Goals!

Well, another month of the year 2012 comes to a close, and this has been a good one!  You may remember WAAAAAY back in January I stated that one of our big goals this year was to really focus on reaching some of our financial goals.  One of which, was to fully fund our savings account and complete baby step #3 of the Total Money Makeover!

Well, I am thrilled to say, that as of this month, not even half way through this year we have met this goal!  I remember when we went and saw Dave Ramsey life,  he took a minute to speak to the husbands in the crowd and said that the one part of the program that will really make your wife happy is to complete baby step #3.  He said that woman really need that stability and reassurance and he was right!

Now, with that being said, we do not get to move ahead to baby step #4 at this time.  When I quit working to stay home with Malachi, we made the decision to first pay off my car and then skip ahead to getting our emergency fund completely funded.  Then we would go back and finish paying off our debt.  So now, we will actually be going BACK to baby step #2 and meeting that goal and THEN we can jump to baby step #4.  We just wanted to be sure to have some money in the bank being a one income family.

We only have one debt left (besides our mortgage) that we need to take care of and this is our largest debt - student loans.  It could take us 4-5 years to complete this task, but I'm really hoping that we can buckle down and get it taken care of in about 2-2 1/2 years.  That is a bit aggressive at this point in time, but I think we can do it if we buckle down.  We've actually had some exciting things happen these last few months that have freed up some money.  We were able to refinance our home and drop the interest rate considerably and Peter also got a nice raise this year.  So our goal is to be putting quite a bit of money every month towards that student loan! It is actually quite a bit of fun to watch that number drop every month!

And another big goal of mine now that I am no longer hosting a child inside my body, is to get back in shape.  I gained 35 lbs this pregnancy - OUCH!  Those 7 weeks on bed rest were cruel to me!  I have about 10 more pounds to go to get back to my pre-pregnancy weight and then I would like to lose an additional 15 lbs after that.  So I have a ways to go to be where I want to be, but I know I can do it!  I joined weight watchers a few weeks ago and also started up Jillian Michael's 30 Day Shred!  Also, tomorrow Peter and I will be starting the Couch to 5K program!  We've done this a few times in the past but never completely finished the program.  I have bad knees from playing basketball and they always start to bother me once we get a few weeks into the program.  I really want to complete this program and be able to run a 5K so I'm hoping I can find a way to get my knees to cooperate!

Peter was a really good runner in high school, and he is finally excited and ready to get back into running.  He has a life goal of running a marathon and we're going to see to it that it happens!  Right now we are going to focus on the 5K together, but once we complete that he is hoping to move on to half marathon training. Disneyland has a half marathon every September and we are looking at getting him signed up to run that for Sept 2013.  The suggestion is 9 months of training for a half marathon so that gives him plenty of time to train for it!  It will be really good for both of us to get back on track with our health!

So that's where we're at!  We met a HUGE financial milestone this month and have lots to celebrate about meeting that goal much faster than we ever thought possible!  And we're just starting a new goal of getting ourselves back in shape!