Hi everyone! It’s time for a 2021 goals update. April was a busy, but still a great month for us.

April was a good income month, went on a weekend trip to the Olympic Mountains in Washington State, and went house shopping!

For those of you who don’t know, my husband works on commission so our household income fluctuates from month to month. Some months we won’t make very much and others we’ll have enough to live off of six months. It’s definitely a roller coaster, but a fun one to be on! I also have a few side hustles on top my day job such as this blog, buying and reselling things on OfferUp, and teaching English online.

We had some friends visit us from Minnesota they wanted to hike the Olympic Mountains so made it a weekend trip. It was so beautiful! After this trip, I definitely appreciate the beauty of our home state. It has mountains, trees, a metropolitan city, and the beautiful Puget Sound flowing throughout Western Washington. I don’t know if you’re anything like me, but because I’ve lived here so long I tend to take for granted my surroundings. We have fresh water, fresh air, and it is incredibly beautiful to look at. You can’t help but relax your shoulders and take a big sigh of relief when you look at the scenery. The picture above was taken on our trip.

Another big news this month is we went house shopping! This will be our first home purchase we are both very excited. Since we both work from home, we can essentially work anywhere. Over the weekend we’ve checked out three different cities within our home state to get a feel for the neighborhoods. We also checked our a few open houses. My husbands cares about the neighborhood and I care more about the house itself so we’ve compromised and I’m letting him pick the location and he can’t say a peep about the house.

We also have a one week trip planned to Austin Texas in May to check out neighborhoods over there. We’re contemplating on moving out of state so depending on how we like it, we might be moving down south! I’ll keep you posted.

April Goals Update

Financial

Save an additional $100,000.00 in 2021 – PASS. For the month of April, we were able to save $7,710.00. This brings our year to date total saved to $37,710.00. We are currently on track to hit our 2021 goal of $100k!
Stay consistent with our zero based budget – PASS. I was able to stay consistent with using the zero based budget. I logged every purchase (even our $2.10 cent spent at the Dollar Tree). My favorite app to use it the EveryDollar app. It’s free and easy to use.
Pay all of our regular expenses with our rewards credit card to earn free miles for travel – PASS. We’ve earned about 10,000 miles for April from putting our regular expenses on our rewards credit card!
Maintain our monthly expenses of $2,500 – FAIL. This month was a bit challenging for our budget. First, we had to pay of 2020 taxes, ugh! It was obviously budgeted for, but it was a little higher than we expected. We also had to front the cost of an office space for my husband. This had to be paid for the entire year so that a was huge chunk out of our savings. Since this can be written off on his 2021 taxes and is necessary for his work, I guess it’s okay right? But trust me when I say I say not happy when I heard we had to do this.

Health

Walk 5,000 steps everyday – FAIL. This was a big fail. I only walked over 5k steps in April roughly 7 times. I was trying to do this during the middle of my day, but I think i’m going to have to wake up early and do this first thing in the morning. If I don’t do it in the morning, I tend to get distracted and not make it a priority (or get too lazy).
Don’t eat past 6pm – FAIL. I would say half the time I ate after 6pm. I noticed that I eat dinner around 5pm, and tend to crave something sweet like an ice cream or a piece of chocolate around 7pm and then something savory and crunchy at 8pm. And this is every night. So weird! I’m going to start eating a more substantial dinner so I don’t give into my evening snacking habits.
Maintain a good skincare routine – PASS. 2021 was a major skincare overhaul. I switched to higher quality products with better ingredients and I am slowly seeing the results. I never sleep with makeup on and use my skincare products every morning and every night. I also never leave the house without using SPF.
Do a 24 fast once a week – FAIL. Instead of doing a 24 hour fast, I think I might switch this goal to intermittent fasting. I also think limiting my eating hours will help me not snack at night.

Personal

Read one book a month – PASS. The book I read for the month of April was Your Money or Your Life by Vicki Robbin. I’ve actually read this book before, but I loved it so much that I decided to pick it up again. This book is amazing because it changes your mindset on how money is in direct correlation with your time. Instead of thinking about that iPhone costing your $1000, think about how many hours of work would it cost me to pay for that phone. Maybe it’s 10 hours, 20 hours, or even 50?
Turn our guest room into a home office – PASS. I sold everything in our guest room on OfferUp and used that money to buy a nice used desk for $60. I have my work computer and printer all set up in my office. I still have to buy two bookcases, a filing cabinet, rug, and some decor items, but I am so happy I can finally utilize that space!
Declutter – FAIL. I need to do a serious declutter of our closets. With work and friends visiting we haven’t had the time (or energy) to do a spring cleaning. I will tackle this monster in May.

Family/Friends

Host dinner at least once a month – PASS. As I mentioned earlier, we had some friends from Minnesota visit us over the weekend and so they stayed at our place one night and we did a trip to the Olympic Mountains together. What a fun filled weekend that was!
Respond to phone calls and text messages right away – PASS. This was more difficult than I thought. But I did it!
Call or text my parents everyday – FAIL. So in the beginning of the month, I was calling and/or texting my parents everyday but then I quickly realized that I was running out of things to talk about, haha! After this realization, I contacted them roughly once a week. I think I might update this goal to contacting them once a week versus everyday.

Relationship

Go on weekly date nights – PASS. Our date nights consisted of local breweries, dinner at our favorite restaurant, and walk by the waterfall. It was very romantic 🙂
Practice giving positive commendation – PASS. My husbands love language is hearing positive words of encouragement so I definitely wanted to make this a goal. I think everything he does it amazing and inspiring, but sometimes it’s difficult for me to express my appreciation into words. This month I made sure to express my gratitude, even if it was for a simple cup of coffee.
Have dinner with no electronics – FAIL. Even though we have a beautiful dining room, we have a habit of eating our meals at the kitchen counter or on our coffee table in our living room. I don’t remember exactly when we started doing this, but it’s a hard habit to break! The only way we’ll be able to hit this goal is to start eating our meals at our dining table, which will be so weird at first, but worth it. I’ll keep you posted on the progress.

Spiritual

Read the daily scripture – FAIL. I need to engrain this habit in my morning routine because I keep forgetting to do it. I only read my daily scripture maybe 4 or 5 times this month.
Practice gratitude by writing down three things I am grateful for or three things that happened – FAIL. I would say I did this on most nights, but not every day. I typically like to do this at night once I am all showered and in bed. I take out my notebook or my phone and start jotting down things that happened that day or a few things I am grateful for. I’ll do better next month.
Be more present – PASS. I picked up this quick 3 minute meditation habit from Pick Up Limes from YouTube. She said that whenever she needs to be calm and present, she takes 3 minutes to sit down and answer the following:

• 5 things I see
• 4 things I feel
• 3 things I hear
• 2 things I smell
• 1 things I taste

This has been such a gift! It’s really fast, calms the mind, and relaxes the body. Whenever I want to be more present I put down my phone, turn the computer off, and answer the above 5 questions. Try it for yourself and let me know what you think!

Work/Career

Post a blog twice a week – PASS. I have successfully posted two blogs posts a week in April. *pat on the back*
Get at least two months ahead on My Personal Finance Blog posts – FAIL. I am currently two weeks ahead on blog posts, but not quite two months yet. However, I will get there!
Do $350k in billing at by day job – FAIL. In order for me to hit the $350k goal, I have to do roughly $2,300 a day in billing. I hit this goal on most days in April, but there were a few that I got so caught up on voicemails, meetings, and emails that I couldn’t get actual work done. To combat this issue for May, I am going to set a timer to reply to as many emails and voicemails as possible the first and last hour of the work day. And the time in between, I plan on turning my phone on silent and working offline to not get interrupted by emails.

May Goals

I wanted to add a few more goals for May.

Practice intermittent fasting on a 6 hour window – Without even trying, I typically don’t eat breakfast and eat my first meal around 1pm and eat dinner around 5pm. However, I snack A LOT at night. I think if I give myself a solid 6 hour window from 1pm-7pm to eat, I won’t snack so much and eat junk at night.

Practice Food Combining 80% of the time – One of my favorite home cooks on YouTube recently announced that all of her recipes will be plant based. At first, I was upset because I am still a meat eater and loved her chicken and beef recipes. However, after hearing her story I completely respect and understand her decision. While she was telling us her story, she mentioned she is also on a diet called ‘Food Combining.’ It’s basically a diet that helps improve your gut health. I’ve recently been experiencing discomfort and bloating in my stomach after meals, even though the food is considered ‘healthy.’ After digging deeper into Food Combining I decided to try it for a week and, oh man! It made noticeable difference in my bloating, discomfort, and I even lost a few pounds without even trying. Here’s an in-depth article from Healthline that explains Food Combining rules and what it is. I want to make it a goal to eat following the Food Combining rules 80% of the month.

What are your 2021 goals? What’s your action plan for setting goals for 2021?

• Personal