Update on 2008 Financial Goal

When Moolanomy reviewed his progress towards meeting his 2008 financial goal he realized that he might fail. His goal was to reduce utility costs by 10% or $35 per month. With a new baby and relatives in house to help out, costs are actually going up.

Faced with this new information he sees three options:

Do nothing and accept the failure

Try harder to achieve the goal

Revise my goal to reflect new assumptions and condition

If you fail to foresee changing conditions when you set you're goal you have to be willing to adapt and continue to make progress towards a revised goal. Thats exactly what he has in mind. He's going to take some time to revise and reflect while still working towards locking down energy loss in places like insulation.

In this post he also asks me how my 2008 resolution is coming along. As I have recently noted, I'm on track to meet my goals, but I'll be a little more specific here.

My original goal was to eliminate almost $17k personal debt by putting at least $1400 per month towards it. In December I used my Christmas bonus and stiffed friends and family out of gifts (just kidding, but I did cut back) to contribute 20% more than that. That put me ahead of the game and gave me great motivation to succeed.

In the month of January, some unexpected expenses came up. An expensive meal with my best friend before she moved out of state. A little extra gas money to visit another friend and her children on the weekend. A really stupid traffic ticket. Things come up. In the end I came up slightly short in January. My total payments added up to $1343. Its not the $1400 I hoped it would be, but its still a huge accomplishment in my book.

My goal is a guideline and a plan, but I'm willing to be flexible. Honestly I believe that setting the goal itself is a huge step in the right direction. It really makes you think about whats possible and what needs to be done to make it happen.

My goal required me to stretch my budget to the limit. In this case, I'm much better off falling just short of a very difficult goal than I would have been if I set my bar lower. For example, had I set my goal at $1000 per month I would have felt content with just that. After all, thats still above and beyond my minimum payments. I knew $1400 was a stretch and thats ok!

Thanks for asking, Pinyo!

Here is a link to all of the 2008 financial goals.

I'll be looking for someone that hasn't updated to tag :)