Goals 2024: Update #1

Whenever I get ready to write my goal updates I always hope that there will be positives to write about, and this year did start off well but then depression snuck in in February.  And then it lingered.....and lingered.......and lingered some more.  I tried to deal with it whilst carrying on with everyday life and working towards my goals, but it was getting worse and, in the end, I decided to just stop.  So I stopped doing my budgets for a while, and I stopped trying to practice new skills, and crafting, and trying to eat healthy, and I even stopped doing as much housework.  I just let myself be.  Am I 100% better?  Not a bit.  Do I feel less overwhelmed?  A little.  At least enough to start doing some things again and to start looking at my goals for 2024.  

Financial Freedom.

• Saving another third of our four-month emergency fund - this has been one of the big positives so far this year as we're already very close to completing this goal already.  Even though we have been spending more than we should, we've still managed to keep all our bills and spending down enough that we've been able to put a good part of our monthly wages into our savings.  We might actually complete this long-term goal before the end of the year.  Which makes me want to give us both big gold stars.  
• Sinking funds - at the beginning of the year we concentrated mostly on putting money into our Christmas sinking fund and we've now got a fully funded Christmas fund.  As it looks like we'll be reaching our emergency fund goal much earlier than we had expected we'll be able to start putting money into our holiday sinking fund this year as well.  We still haven't quite decided where we're going, other than it'll be somewhere on the African continent.
• 12.5% of earnings towards my pension - I did change jobs at the beginning of March and with that job comes the company pension scheme.  I'm just waiting for my details to come through and then I can change my payment amount to fit the 12.5% that I want for this year.  The good thing about this job is that they will match pay into your pension up to 10% and I intend to make full use of this.
• Secondary income - this has gone completely on the back-burner for now, but hopefully, I'll be in the right mindset to think about it again soon.
• Changing my bank account - still to do, but again I'll come back to this at another time.

Learning New Skills.

• Skateboarding - I have given this a few tries and I do feel more comfortable than I did before.  However, I'm still nervous about hurting myself so maybe I just need to bite the bullet and buy all the protective gear.  Then I can just get on with it.  I haven't done much of this recently though as I've just been letting myself sit instead of trying to do things. 
• Surfing - I had started the process of looking into hiring surfboards for us to practice with, but that fell to the wayside when the depression came along.  But we both enjoy this so it's definitely time to get back to it again.
• Drawing - this was one of the first things to go when I started feeling low.  I don't mind though, as I had already managed to fit some practicing in and that gave me a bit of an idea as to where my skill level is.  I will bring this back, but as an 'every now and then' thing instead of a 'must do regularly' thing.
• Flute playing - I did get quite a few practices in for this and it did feel good, though I'm not sure how far I'll be able to go without having a teacher guide me along.  As with everything else, I stopped for a bit, but I will start it up again.  I'll see if I want to carry it on once the year is out, but for now, it's been enjoyable when I do play it.
• Reading - this one hasn't really gone to plan, but it'll be easy enough for me to pick it back up again.  I just need to make the decision to.
• Learning another language - funnily enough, I haven't even looked at this.  Future George decision I think.  For now, I'm just going to concentrate on getting back to where I was at the start of the year.  This can wait a little.

And that's it.  Depression has meant that it hasn't been quite the success I was hoping for, but then it hasn't been a complete disaster either.  Especially when it comes to our financials, which we have managed to do pretty well.  We are already a third of the way into the second quarter, but hopefully, I'll be able to pick things up for the next couple of months, though I'm not going to push too hard just yet.  I'm going to take it slow. After all, I have plenty of time this year to achieve what I want.  No need to try and get it all done now.

Goals 2024

The goals this year are going to be pretty much the same as last year, mainly as our long-term goals haven't changed.  There are a few ones that I've added at the end, but I will put less effort into those ones.  It's not that they are not important, it's just that we are trying to concentrate on our finances first so that we have more freedom to do other things in the future.  This is what we'll be working on this year.

Financial Freedom.

• Saving another third of our four-month emergency fund - we did really well last year with saving up for this, but that was partly helped by the money I got to keep after doing my taxes as a self-employed person.  However, I'm not self-employed anymore, but hopefully just means that I can put aside that additional money straight away with each wage I get.   So that'll be £2500 into savings in 2024.
• Sinking funds - we need to save up for Christmas again and this will be one of the priorities at the start of the year.  It works out at about £73 a month to get us back to where we can have a financially stress-free Christmas, but I'm hoping we can put more in at the beginning to get us there quicker.  We also want to start saving for a holiday abroad, something a bit bigger than what we've been doing before.  It possibly won't be this year, but hopefully next.  We're still working on where we want to go and what we would like to do, but once we've worked that out can calculate how much we'll need to save and start putting money aside for that.
• 12.5% of earnings towards my pension - this is basically the same as last year and I'll need to see if I can do it all through my work or if I'll need to keep putting away additional sums as before.
• Secondary income - this is the same as last year as well.  I'm starting to form more of an idea about what I'd be comfortable doing so we'll see what happens.
• Changing my bank account - yep still haven't done this yet.  To be honest, it's not as high on my priority as it probably should be.

Learning New Skills.

• Skateboarding - this is still something that I want to learn to do and what I've learnt over the last couple of years is that I just haven't been very disciplined when it comes to sorting this out.  I plan to practice at least twice a month, usually with my husband who wants to get back into it.
• Surfing - now that we know that we don't need any more lessons just yet but just need to practice we can just hire some surfboards, which I can book in advance when I know what Ed's work hours are.  Again we just need to be more organised and disciplined so that we do this whenever we're both off.
• Drawing - this is something that I wrote about in my new hobbies blog.  It's really just for my own enjoyment and to keep my brain nice and healthy, but there is a possibility that it could play some part in getting a secondary income.  I'd like to practice at least once a week.
• Flute playing - again this was in my hobbies blog and this is also just for my own enjoyment.  In fact, there is absolutely no way I'm playing the flute in public.  This isn't high on my list of things to prioritize but I would still like to do this once a week if I can.
• Reading - another thing that's just for my own personal enjoyment.  I plan to do a little reading every night, just before bed - at least on a weekday.
• Learning another language - this is something I've put in but I haven't really made any decisions on or plans yet.  Ed has said that whatever I learn he would like to learn with me, but what language that is I'm still not sure about.  Sometimes I think it would be good to learn French as some of the countries we want to visit have it as their official language, there's also the possibility of learning Welsh seeing as we are now in Wales, but it would also be good to get back into learning British Sign Language again and that's more where I'm leaning.  There's no way I'd be able to learn multiple languages at a time, so it'll just have to be one for now.  We'll see.

So that's all of them.  There are quite a lot that I've written down, but as I said we'll prioritize the top ones to begin with and see how the year goes.  In a way, it's good for the way my brain works to have a few different ones going so that I spend my time bouncing between things the way my brain does.  I actually find it hard to concentrate otherwise.  I wasn't really that organised with my goals last year and I feel like that showed in the outcome so I want to be more organised this time around, starting by breaking the goals up into quarters again.  Having something more concrete to work toward means I'll be much more likely to accomplish them.  Let's see what we can actually do this time around.