Starting 2008
Ok it's a bit late in January to be posting a "Starting 2008" message but since I only post a few times a year I think it's pretty good for me.
This year is starting off really well. Work has been a bit more relaxed now that the Vista project is basically over. And homelife has been great lately.
I think the thing that is going to have the biggest impact on our homelife this year happened last weekend. About 5 months ago we set up a budget, again. We'd done it several times in the past but never in a way that we could use on an on-going basis. Those exercises always left me feeling frustrated because I knew that with 2 incomes we shouldn't be scrounging for money to make ends meet on what I felt was a fairly frugal lifestyle. Anyways, we created the budget in Mvelopes and stuck with it for a month or so. We kept an open mind, knowing that it would take a few months to really work out all of the bugs. We kinda fell off the bandwagon over the holidays, so this past weekend we sat down and entered all of our receipts and bills. As it turns out we were almost completely within our budget the whole time. We made some adjustments here and there when we found areas that we weren't being realistic in, but overall we were pretty close. Now that we know we have a budget that is an accurate reflection of our lifestyle, we can relax a bit and trust that we really will have X dollars left over at the end of the month that can go into savings. That peace of mind also means that we can be more comfortable splurging and say adding HD to our cable bill since we know that an extra $15 or $20 a month on the bill isn't going to bankrupt us.
The other thing that has improved homelife has been the writers strike. I never realized how watching TV every night was impacting my life. With the strike going on, almost everything on TV is a rerun so there's no need to watch for 3 or 4 hours a night. While we used to sit on the couch and check our printed out schedule to find out what we were scheduled to watch all night, now we play a game together on the Wii, dance with DDR, do puzzles, read, or do other stuff around the house.
If I can work some regular exercise, a promotion, and some new electronic toys (such as an iPod Touch) into the next 11 months, this year is bound to turn out pretty well.
This year is starting off really well. Work has been a bit more relaxed now that the Vista project is basically over. And homelife has been great lately.
I think the thing that is going to have the biggest impact on our homelife this year happened last weekend. About 5 months ago we set up a budget, again. We'd done it several times in the past but never in a way that we could use on an on-going basis. Those exercises always left me feeling frustrated because I knew that with 2 incomes we shouldn't be scrounging for money to make ends meet on what I felt was a fairly frugal lifestyle. Anyways, we created the budget in Mvelopes and stuck with it for a month or so. We kept an open mind, knowing that it would take a few months to really work out all of the bugs. We kinda fell off the bandwagon over the holidays, so this past weekend we sat down and entered all of our receipts and bills. As it turns out we were almost completely within our budget the whole time. We made some adjustments here and there when we found areas that we weren't being realistic in, but overall we were pretty close. Now that we know we have a budget that is an accurate reflection of our lifestyle, we can relax a bit and trust that we really will have X dollars left over at the end of the month that can go into savings. That peace of mind also means that we can be more comfortable splurging and say adding HD to our cable bill since we know that an extra $15 or $20 a month on the bill isn't going to bankrupt us.
The other thing that has improved homelife has been the writers strike. I never realized how watching TV every night was impacting my life. With the strike going on, almost everything on TV is a rerun so there's no need to watch for 3 or 4 hours a night. While we used to sit on the couch and check our printed out schedule to find out what we were scheduled to watch all night, now we play a game together on the Wii, dance with DDR, do puzzles, read, or do other stuff around the house.
If I can work some regular exercise, a promotion, and some new electronic toys (such as an iPod Touch) into the next 11 months, this year is bound to turn out pretty well.