2013 Goals Progress: 1st Quarter

I feel like all end of the month/quarter goals posts start the same. The blog author starts off by lamenting about how fast the month went. But seriously, dudes. This year is going FAST!

I’m excited because on Sunday, I’m hosting my first ever Easter dinner. Usually, J and I make the trek to our hometown (about a four hour drive) to celebrate with our families, but this year we have the house and my mom and stepdad are coming to us.

I don’t know whether my aunt is coming, and if she doesn’t then we’ll definitely miss her (I haven’t celebrated a single holiday without her in years), but I’m still relieved that I don’t have to make the journey and waste what is the first four day weekend of the year driving back and forth. Now, my mom and stepdad get that pleasure!

I took an extra day off on Thursday to recharge my battery a bit and get away from work. Not that I mind work, lately, but I needed some time away. I find myself getting sarcastic and negative with some of the people I have to deal with every day if I don’t take a break from them.

Anyway, for those who actually care, which are probably few and far between, I had a few “goals” in my 2013 plan that I was working toward.

I wanted to build up my emergency fund, earn an extra $1000 in side income per month, lose 10 lbs and travel more. 

At the beginning of March, I posted about how those are going, but a lot can happen in a month, so let’s look at them in the grand scheme of the year (so far).

Emergency Fund

Since January 1, I have added $2135.77 to my emergency fund.

Mid March, I filed my taxes and realized that I was getting a nice chunk of change back. I struggled with what to do with the windfall, ultimately knowing what I had to do with it – I had to put it on my car loan.

I could have added this amount to my emergency fund, but it would have ended up going to my car loan anyway. It’s a little anticlimactic putting money on debt, but it has to be done.

In any case, if I continue putting this amount in my EF per quarter, I’ll be sitting pretty at $8543.08 by the end of the year. Plus any interest that I make from that money.

I don’t think I’ll get there, because I don’t see the value in having thousands of dollars sit in my EF, so I’ll likely start re-routing it to my car loan to pay it off once and for all in 2013, after I get to $5,000.

Extra Earnings

In March, I made an extra $1,166.14 in online income (through all of the services I offer – writing, ghost writing, blog commenting, some random projects here and there, and advertising). I also think I made around $80 babysitting but because I’m not sure, I’m going to just not count it.

I’ve been successful in meeting my goal of making at least $1,000 more per month. I’ve actually exceeded it every month to the tune of around $200.

Lose 10 Pounds

I’m officially weighing in on Friday, but I lost 1 lb in February, and a couple of pounds in March. I think I’m down around 3 pounds, which is a great start if I wanted to ONLY lose ten pounds for the entire year.

I don’t know what I want to do. Ideally I’d lose ten pounds and tone like crazy, but once I lose that ten, I’ll probably want to lose another five or ten.

I’m short so every pound makes a difference.

Travel

Last I talked about this, I had booked time off to go to NOLA with my best friend. In March, we booked our flights .

I also had plans to maybe go to BlogHer in Chicago in July, starting off in Toronto. I have my fingers crossed that it works out, because then I can cross off another two places on my “must go” list.

I’m rocking pretty much all of my goals, but I feel like I need to add one to the roster so that I can feel more challenged. We’ll have to see. I wanted to join Toastmasters, but all of the clubs around me have meetings on Tuesdays which is unfortunate since that’s a day that I babysit.

I wanted to get Invisalign but that’s not so much a goal as it is something that I do and then don’t have to work toward.

Maybe I need a new web venture.

How was your first quarter?