This last year I succeeded in reaching two of my goals. These are probably the most common goal areas: money and weight.
Now I’m in a weird in-between place; I’m on a plateau. I reached my goal, so what do I do now?
It took time to reach both goals. Working slowly and establishing good habits helped me to not slide back. It’s close enough in the rear view that I still remember the struggle. But where do I go now?
The weight area is the harder of the two for me. I lost a lot of weight quickly at the beginning. The last 10-15 lbs were more difficult. I told my wife the other day that while I have gained a little back, I’m still in the larger range of my target. As long as I’m one sixty-something, I’m okay. I was 163-66 for a long time, which was good. The last month or so it’s been more like 166-169. That’s getting too close to the upper limit. My pants are getting a little snug around the waist. That’s a problem too.
I like Mister Money Moustache’s strategy to use clothing pressure as a motivator. Don’t upsize clothes to be more comfortable. Discomfort can be a good thing. It will stimulate the behavior that will bring about the change in size. So that’s what I’m doing. I’d been slacking off in my eating habits and workouts. Last week I committed to improving, and I did pretty well. I did my travel workout every day.
Money is easier for me. We eliminated our consumer debt in June. Now it’s time to build savings and investments. We have to be careful not to experience the same financial creep that my waistline has. It’s easy for me to think, “we have enough money now, so we can have this little extra, or do that fun thing”. There are some bigger projects that we’d like to do too. We have to balance some deferred home maintenance with future planning, so we tackle one thing at a time.
One of our past financial difficulties has been the vehicle; both the purchase, and the maintenance. When large repair bills happen, did we have the cash to pay? Sometimes yes, sometimes no. When our last car died, we didn’t have money to buy another, so we took out a loan.
No more. We need to build not only a solid emergency fund, but a car purchase fund that will be ready when we need the next vehicle. Who knows when that will be? In the meantime, maintaining it properly should help to make the new purchase a distant future event.
Image by RÜŞTÜ BOZKUŞ from Pixabay
NOTE: I originally wrote this last week. On the weekend we drove to MN for a family funeral. Just as we arrived in town, the car died, within the hour of the funeral starting. We found out that it was the alternator, which is usually not a big deal. Unfortunately, in our vehicle, half the front end must be moved or removed to get to the alternator. We had some family members who did the work for us. We still paid for the tow, parts, Lyft rides, and a rental car. Six months ago I would have been very stressed out about it. This time I knew that we have cash to cover it. While that’s not exactly what I want to spend the money on, that’s the nature of emergencies. I like this new financial situation that gives us some breathing room.