Goals, Goals, Ever Lovin Goals!

Tonight I'm meeting family and planning to see the Christmas lights at our local  little botanic gardens. Afterward we will find something to eat. Tomorrow I'll be packing, picking up, and running to get a couple stocking stuffers before heading to the south on Saturday morning. We've reservations at a decent but cheap hotel, our cooler,  and have family, food, crafting and dogs at the other end. While I'll be having fun and hopefully posting about fun here and there, I'm not liable to think about goals for the new year between now and then-and we return on the first. Even if I think about them, I'm not liable to write about them, so with no further ado, here are the goals for the coming here from the frugal retiree. This is down and dirty, and I'm sure I'll be explaining about each more as the year progresses and I break them down month by month:

Financial:

• Get the groceries down to $70 a week, and try real hard for $50 per week.  We are two adults, a six foot six twenty something. My sister cooks three dinners a week at the most and I do everything else. The bill has been going up lately and my goal is to see if we can eat as well as we have been (which is damn good) with some effort). This includes food only folks.
• Make a list of every single upcoming expense or planned expense for the coming year from travel to birthdays to my car registration renewal by month. Then make a month by month budget.
• Taking my inspiration from another blogger, try and find one way each month to reduce my long term expenses in some say
• This is more general and non specific, but find at least one thing each week to refashion, re-use or repurpose in a real way. This one is about waste as much as it is money.

Health

• Increase weight bearing and strengthening exercises which I already do daily, and try to move up one pound in weights each quarter.
• Try and find a modified yoga and/or Pilate's class for people who cannot get on the ground-in person rather than via video if possible.
• Deal with the dental issues (and there are some, believe it or not) that arise from a woman who had a shattered jaw at eighteen and at least partially false teeth since then (everything, even opening wide is painful, so avoidance is my default).
• Start regularly taking all the supplements I need regularly which include Vitamin D to COQ10.
• Attempt to use the DASH diet as a general guide for eating, with five fruits and vegetables as the minimum.

House/Family:

• Deep clean and declutter one room in this house each month, from rafters to floor, making a list of wants, needs and fixes if any room my room.
• Take the above and make a master house list, to be fulfilled depending on money, energy, time, tastes and landlord.
• Give each adult kid a surprise and a gift each month. I welcome your thoughts here. I am trying to decide between a coupon book that they could cash in each month, with things like an item under $30 from their Amazon wish list, a Safeway GC, and so on, or just doing something each month. It's not like I can ask them, lol.
• Make a plan for when my son graduates/moves/leaves this house and how we will deal with the dog. This may include my subsidizing an apartment in this Denver market, having him move and leave the dog here and then come to walk, his living at home or his moving to Arizona or Texas. Everything is fluid but I (we) need to start preparing.

Personal/Enrichment/Creativity/Challenge

• Learn three new skills this year. Right now I am looking at learning how to can and preserve, another language, and learning to weave.
• Be firm on my weekly personal/artistic/meditation time-it has to be out of the house and in general it has to be something not done before, even if it's just walking in a new location or going to a small art gallery alone and having coffee. It must be alone!
• Unless the weather is crippling, commit to at least two social obligations a week that are not exercise class (three would be better) or church on Sunday. This is here mainly for these darker months as I tend to be a nester.
• Plan four one or two week getaways for the year now that I am free of tuition-as of today this includes a train trip and a week in Chicago, A train trip to San Francisco, ten days in Wyoming and Montana, and one yet to be determined but will be near a beach!
• Try and commit to a monthly long weekend someplace new each time
• Write at least one page of journaling in the morning since i am a fail at three pages of morning pages.
• Make a master list of creative and diy projects to do this year.

Spiritual/Giving Back

• Do at least five minutes of meditation/complentative prayer/holy silence daily (note that I already pray and read twice a day, this is in addition to that)
• Go to my church's weekday study brunch at least monthly, early morning or not
• Make at least one thing for charity each week, be it scarves for the homeless, cards for meals on wheels or whatever
• Take on a responsibility in my new church, whether it is reading, ushering, doing a book group or something else besides my Family Promise commitment.

Blogging/Writing Goals:

• Blog at least three times weekly, with one blog being about creativity and one about frugality and retirement.
• Write on at least one social media platform daily (Instagram. Facebook or Pinterest-I no longer do Twitter).
• Blog at least monthly on issues like homelessness, human rights and medical care that are important to me. I feel that people who love this blog  should be able to avoid those or comment intelligently if they disagree.
• Read every single blog on my bookmarks weekly and comment as much as I can. Right now I am a huge fail at this!
• Start three "series" type blog posts that will continue semi regularly.

And there you have it. I still need to fine tune, and make some adjustment, but these are my goals for the coming year. They all need to be broken down into monthly (and sometimes weekly) increments.

And now I'm off to my last gals happy hour before heading off for the holidays. Dallas, here we (almost) come!