March Goals Update

I hope everyone had a good week. Time do some writing on the blog. First up, update on the my goals from March.

GOALS

Financial

Expense rate under 45% of my net income.  D

January started out very rough with a 108% expense rate, but February was much better due at 35% of my income and finally 75% for March. That leaves me with a 66% expense rate for the year. Definitely not the start I wanted to the year I hope we will be able to make up some ground.
 
Establish an emergency fund and automatically deposit some money into it each month. C

Still no progress in this department yet, if I want to open a Money Market account, as I was planning to do, I need at least $10k to open that account with my bank so I am still trying to decide how much cash to save up for this goal.

Invest $2,500 per month. A+

I invested over $1,951 in XOM and $200 split evenly between Disney (DIS), Kellogg's (K), Unilever (UL), a Pepsico (PEP) this month. Not where I would like to be for the month, but I am up to $8,354 for the year, so I am right now track, if not a little ahead of schedule.

 

Open a Loyal3 account and start a small amount of automatic investing. B+

One on sense this goal is complete, I opened an account and starting automatic investing, however I don't want to mark this as complete yet, I would like to reevaluate in a couple of months and if all is going well, add to my automatic investing.

Pay for my vacations with overtime. A

I put in 28 hours of overtime in February, fantastic. That leaves me a little ahead of schedule. 

Establish one new source of income. C

No update on this front yet.

Physical

Complete the Tough Mudder. C

I am already signed up for this one, so it will be happening.

Workout my legs 2x per week. C

I got really busy in March so I did not go to the gym as much as I would like and so I don't think I reached this goal.

Complete a sprint triathlon. C

No progress on this front yet, plenty of time to plan this one.

Run at a faster Pace: complete a 15K in 1 hour and 24 minutes (9 minute/mile). D

No progress here either.

Reduce my percentage of body fat to 12%. D

I am actually not sure what my current percentage is but I don’t think it is good. 

Track my calorie intake every day and review weekly. F

I ran out of time this month and stopped recording.

Personal

Read 6 Books from my Reading List. C

No progress yet.

Take an online class. D

Nothing here either.

Average one blog post per week. B

Only 3 posts in March so I did not quite reach my goal. I think I hope to make up for it in April.

Travel somewhere new. COMPLETE

We did it and it was great! We loved our time in New Zealand and I wish we had gone for longer.

Try meditation. C

I need to figure out a game plan for accomplishing this goal.

Try out one new hobby. C

Step 1: figure out what I would be interesting in trying, currently I have no ideas…but I got one idea while on our trip: mountain biking. We spent one day biking around a lake along some gravel trail and will it was too mild to really be called mountain biking it got me thinking that it may be a hobby I would enjoy.

Date night with my girlfriend at least once per month. A

We went out to dinner a couple of times this month.

Conclusion

Well I think I am still doing OK. Certainly the big trip provided a bit of a speed bump but most of these goals will just take time and patience.

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