January 15, 2019January 14, 2019 FOGA

December Goals Update

Goals, Money

Hello FOGTA Readers,

It’s 2019!!! Finally! This year seemed to take a long time. I think it’s due to being very slow at my job for a while. Boredom makes everything take forever.

December was interesting. I got ill for the first time in about a year. Not fun at all. I had to call out of work sick. I couldn’t eat and breathe at the same time. Just swallowing was an exercise in tolerating pain. Thankfully, I feel much better now.

We also traveled to see Mr. FOGTA’s family for Christmas. They are on the other side of the state. I was sick, but it was fun overall.

My job was slow for most of the month, yet I somehow sold three homes. Two to people I have been working with for months. Plus, all five of my homes closed last month, so I met my gross income target for the year! I honestly wasn’t sure if two of the five were going to make it, but everything worked out. 🙂

We also celebrated my birthday. My birthday is New Year’s Day so celebrating it is always a little odd. People close or have reduced hours for the holiday. We opted to go out to eat on New Year’s Eve and then be lazy on my actual birthday. I even did laundry (It was long overdue).

Top Posts!

Most Popular Post In December: Five Opinions and Ideas About FIRE That I Do Not Agree With
This did not surprise me in the least. Early in the month this post featured on Camp Fire Finance. I guess they found it via twitter or someone submitted it to them. Either way, the feature brought a LOT more traffic than I have ever seen to the site. You’ll see this reflected in the blog goals below.

My Favorite Post In December: Why I Decided to Pursue FIRE
This post took weeks to write. Lots of stalling, lots of rewrites, and lots of editing. Glad I wrote it though. Feel free to check it out.

Onto the December Goals Update!

Goals for December

I had one closing from November that I received payment for this month. December was a busy month in regards to closings since it was the end of the quarter. Five of my homes closed this month, and I received payment for three of them. The other two closed after the cutoff point for 2018. Hooray for a 2019 paycheck.

Without further ado, here’s how I did in December. 🙂

 

• Keep MasterCard paid off. PASS. Paid off at the end of each month. Doing good at being consistent with this.
• Stay under $350 for eating out. FAIL. We ended up eating out a lot more than I thought we would. Birthday combined with the Holidays completely threw us out of whack. On a positive note, we tried Krispy Kreme gingerbread doughnuts, and they were amazing.
• Pay off the loan. PASS. IT’S PAID OFF!!!!! Completed on 12/31. It was a great feeling. 🙂 The only debt we have remaining is our mortgage.
• Keep the savings accounts at $24,000. PASS. Got to $25,000 this year. That would be six months of bills if both of us were not working.
• Read One Book. FAIL. Nope. I failed miserably. Being sick didn’t help, but it is a lie to say I didn’t have the time.
• Work Out Once a Week. FAIL. Failed this as well. This I will partially blame on being sick since walking was barely doable for a while there.

 

Blog Goals for December

 

• Post five times. FAIL. Considering this is the third time this has failed, I think I will need to lower my expectations on this. I have been averaging three a month, and that seems to work with everything else.
• Get Two Followers on Pinterest. PASS. Sort of. I am convinced that the second follower is a bot. Still, it shows up as two and, aside from using Tailwind, I have no clue what I am doing with Pinterest.
• Get to 40 50 followers on Twitter. PASS. I severely underestimated twitter. I ended the month with 93 followers and am now at 144 followers as of my writing this. It will probably be higher by the time this posts. Just wow. I would never have expected that.
• Get to 150 250 views in a month for FOGTA. PASS. This was another one that I severely underestimated. We ended last month at 348 views. That’s just amazing to me, and a big thank you to Camp FIRE Finance for featuring my post. You should check them out!

 

Goals for January

It’s a new year and things are moving. I will be getting paid for two closings that happened in December on the 15th. I have two closings this month, but both will be paid in February on the 15th. No paycheck on the 31st. Mr. FOGTA has his normal bi-weekly paychecks.

Here are the January Goals.

• Keep MasterCard paid off. This is our main card and we use it all the time for the cash back. This is a permanent goal at this point.
• Stay under $400 for eating out. We were in the $500s last month, so bringing this down slowly.
• Pay Off May Cruise. We booked this cruise last year with a $250 deposit. We don’t pay them off all at once in case we need to cancel the trip for some reason. Thankfully, we are all good to go.
• Read One Book. I have already started on a book so this should not be impossible.
• Work Out Once a Week. At this point, I feel that the worst that will happen is that this stays up another month a fail. I did do some exercising last month, but nowhere near what I should have done.
• Transfer $10,000 to an Ally Account. This way I am making more interest the emergency fund money. In the end, we’ll have the entire emergency fund in the Ally account.
• Put $500 in both our IRAS. I am not sure if this one is doable since I only get one paycheck this month. Nevertheless, I want to make it a point to try.
• Increase 401K contribution to 9%. Due to the fact that my company doesn’t offer the option of a dollar amount, I am limited to percentages. Furthermore, our 401K system doesn’t acknowledge commission as a payable option. It assumes that I make the same amount twice a month. Since that is clearly not the case, my 401K is all over the place. My goal is to contribute the full $19,000 this year, but then I have to turn it off to avoid issues. Going to be raising this number throughout the year until I reach that point.

 

Blog Goals for January

• Post four times.  I lowered this goal by one. My goal is one a week for 2019 so, that will be four for January. This post makes two, so we should be good to go on this.
• Get Four Followers on Pinterest. Thanks to Fire-Ish (check out his blog btw), I am at three followers now. So the goal is one more by the end of the month. That does mean I am going to have to dive more into Pinterest, which is something that NO ONE seems to understand. Due to that, this will be rather interesting.
• Get to 225 followers on Twitter. Last month saw a massive jump in Twitter followers after the aftermentioned post. Since then, I am trying to overset this goal. I figure if it’s too high I’ll still get pretty close.
• Get to 200 views in a month for FOGTA. I am going with the mindset of last month being a bit of a fluke due to the feature post. So, this would be the next logically step for FOGTA without any outside influence. Outside influence is always welcome though. 😉

Life Changes That Are Coming

Due to some truly stupid decisions with Mr. FOGTA’s job, he will be looking for another job this year. He wants to work in IT and is looking into certifications and classes he can take to get to that point. I am hoping that he’ll be able to leave his job when he is ready, but that may not be in the cards. So, hooray for the emergency fund!!!

All joking aside, he is doing his best to be smart about it but isn’t planning on stressing himself out over it either.

I am looking forward to this. I haven’t been the biggest fan of his job since they have a habit of taking him for granted. It would be great for him to find a job he enjoys where they show him some respect.

In Summation

That was the December Goals Update. I have not been doing well on the non-financial goals. That is not good. I need take better care on this stuff. On the other hand, the loan is paid off and, except for the mortgage, we are debt free.

Only $226,190 to go. No big deal right?

So, how was your December? Was it good or bad? Did you meet your goals? Also, if you post goal updates, please include your December Goals Update. I love reading these. 🙂

Thank you for reading. Until next time.

-G