Goal 1: Maintain a Healthy Lifestyle
I definitely ended this year on a lazier and more unhealthy note, but I still felt good! Marathon training started in the middle of the month and so far so good! I was able to get in a lot of great runs during my Christmas break.
Overall: I believe I put a lot of effort into this goal throughout the whole year! Leading up to my wedding I changed my eating habits and added a lot of strength training to my routine. These have carried with me since then.
Goal 2: Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle
I'm not sure if this makes me sound cheap or weird but I actually don't care. When it came to wrapping gifts this year, I reused a lot of things from last year. I had saved all gift bags that were nice and even kept some of the tissue paper that wasn't super wrinkly. I was able to wrap {or I guess bag?} all of my Christmas gifts for people without buying anything new/wasting paper.
Overall: Having this as a goal definitely made me very aware of my wasteful habits. I almost completely transitioned to only using reusable bags. Every one in awhile I'll forget them at home so I'll use plastic but I always find a way to reuse them afterwards. I am glad that I have now adopted some great habits!
Goal 3: Reduce Phone Usage
I found myself spending a lot of time on my phone towards the end of this month when I was just sitting around, relaxing. This is definitely a goal I could've worked harder on but didn't.
Overall: Like I said, I could've done better with this goal. Going into 2020, I am more aware of this bad habit and am already working on ways to keep myself off my phone.
Goal 4: Try New Recipes
December was a very VERY busy month for us, as I'm sure it was for all. Because of this, we hardly even ate at home, let alone made a new recipe. Although towards the end of the month I went on a grocery shopping strike {okay, maybe that sounds dramatic} because we already had so much food in our fridge. freezers, and pantry that we needed to eat up. This caused us to get a little creative {pizza on bread or pasta with random frozen veggies tossed in, anyone?!}. It wasn't anything crazy but did require some creativity.
Overall: I'd say we did pretty good with this most of the year! We added a lot of new meals into our rotation thanks to trying to new recipes. We have a goal of trying 24 new recipes {2 a month} in 2020!
Goal 5: Give Back
As crazy as it sounds for this time of year, I can't think of any giving back I did throughout the month of December. Oops!
Overall: This was a goal that I felt like I focused on in spurts. I enjoyed going through old stuff and donating to Purple Heart so I am hoping to make that a habit in 2020.
Goal 6: Save Money
I'm actually surprised that we did well with this goal in December, of all months! We were really strict about our spending with Christmas gifts and still managed to get great things for people. All the parties and my grocery strike helped us save money in the "grocery" category of our budget.
Overall: 2019 was a good year of budgeting for John and I! We established a budget and worked hard to stick to it. A couple little unforeseen bumps along the way caused us to shell out some money we didn't expect but that is what an emergency fund is for! If you take away anything from this post today, please let it be that you will make an emergency fund and not touch it until absolutely necessary. The amount in your emergency fund can be up to your discretion {Dave Ramsey suggests $1,000}. We would've really been in the hole this year with our pipe bursting, heat breaking, many many car troubles, etc. without it.
Question of the Day: What is one goal you have made for yourself in 2020?
My family reuses giftbags all the time! We just place a new sticker on top of the old one haha. I guess I didn't realize not everyone did that...seems like a no brainer to me!
ReplyDeleteOne goal for myself this year is to budget better. I want to start by first tracking our spending to see what is realistic for us though instead of just throwing down a blanket number for groceries that might be unrealistic.
I think gift bags are common but I'm not sure everybody goes as far as saving tissue paper haha. I'll take it out, fold it up, and save it for later.
DeleteWhen we first started to budget, we tracked our spending for a month to see how much we typically spent in groceries and then went from there. We buy mostly the same stuff so it is almost always spot on.
I don't save tissue paper unless it's white since that's good for the bottom of bags or in boxes.
DeleteOur shopping changes every few weeks since sometimes we go to Costco and restock on a ton of items while other weeks it's just a quick Trader Joe's trip to get produce. I wish it was simpler though!
It gets a bit trickier with us when we budget for the cat's stuff. There is just a lot to consider and I buy different things at different places to get the best deals. And then some things I buy a lot of at once but not others. I make it much harder than it needs to be to save like, a dime probably haha.
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