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20 for 2020: Q1 update

This post is ridiculously late. I’m gonna be real: I haven’t been able to bring myself to look at the goals a baby, naive version of myself made way back at the beginning of the year, back before all this shit happened. 

That’s not to say that the pandemic is the only thing that’s thrown me for a loop this year! Some other (good!) things have happened, too: I sure as hell didn’t think I’d be spending most of this year planning/paying for a wedding! But it’s striking how different the world was a few months ago—some of these goals just straight-up aren’t possible in the world we now live in.

In theory I’d be writing this post in April and wouldn’t know as much about the pandemic as I know now, buuuuut obviously that’s not the case. “Hindsight is 20/20” is the most fucking darkly ironic phrase for this hellscape of a year. Anyway, let’s get into it. (-sob-) Continue reading “20 for 2020: Q1 update”

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19 for 2019

Happy New Year and welcome to…oh shit, we’re 1/6 of the way into 2019.

So that ship has sailed! Which is fine, because I hate New Year’s resolutions anyway. Last year I tried something new and did a series of monthly experiments instead of year-long resolutions. While that was fine, it was also hard to build any momentum. I don’t like the focus on “new year, new me!” that tends to come with resolutions in January, but there is value in tracking goals for a longer term/over the course of the year, rather than moving on after a month.

So this year I’m trying another new thing and doing a kind of bucket list for the year (credit to Sarah at Smile and Conquer for the idea). And 19 for 2019 sounds catchy, so 19 bucket list items/goals for the year it is!

First up, money things because I am a personal finance blogger. Continue reading “19 for 2019”

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The year in money goals: 2018

Yep, it’s the last day of January and I’m still doing 2018 wrap-up posts (this is what happens when you stop posting regularly, whoops).

In lieu of doing New Year’s resolutions for 2018, I did monthly experiments instead (and yes, the months I didn’t do set experiments were experiments in slowing down/taking pressure off myself. That totally counts ?). But I also set some money goals for the year.

In that post, I wrote that I failed at my 2017 money goals. But failing while still making progress means failing upward, so for probably the first time in my life, I embraced failure.

Did I, seasoned money blogger that I now am, kick ass on my goals last year? Or did I fail upward (or just straight-up fail) for a second year in a row? Let’s find out. Continue reading “The year in money goals: 2018”

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Everything I spent in 2018

The fact that it took me multiple tries of adding up numbers to get ones that were reasonably the same means I a) am not as much of a recovering perfectionist as I thought and b) probably need to slightly rethink my system of tracking numbers. I think a lot of it is inconsistency in categorization, which is frustrating but ultimately doesn’t affect the total (so I could’ve spent a way healthier ratio of time spent writing this post compared to spreadsheeting for this post ?‍♀️).

But, I am finally done spreadsheeting. And in total, I spent $28,629.03 in 2018. Continue reading “Everything I spent in 2018”