December 8, 2018December 8, 2018 FOGA

November Goals Update

Financial Independence, Goals

Hello FOGTA Readers,

It’s officially December. Only 23 days until 2019. Crazy to think about.

November was an okay month. Work was incredibly slow, but I still managed to sell a home. Far cry from the seven homes from last month, though. I wrote that I sold six last month, but it turns out I sold seven. I miscounted. In a good way though. 🙂

Thanksgiving was good for us. Got to see my godmother and sister. Also got to eat a lot. The was the first year that my godmother requested we bring food. Mr. FOGTA was nervous about it, but everyone liked it. He brought buffalo chicken dip, and I brought shrimp bruschetta. We are now required to bring both every year.

We also went to see my in-laws. Ended up eating out a few times. Saw one of our friends from college and some of Mr. FOGTA’s family. We were only there for about 1.5 days.

December is going to be a better month, especially financially. I have more closings this month. 🙂 We are going to visit Mr. FOGTA’s family on Christmas Day. Trying to be social and meet up with some friends this month as well. Also, my birthday is going to be sort of this month. I say sort of since my birthday is January 1st and I am not sure which month I am going to end up counting it under since these updates tend to come out about 1-2 weeks into the next month. 

So, how did I do on my goals?

Most Popular Post for November: Six Unexpected Costs of Buying New Construction

Goals for November

This month was interesting in regards to closings. While I had three closings in November, I wasn’t getting paid until the 30th for the first two. So, I spent the month waiting on paychecks. It ended up being manageable since we made an extra mortgage payment last month to compensate for the gap of this month.

• Keep MasterCard paid off. PASS. Paid off once I got my paycheck. 
• Stay under $200 for eating out. FAIL. Turns out holidays and visiting family just kills your budget. *Shrugs* Oh well. We had fun. 😉
• Pay at least $1000 towards the loan. PASS. This was one of the first things I did when I got my paycheck. 
• Keep the savings accounts at $23,000. PASS. Except, this wasn’t a keep at $23,000. More like a get back to $23,000 after coming back from the cruise. We spent more on the cruise than we were expecting, so took some money out of the savings to pay it off. Now it’s back. 
• Read One Book. FAIL. I did not read a book. I did start one, but I did not finish. Honestly, I forgot about it. 
• Work Out Once a Week.  FAIL. I am starting to wonder if I really want this to be a goal. lol 

Blog Goals for November

• Post five times.  FAIL. This did not happen. Only posted three times. Prepared for this to be much better this month though.
• Get One Follower on Pinterest. PASS. This happened! She even left a comment! 🙂
• Get to 10 followers on Twitter. PASS. I doubled this goal! I have 20 followers on Twitter now. Plus everyone has been really nice. Makes it easier for an introvert like me to actually

Goals for December

November will be a better month regarding closings. I will be getting paid for homes this month if all goes well (one on the 15th and three on the 31st). I am excited about the financial goals for this month. It’s going to be great to get to the end of the year with six months worth of expenses in our savings account. 🙂

• Keep MasterCard paid off. This is going to be a constant goal. We use this card for everything (we get cash back on it and extra if we put said cash back into a savings account).
• Stay under $350 for eating out. We are acknowledging that this month will be higher between the holidays and my birthday.
• Pay off the loan. We are aiming to pay off this loan before the year is out. This we are determined to get done.
• Keep the savings accounts at $24,000. This is a big goal for us since this would mean that we have six months of expenses in our savings accounts.
• Read One Book. I am going to do this. I have been reading books on an app I got addicted to, but I don’t count that since they are relatively short when compared to a real book. Going to finish the book I was reading last month.
• 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.

Blog Goals for November

• Post five times.  Going to keep the same goal as last month.  I think the hardest thing has been finding something to write that I am both interested in, but that someone else has not written before. It turns out, a lot of this has been written, but different experiences make the content different.
• Get Two Followers on Pinterest. Got one last month. Seeing about two this month.
• Get to 40 50 followers on Twitter. I doubled the goal last month, so I want to see if 40 is possible. Since I originally wrote this, one of my post this month (okay, my only other post this month) got featured on Camp Fire Finance.  Hooray!!!! More on this next month. Due to that, I decided to up the goal a bit. 
• Get to 150 250 views in a month for FOGTA. I am currently at 116 being my highest, so working on getting to the next step. This goal is now higher as well. FOGTA is presently at 132 as of my writing this, so I feel like 200 is attainable. Guess we’ll find out. 🙂 

So, how was your November? Was it good or bad? Did you meet your goals? Let me know. 

Till next time.

-G