Keeping Our Goals and Dreams in Focus

With only a few days to go until Thanksgiving, we’ve got it all planned out. We get together with our family and everybody brings something, so nobody has all of the bills or work. Paul shot two wild turkeys this fall, so we will be bringing one of them, along with the mashed potatoes. This year the festivities will take place at my sister’s house.  Paul is excited to be able to watch football there; our TV watching at home is limited to Netflix DVDs and streamed shows, which severely hampers his football enthusiasm.

With Project Money coming to an end in another 5 weeks, we are starting to talk about what we are going to do after the contest is over. Combining hard work with constant attention has turned our finances around. We love the feeling of accomplishment we have from making this happen. It’s easy right now to say that we have made a permanent change, and that going forward, we will continue to balance our budget and our checkbook every week. However, it would be unrealistic to think that our consumer-selves are not going to challenge our frugal-selves in the coming months and years. 

Of course, our consumer-selves have plenty of ideas: Buy a flat screen! Subscribe to satellite TV! Buy new clothes! Replace the stove! We have learned so much and come so far, but soon we will be leaving the safety and structure of the past six months and it will be up to us to continue to apply our skills permanently. Our biggest challenge will be to continue to stick to our budget and not let our busy lives or desire for instant gratification get in the way of that. It will be up to us to keep our goals and dreams in focus. I think that will take care of our New Year’s resolutions this year!

Comments

[Rachel Seltzner]

I hear you on the football thing! There have been a few games that come in with our bunny ears, but if I'm not up for driving to a relative's house to watch the game, I found a great site to watch the Pack live - streaming online... though you have to put up with what seems to be Danish commercials :) I've gotten through it though!