Accomplished this week

I've realised this week that I've been focusing too much on things that I haven't achieved, opposed to things that I have, so I'm starting a weekly feature on things I have done.

This week I've..

Had my haircut and it feels great. I feel so much better about myself and its make me feel even more motivated about the whole lose weight/get fit goal I'm currently on. The cost was £35, including tip, so not too bad.

Booked flights to Lisbon in July. The flights were a little expensive £269 for three; it's my own fault I left it too late. I had a chance to book in January and didn't, so this has cost us £100. I've also put a deposit on an apartment on the Lisbon coast, which was 165 Euros; travel wise this has been an expensive week.

Walked every day. It's becoming a {free} habit. I'm wondering if I'll ever get to enjoy it though! I could walk around cities forever, but I find the area near my house quite boring :-( Proof again that I'm a city girl!

Sold one item on eBay. I think I'm finally over the whole selling stuff on eBay gig. I made £10 though.

What have you accomplished this week?

:: You can subscribe to this site here. Get free updates to your in box!

A Tax Refund

Yay I got a tax refund, a £1,067 tax refund. So happy. I'm going to put £1k into my personal savings account, and £67 into my clothing fund account.

A Rollercoaster Ride

I've been reading back through some of my old blog posts and they make funny reading; the highs and lows that I went through paying off my debt are well documented and I now realise just how much of a rollercoaster ride I was on; not that I would change anything. I needed to go through it all to change my habits and move on.

The same principals now apply to my weight loss goal; there is no quick fix to twenty years of overspending, like there is no quick fix to twenty years of over eating. What I have to do is resolve to change things and work towards my ultimate goal bit by bit - so this is what I'm doing; resolving to change.

Re-solve: verb (used with object)
1.to come to a definite or earnest decision about; determine (to do something): I have resolved that I shall live to the full. source: dictionary.com

March To Do List

Nice and simple. What I would like to accomplish in March.

Health
1. Lose 7lbs; continuing with my one main goal focus this year I want to lose another 7lbs in March. I've lost 8lbs since Christmas so it's heading the right way. I'm not calorie counting I'm just concentrating on the food I'm eating, no crap.
2. Make 6 a day a habit; this ties in with the above; I'm concentrating more on my fruit and vegetables intake than anything else. In February this went quite well; in March I want it to become a habit.
3. Walk for one hour three times a week; enough said

Personal
1. Get a {good} haircut; after getting random dry cuts at the salon over the last few years {to save money} I'm going to get a proper haircut using some birthday money I received. {thanks Mum}
2. Find a CV {resume} template I like and complete it. This is a difficult one for me as it's been so long since I did this; probably 16 years! eek.
3. Re-do my bucket list using this great template provided by LobotoME via SeeJaneFly. I can't say enough how important it is to have a list like this. After wasting 20 years spending and aquiring it's pretty sobering to realise just how many experiences you could of had with that wasted money. I'm not dwelling on that though I'm just focusing on what I do from now on :-)

Finances
1. Make £200 in extra income by selling at least ten items on eBay and doing a car boot sale. Hopefully the weather will improve this month and I can get out in a field and sell my stuff.
2. Purchase flights to Portugal in July. We're going to Lisbon in July and I want to find the cheapest flights I can for me, hubby and youngest daughter.
3. Stick to grocery budget by continuing to menu plan and cook as much as possible from scratch.
4. Save £350 even after paying for flights. This means I need to make some extra money and keep my grocery budget down

:: Subscribe to this site here

Cash only system, my solution

Thank you for all your recommendations on cash only systems. After thinking about it for a while I decided to stick to using my debit card, but use my spending excel sheet columns like cash envelopes. I've attached a copy of how it looks below.

Each spending category, which falls into cash spending, has its own column/s with the budgeted amount at the bottom; when you put any spending in the sheet, its set up to take the money off the budget figure and leave the amount left to spend. This solves my problem of not wanting cash lying around the house.
{click on the picture}

My next big goal

Can you attack two major goals at the same time? I know I can't. For the last five years, alongside the debt payoff, I've been trying to lose [lots of} weight, and it just hasn't happened; for whatever reason it seems I could only tackle one big goal at a time.

Anyways now the debt has actually gone {I still struggle to believe it sometimes} I'm moving on to my next major goal; losing the fat.

I wasn't always overweight. Eight years ago I weighed a happy, for me, 140lbs. I felt great at this weight and I want to get back there. In theory it should take me until the end of the year, which in the scheme of things, compared to paying off debt, is a lot less time. But, for some reason I find cutting out spending a lot easier than cutting out cake!

I'm not going to post the amount of pounds I need to lose just yet { it seems too personal at the moment} but I probably will in time. Wish me luck!

Mini Goals Progress; The Procrastination Edition

It's the last few days of the month and so far I've not completed one of my mini goals for February! There are no excuses as I've had the time to complete them all, just no inclination. Why? I have no idea.