyed it. I really felt like we learnt quite a lot this time, but we want to do a few more lessons before we go out on our own. I'm not sure we'll manage to afford them this year, but if we do manage to save up enough to get some more lessons in before the end of the year we definitely be doing that. This might just be something we do next year.
All in all there's probably more positives than negatives this quarter, it just hasn't been as successful as the previous quarters and as we had hoped. I always knew that we'd picked quite a few goals in for this year which were a little bit unachievable so I am a little bit proud of how much we have actually achieved so far this year. Our biggest goal was to save up our four months emergency fund and that is the one that we haven't really manage to achieve, but there's always next year where we can put more emphasise onto it.
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