Happy New Year everyone! I hope everyone had a fun and safe New Years!
Every year since I've graduated and started working full time, I set goals for myself for the new year. I think of it as a kind of syllabus for the year (still in student mode here). I'll be making January and February my month of planning. March will be when I start implementing my new goals. I'll be using 2 separate manila folders to collect workouts and recipes. Once I compile a good amount of workouts, I'll start planning when I'll be doing them throughout the year. I'll probably change workouts every 2 weeks. As for recipes, once I have compiled a good chunk, I'll probably end up bundling recipes with similar ingredients together and do some meal planning. I'll probably be Pinterest-ing quite a bit as well. So let's start off with the 4 main focuses of the year.
1. Finances
- Loans:
- Reflections: My goal to be debt free by 33 is coming along swimmingly. I'm not a patient person so before my post today, I was actually quite disappointed with myself because I had originally wanted to finish paying off one of my loans (I have a Stafford and a Grad Plus loan and I wanted to be done with the Grad Plus loan since it's the one with the higher interest). Unfortunately, due to some extra travel (Coachella, Alaska, Seattle, Tennesee for Bonnaroo, New Jersey/New York, Hawaii, and New York again) and splurges (which I'll discuss below), I was unable to pay off as much as I wanted. But after some careful Excel maneuvering, I found out that I paid a total of $36,079 towards my loans which was $18,000 more than what I would've paid if I was just paying the minimum. Another accomplishment I had wanted to achieve was to get to a point in my loan payments where I would be paying more towards the principal vs. the interest and I'm finally doing just that for my Grad Plus loan!
- New Goal: Now that I've kind of seen the sacrifices I had to make for the year as well as how much I dug into my savings, I will probably be content with myself if I end up paying the same amount as I did this year towards my loans. I mostly want to use the money I save up this year towards traveling. This past year, I was bitten by the travel bug and it's still going strong. I've seen a few of my friends go to Europe this past year and it really makes me want to go back, especially to Italy.
- Savings:
- Reflections: I pretty much emptied my savings this year to pay off my loans so that was the "sacrifice" I had to make this year. I didn't go into my emergency fund but I good chunk of my savings was depleted :/.
- New Goal: I want to be able to double my emergency fund by next year.
- Splurge:
- Reflections: This year I made the leap of purchasing my first Chanel bag. It's my most expensive purchase to date and I did purchase the bag when I was in Oahu at Ala Moana. I've had my heart set on getting a Chanel bag since I graduated but I could never get myself to buy something so expensive. But I finally went for it because it was only getting more and more expensive. I'm really happy with my purchase but I wish I could wear it out more often.
- New Goal: For the new year, I'd like to save up for a second, less expensive Chanel purchase. Also, we've had to downsize from a 2 bedroom to a 1 bedroom, we've been getting rid of a lot of our clothes. Now that I'm a bit older, I'm trying to purchase fewer but better quality clothes. I'm hoping to be able to do a session with a personal stylist possibly at Nordstrom, J. Crew or Topshop.
2. Food
- Explore:
- Reflections: During January we did restaurant week and we realized that many of the restaurants that participate in restaurant week tone down their menus and food for those weeks. All the places that we've been during restaurant week, we've been pretty disappointed minus Amaya at the Grand Del Mar and Eddie V's. That's why we didn't end up participating in September. It was also costing us a fortune since each meal was at least $100. I'm glad we didn't participate in September (minus going to Eddie V's which was only because we had a double date with a friend from out of town) since we did a lot of travelling and we spent a good amount on food when we were gone.
- New Goal: Since we are now living in Little Italy, I really want to explore the restaurants that are in the downtown area. I didn't really do restaurant week this past September besides going to Eddie V's but I do want to try a few places this time around in January.
- Cook:
- Reflections: Cooking was definitely really hard this past year mostly because I didn't know what to cook and I didn't really have time to cook. Also it was getting really expensive to purchase groceries that I was planning on cooking and then not having the time to cook and throwing, basically money, into the trash. That alone made me even more discouraged to cook. Our fridge for most of the year consisted of only alcohol and condiments. Closer to the end of the year was when I made more of an effort to cook. We purchased meats from Costco and the defrost button on the microwave became my best friend.
- New Goal: Every year I tell myself I'm going to start cooking. This year I'm going to once again put that on my list of things I want to do. There's a farmer's market in Little Italy every Saturday so we'll be able to purchase groceries on a weekly basis just steps from our place. It might not be very friendly on the wallet though so we'll have to see.
3. Fitness
- Reflections: So beginning of last year I told myself to join one of those pilates/yoga classes. That plan didn't exactly come to fruition or I should say at all. Time and my lack of energy were the biggest contributors to that failed resolution.
- New Goal: This year, I'm hoping to get a fitness pass to one of the fitness joints in the Downtown area so that I can just walk there. I know one of them has a Groupon but I think they removed it since everyone's goal is to get in shape but once that dies down, I think they'll put the Groupon back up.
4. Travel
- Reflections: We did quite a bit of travelling this year so I was very proud of us. Our first venture was to Indio for Coachella which was super fun. We celebrated my cousin's quarter century there so it was really fun. Second stop was to Seattle where we then took a cruise to Alaska and Victoria, B.C. It was our 2nd cruise and even though we were a bit disappointed with the cruise food, it was still a very humbling experience. In June we went to Manchester, Tennessee for Bonnaroo which was also extremely fun. We were extremely happy to have been able to see Sir Elton John and Lionel Richie. In August we flew cross country to New Jersey where we got to see our friend's tie the knot. We got to also explore New York a bit which was nice. My first time in New York was a bust (I pretty much hated it) but this time I fell in love and I was almost debating living there for a bit. In November, I took my annual trip to Oahu and this time I also flew to the Big Island. It was a very interesting experience to say the least and I can't wait until next year to explore a new island. To continue the birth month celebrations, I also crashed my friends' vacation to New York. This time I got to see New York without my beer goggles so my infatuation with New York has kind of died down but there's definitely so much to see there that I would definitely want to go back in the future (now that I've gotten the hang of taking the subway).
- New Goal:
- Places I'd like to visit in the new year:
- Peru
- Coachella again or Lalapalooza?
- Dallas
- Somewhere in Europe
- Annual Hawaii trip
What are your goals for 2015? Any trips you are particularly excited about?
Let's make 2015 our best year yet! Love you all!
Here's a look back at 2014!
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