Seems like every time I try to get my life in order, I try to do everything at once, and end up crashing and burning. So I think it’s time to lay things out slowly, so that I develop some positive habits and maintain life at the standard I like it.
1. Have my house back to “maintenance” level by September 17. That give me four solid weeks to both scrub down the sty, and put my cooking/cleaning routines back in place. It’s unfortunate that when I don’t clean, don’t nobody clean – but it’s not actually that bad when I keep up with it regularly. I’ll also be pricing out housekeepers as part of this strategy. I can’t have the house falling apart every time I have a busy week. Not that I’m extra messy when I’m busy, but I don’t have time to pick up after the roommate too – and things pile up and the clean disappears very quickly. The roommate will be paying for this service, since she’s the reason I’m even considering it.
2. Get my physical well-being back on the map. This includes preparing for, starting and sticking to Weight Watchers when my at work program starts on September 23. Also, signing up for fall Yoga (starting in September) and going to the gym here 4 days a week (starting around the same time as WW). I’m currently trying to figure out if I can afford a session or 3 with a personal trainer, to put together a good routine for my current physical condition and goals. Which brings us to…
3. Get my finances in order. Being unemployed always throws a bit of a wrench into things – and I made a few dumb mistakes with my loans that screwed me over. I also got all giddy about getting a new job, and overconfident about the “3 paycheque month.” These all compounded to put a higher balance than I’m comfortable with on my credit cards, so I’m eschewing all but the necessary spending in order to pay those down as soon as possible. I just need to figure out what exactly I deem necessary. I’m quite anxious about this process, and want to get it started ASAP – though I think to be successful, it’s going to have to wait until November to really get started. I’m going to track all of my spending in September, and make a more realistic budget for Nov.
Any ideas or suggestions for making this happen more successfully than it has before?
Get yourself a software package like Quicken to make the budget in. You can download your bank transactions into it each week (or every two weeks) and classify each expense into a category. That’ll show you what you’re actually spending in a month. Then you set your budget depending on what you want to realistically spend, and you use Quicken to monitor it. I can show you how, if you want.
As for limiting your spending, I do recommend giving yourself a set budget, e.g. $50, to spend on absolutely unnecessary things each month or each week or whatever. Then you won’t feel like you’re totally depriving yourself, which usually leads to a huge splurge.
1. your roomie is going to pay for the housekeeper?? as long as you don’t have to, i’m all for it!
2. finding some way to keep yourself motivated and committed. whether that’s finding a work out buddy or setting a realistic goal. speaking of work out buddy, where do you work out?
3. what i find helpful is having my bank automatically withdraw a set amount of money from my account and placing it into an account that i can’t access (and with a higher interest rate)
I’ll be your personal trainer if you’ll be my swim coach!
Gradually!
Instead of deeming it a general ‘getting life in order’ and making a huge lists that all of a sudden it seems like such a giant task, take it one thing at a time. Doing it all at once, even if all the steps are just small steps, they still amount to a lot…
Laying down the ground rules is a good start. But I’d suggest that you break down each step into steps. You’re doing so much! Put the road in front of you, make sure each of your items match up.
Honestly, I do the same thing. Bite off more than I can handle, and end up burnt out, disappointed, frustrated and I give up.
and know that I love you 🙂
Yeah…indie/emo whatever but here’s an interesting read for some answers.
emo