Goals 2022 Update #4

Well this quarter rushed by quickly, along with the good intentions I had to catch up on all the goals I had planned for this year.  I did have other things on my mind this quarter, such as trying to get everything ready for Christmas and dealing with multiple car issues.  I'm sure if I'd really put my mind to it I could have come along much further, but where's the fun in that.

Financial Fitness

Getting our two sinking funds sorted out early on in the year couldn't have been more of a blessing for this quarter as we were able to do Christmas shopping for all our family without having to stress about money.  The sinking fund for the car also meant we were able to get the tyres fixed without too much bother, deal with a couple of breakdown costs, and have money to help with the deposit for our new car.  It definitely meant that an already stressful situation wasn't made even more stressful, especially around this time of year.  They will need to be saved up again, but it's been worth it.

Unfortunately our attempt to save up our four months emergency savings went out the window.  This was partly due to me working less hours and my husband not having the extra hours available at his work over the winter.  However, it would be true to say that our spending on food and other things we didn't necessarily need also played quite a bit factor in this.  I've definitely spent more money on crafting than I probably should have and whilst it has produced items that I use all the time I could have done without them to reach this goal.  

I also haven't managed to work out an additional income as I had planned to do.  I would have needed to dedicate some of my free time towards it to get it to work, but I was too busy crafting to do that.  I had set myself quite a few crafting goals this year, which I'm not doing next year which might make it a much better time to get that done.  I also haven't gotten around to changing my bank over to a more ethical one, though I have done all the research into it that I wanted to do and have decided that Triodos is going to be the best one to go to.  I still have a little time before 2023 arrives and I'll be off for part of that so that'll probably be the perfect time to make this change as it shouldn't actually take that long.

To end this section on a plus I have managed to pay a full year of pension this year and we've managed to end the year with our credit cards being zero.  In the last week of 2022 I'm going to have a real in depth look at our finances to get an honest idea at how we've been doing and where we've been sending our money.  There will need to be quite a few changes next year even just to ensure that we can pay our bills.

Sailing Around the World

We haven't been able to take any sailing lessons this year, but we knew that was going to be a bit of a long shot anyway.  However, I have been doing more research into electric motors on sailing boats.  Do I completely understand how they work - not really.  Do I at least have a better understanding - definitely.  Maybe sailing lessons could be one of our sinking funds for next year, but we'll see how that goes. 

Long Distance Walking

I've done everything on this that I had planned to do.  Our finances and fitness levels means that this won't be anything we can do anytime soon.  Good to have a distant carrot to work towards though.

Learning New Skills

We haven't managed to get any more surfing in this year, but we have asked people to put money towards surfing lessons for our Christmas present so hopefully we'll be able to get back to that soon.  Possibly another sinking fund.

The skateboarding has gone right out the window.  I am annoyed with myself on this one as I seem to get better at it each time I practice, but I'm just being lazy when it comes to getting up and giving it a go.  I'm not going to let this one go though as I'm still keen to learn.  I just need to make it a habit that we do.  At least my husband is also wanting to get back into it so that's a partner in crime now.

I'm aware that this year I did give myself a lot to do on both the goals and crafting front.  In fact, I probably gave myself a little bit too much to do and, though I'm disappointed I didn't get more done, I know that what I have managed to do is still good.  I am at least a little bit further forward than I was last year and that's the most important thing to me.  

Goals 2022 Update #3

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.

September 2022 Budget

It definitely feels like every month this year there has been something going on that has put a little spanner in our financial works.  This time I was ill...... again...... for about a week.  It was horrible and obviously stressful as, as someone who is self-employed, I can't earn any money when ill.  Not ideal, but it's also something we don't have any control over at the moment.  Hopefully the tests I'm getting done by the doctors will come up with something that we can then fix and then I can get on with my original life where I'm not ill on a monthly basis.

Due to the whole being ill thing I've had to move some more money over from the savings to help cover some of the bills that came out at the end of September before my husband's wage went in.  Not ideal, but that is what they are there for and I was able to put some money back once his pay arrived.  Thankfully we've both been able to hold onto our personal emgency funds and so we still have some added security for all the financial changes that are happening at the moment.

Despite all this I was still able to pay off my credit card and almost paid every week of my pension, bar one.  I'm still going to classify this as a win though as I didn't actually earn anything one week to pay it.  Once things have settled I will try and make up for that but I'm not going to worry about it too much, just concentrate on paying into my pension for the rest of the year.

We did decided to move our groceries spending to a cash system to help curve the amount we were actually spending on this and I have to say that it worked a treat.  We did spend a little more on the week I was ill as we were basically buying things that I could keep down, but we made up for this on the other weeks and have actually been under budget for September.  We've also been a lot more conscientious about our take-away / eating out budget and have come under budget on this as well.  This is all very good progress and has actually been quite painless to do.

We've also been a lot more careful about the money we spend in general on things we don't necessarily need and that has also brought our overall spending down in September.  And really it couldn't have come at a better time as things are progressively getting worse in Britain when it comes to our economy.  There's even talk about the possibility of us going into yet another recession, so this change in our financial habits couldn't come at a better time.  

September might not have been the month I was hoping for, but we've still managed to make changes to our spending habits that has saved us money and will follow into the next months, bringing us just a little bit closer to reaching our financial goals even in the financial climate we're in at the moment.

Walking: Horseshoe Ridge, Brecon Beacon

We decided that during our week off in August we would do some walking in Wales, specifically the Brecon Beacons which are the closest mountains to us.  After having a look at what walks there are we thought that the most interesting one would be the Horseshoe Ridge as it's right in the centre of the Brecon Beacons, is a good walk that is challenging but not really difficult, and it includes the two highest mountains in the Brecon Beacons (and south Britain).  

I was having a look at some of the recommended ways of doing this walk and decided that the best one was the one recommended by my Ordinance Survey app.  It also meant that I could check where we were on my app and my husband could carry the physical map and compass in case anything happened to one of us.  We started at the Taf Fehan car park (which is literally labelled on Google Maps as the Brecon Horseshoe Walk car park) and followed the path that takes you up the reservoir.  It did take a little while to get to this car park (and there's no public transport to it) and there aren't any facilities there, but it's definitely worth doing the walk from this starting point.  When you get to the reservoir you get a really good view of the glacier valley you're in and all the peaks you'll be heading to during this walk.

At the reservoir we followed the path left (which got a little bit confusing around the buildings but we found our way in the end) and then headed up the very steep climb to the Graig Fan Ddu ridge.  This definitely gets your heart going, but also means that you've done most of the climbing right at the start making the rest of the walk a bit easier.  I also wouldn't want to do this part near the end of my walk.  Once we'd reached the top we turned right and heading along the ridge to Corn Du.  This bit of the walk is really lovely, easy on the legs after the straight up climb, and you get a really good view of the valley with all the birds flying around the area.  There also wasn't too any people at this point, unlike the peaks we got to later.  

Corn Du is the second highest point in the area and has a Bronze Age burial cairn at the top of it.  There is a little scrabbling section just before you reach the top, but otherwise this is a pretty straight forward hike to the top.  Then you drop down into the saddle and straight up again to the top of Pen y Fan.  There were a lot of people at the top of this peak and, even though the views were pretty amazing and I usually enjoy pottering around the top of mountains when I reach them, I really didn't want to spend too much time there this time.  For me, going out into the wild is about being away from other humans so meeting lots of people there is never particularly enjoyable for me so I dragged my poor husband down the other side pretty quickly. 

It's a pretty steep climb down Craig Cwm Sere and an almost similarly steep climb up to the top of Cribyn.  The top of this peak was much quieter and we did stay a little bit longer before turning right and carrying along the path down the other side.  It was at this point that we past an 80 year old lady practically skipping past us up the mountain, making us feel very unfit.  This walk down is a double descent, where you descend half way down quite steeply and then get to walk for a little bit along a flat ridge, which I would imagine would be quite boggy normally but as it had been pretty dry over the summer was actually quite easy to walk on.  This is where we decided to stop and finally have our lunch as well as reapplying some suncream.  Then we dropped down again to the cross road with Gap Road.  This is labelled as a Roman road, but I couldn't find any archaeological evidence for this.  However, it was one of the first horse and cart roads over the Brecon Beacons.

As we wanted to hit the five points on this walk we crossed over the Gap Road and headed up the last climb to the top of Fan y Big.  You can get very close to the edge here and get a really good view back across to the peaks you've just climbed.  We then climbed back down the route we'd taken up to get onto Gap Road and headed back to the car park.  I was hoping this last section was going to be a gentle road back to help us cool down before we had to get into the car, but unfortunately this path ended up being a complete foot destroyer with loose stones all over the place.  It was almost nice to get back to the tarmac road which takes you to the car park.

On the day we had originally planned on doing this walk it was meant to rain with thunderstorm warnings for up on top of the mountains.  Even without the storm it was going to be very foggy, which isn't the safest way to climb a mountain or the best way of seeing the views.  So we decided to put it off until the next day where we got clear blue skies and views across the whole of the Brecon Beacons.  It wasn't the most difficult walk we've ever done, but it was still quite physical and gave us a pretty good leg work out.  Pen y Fan is obviously a very popular destination, to be expected on a good day and a peak that is close to good parking spot on a main road, but the rest of the walk wasn't too bad when it came to the number of people you come across.

We did really enjoy this walk and it was nice to get back out into some mountains again.  It would have been nice to have done some more walking when we were there, but we didn't want to push it too much seeing as we haven't done this type of walking in a while and we were already aware that our fitness levels aren't as high as they use to be.  I would definitely recommend this walk if you're in the Brecon Beacon area and I'm glad we came here to do it.  We want to come back to the Brecon Beacons again as it's beautiful and very close to us, so we'll be looking at what other walks we can do in this area for the next time we come. 

August 2022 Budget

I have to admit that I didn't really want to write this blog as we haven't done particularly  well this month at all.  We were already starting this month on the back foot we hadn't been able to build back up the baseline of our joint account to £1000 which covers our regular bills.  I also lost one weeks pay as we went on holiday this month.  Thankfully my husband still got paid for the days he took off, but it still made a noticeable difference not having that one payment.

The other thing was that, even though we knew that this month was going to be tight,  we still spent way more money than we should have done.  Ironically this wasn't actually during our holiday, as we had expected, but mostly on items that will allow us to do more free activities in the future.  Theoretically this is good, but maybe not for this month.

As I knew that the money would be low during our holiday I didn't pay one weeks pension or pay off some purchases I had made with my credit card.  Then there was the week I was off and not earning to I wasn't able to pay these again on that week.  I will need to find a way of catching back up on these two items and if I could do that by the end of September that would be very useful.

That being said, we haven't done too badly on the groceries and eating out spending which I was expecting to be much higher as we were on holiday.  Obviously the fuel was quite a bit more this month from all the driving we did when we were away.  We have still had to move money over from our savings again to help pay our standard bills, but this is a habit we really need to break.  However, by the end of the month we were able to bring the balance of our joint account back to where we want it and put just over £200 back into our savings.  Have to take the wins where we can.

Despite all this I don't regret us going on the holiday as we needed the break and we got to go to a place that I love and have a family connection to, but which Ed has never been to.  We also got to get in a great walk as well, but more on that in a future post.

However, it's now time to get serious again about our financial situation now.  We've known for a while now that it is pretty unlikely that we'll reach our savings goal by the end of this year and, if I'm being honest, that did dishearten me a little bit and put me into a 'why bother' mentality.  I did try and fight it, but sometimes you have to sit with those emotions for a bit to actually get through them.  Now the time for wallowing is over.  We may not reach our savings goal, but we can get closer to it and that's still a good thing to hold onto.  I also now made a visual representation of our savings that I can look at on a daily basis and that should also help.  So, bring on September and whatever that month has to throw at us.

Making a Mood Board

Over half the year has gone now and, I'm not going to lie, I'm losing some motivation now to carry on working towards our 2022 goals. I've heard many people talk about doing a mood board to help with inspiration and I thought it might be worth giving it a go. 

One decision to make was where to put the mood board. It's great having it on your tablet or computer but I wanted it to be somewhere where I would see it regularly, especially in the mornings and evenings which is when I normally think about these things.  It occurred to me that the best place would actually be the front of our wardrobe.  It has a good surface area to put things on and as it's located in the main living area we'd see it all the time.

This does mean that the pictures have to be relatively big to be able to see them easily, though not necessarily of good quality which makes things a little bit easier.  I don't have any magazines or anything like that to use and I couldn't find anything in the charity shops that we could use, so I decided that I would need to print some off.  We don't have a printer at home so I just put some pictures together on an A3 size page and send it to a printing company. Might be a little excessive, but it didn't cost too much and if it helps me get motivated I'm up for it.  That should be available to collect at the start of next week and I'll add them then.  For now I've added a picture I love but which the frame broke on and some of my old drawings to remind myself I was alright at doing that type of art and of which a possible secondary income could stem from.  I've also put up a tracker for our four months savings so we can have a more visual show of how we're doing.

I decided to use some of the washi tape I have quite a lot of to put the pictures up rather than blu-tack just to add a bit more colour and to tie all the different elements together.  So hopefully this'll give me the boost I need to keep working on our goals this year. At the very least our wardrobe is much more colourful. 

Little update - this is what it looks like now. 😊

Goals 2022 Update #2

And just like that half the year is over.  Seriously, this year has gone by so fast.  I must be getting old, mainly because I've started talking about how fast time is going.  There's been a few not great things going on in this quarter, though at least we had a nice thing in our wedding, which has made concentrating on reaching our goals a little less of a priority than they might otherwise have be.  That being said, we've still managed to make some progress and I still feel that things are going pretty well.

Financial Fitness

The plan for this quarter was for me to have paid into my pension every pay day for six months, which I've managed to do, and for us to have saved up half of our four months emergency savings, which we have also managed to do.  I'm very proud of us for that and hopefully we can keep this going for the rest of the year.  It definitely feels like we're actually doing well on this front.  I've also put a lot of thought into what type of secondary income I could do.  It's mostly crafting type of things, but I now really need to experiment with these so that I can work out what would actually suit me best.

My plan for the next quarter is to have a good look at more ethical banks to move my own current account to.  It really is time that I took this step.  I also want to use this quarter to really look at the secondary income ideas to see how much of a possibility these could be.  It will entail me having to find the additional time to do it, but it should also be fun and hopefully worth it in the long run.  The last goal for this quarter financially is to have paid into my pension every pay day.  This could be the first year that I actually manage to do this for a full years pay.

Sailing Around the World

The plan for this quarter was to research what type of boat we would like and what would be suitable for just two people to sail and live in.

This coming quarter I want to research about electric motors for sail boats and all the components that you need to have to make this actually work.  Whilst electric motors on boats aren't common they're also not completely rare either so it should be easy to find out about them.  I also want to look at actually booking our sailing lessons so we can see if this really is a viable thing.  However, we will have to see how the finances are doing first before we think about that.

Long-distance Walking

There wasn't anything for us to do on this goal this quarter as we're not really going to do any of these until our financial goals are reached.  However, we have started looking at Offa's Dyke as something for us to do next year.  There aren't any goals for this next quarter either, but if we do have any spare time I think I'll keep researching Offa's Dyke.

Learning New Skills

I was meant to have practiced skateboarding at least twice a month this quarter, but it really hasn't happened......at all.  It really is just getting myself out the door that's the problem.  If I could just get myself to do that it would be fine, but it's just so much easier (with less possibilities of breaking something) to be lazy.  I'm not giving up on this yet though, so next quarter I want to aim for at least once a month.  You never know, it could happen.

The last goal was surfing.  I had no plans on this for this quarter either, but I do want to at least start lessons in the coming quarter.  For my birthday my husband brought me a gift card for a local surfing school, so I'm going to use this to book us a private lesson.  We can then take it from there.

All in all it's been a mixed bag when it comes to reaching our goals.  The main one this year was the finances and we're doing well on that front so I'm happy.  If we can get the other goals to follow that would be good and, seeing as there is still half a year to go, that is entirely possible.  I just need to concentrate a bit more and maybe 'relax' a little less.

Goals 2022 Update 1

Despite the last few months being a little bit of a disaster, at least on the health front, most of the goals actually went quite well this quarter...... surprisingly.

Financial Fitness

My plan for this quarter was for us to pay off my credit card debt, pay half of our Christmas sinking fund, fully pay the car repair sinking fund, have quarter of our four months savings paid, have paid into my pension every month, and researched additional incomes.

I did manage to pay off my credit card and fully paid our car repair sinking fund.  As for the Christmas sinking fund, we decided that due to the way our finances are going we should fully pay this off this quarter rather than spread it out over the first half of the year.  This meant moving money from our fourth months emergency fund to do this which, in turn, meant that we didn't reach out goal in this front either.  However this means we only need to concentrate on this for the rest of the year.  I also managed to put money into my pension every month, just not as much as I had hoped.  Once our finances are in a better place then I'll increase the amount I'm paying in to hopefully make up for this.

For the next three months I would like us to save up half of our four months savings, though that is going to be a real stretch with our low income and increasing cost of living.  I would also like to pay up my six months worth of pension with the additional payments made.  Again this might be a bit difficult. Lastly, I want to think more about what I could activity do as a secondary income.

Sailing Around the World

We're taking this goal pretty slowly as we can only really jump on it once we have some finances to, but it's good to keep it fresh in our minds and as a motivation for everything else we're doing.  We've found out about where we can get sailing lessons locally and the general cost, which are about £300 to £700 per person depending on what level we go for.  We are thinking about the more in-depth, more expensive one as this would give us a better idea as to what we could be letting ourselves in for and whether or not we'd be able to actually do it.

For the next three months I want to research more into what type of boat we might want and would be most suitable for us as a two person crew.

Long Distance Walks

This one was pretty easy.  I just added a notebook to my OneNote and then added a whole lot of sections for all the multi-day walks we are interested in doing in the UK.  There are some that we're more interested than others, but it's good to keep our options open.

I'm not really going to do much more with this whilst we're still sorting out our earnings etc.  But it'll be nice to start planning one soon, even if it's just theoretical for now.  

Learning New Skills

Yes well, this one didn't exactly go to plan.  We didn't manage to do any skateboarding in the first quarter, but hopefully we'll get some done over this next quarter so I can actually start to get used to it.

As for the surfing, we did research local surf schools we could go to.  These are also quite pricey if we went for private lessons, around £100 to £140 per person, though obviously much less if we just book with a group.  Depending on how our finances go we might get some lessons in the second quarter, but it's more likely to be later on in the year before we get a chance.

And that's it.  Apart from a couple of things, we've done a pretty good job at completing this quarter's goals.  I haven't made too many goals for the second quarter as I want to be able to relax for a bit after all the wedding planning.  We also don't really know what our finances will be like so we can't make any concrete plans on goals connect with this.  If we can do better than I will do more, but otherwise I'm going to aim at low hanging fruit this time.  But all in all I'm quite happy with how things are going.