A little bit ago I wrote about my Goals for 2013. One of them is being foxy and save up some dinero to purchase a cute LoveHouse (awwww) or a new car in case mine decides to die (noooo!).

The German philosophy to money is to save and then spend and not spend and then pay off debt and so I was fairly nervous about moving to the States without a rainy day fund (and not much of a credit history to open credit cards so no taking advantage of philosophy #2 either.). Well, I’ve lived here for over five years now and have been lucky enough to afford furnishing my apartment, purchasing a cute, used car and even to create a little rainy day fund. And let’s be honest, something I don’t want to skip: plane tickets home gobble up quite a bit of any foreigner’s savings, too.

Somehow though I feel really behind in saving up money for grown-up purchases like real-estate or car down-payments let alone fabulous trips to fabulous places. And while I realize I am FAAAAAAR better off than lots of people in this world (#FirstWorldProblems) I decided to be a little more aggressive with my savings this year and set a formal monthly goal.

I’ve been doing OK so far. As you can see, February didn’t go as planned but zee car didn’t start and needed to be towed (“No Ma’am, it does not sound like the battery is dead, I know from experience what that sounds like! So can you just send the tow truck, please?”). Ah well. No stress. I’m hoping that I can make that up later in the year!

San has a great list of suggestions on how to save money on her blog. And just like her, many of the traditional saving suggestions like “Don’t buy fancy coffee every morning” I also don’t do. I don’t restrict myself to a weekly budget either and am just trying to make foxy moves and cut-out unnecessary spending. OK so Alfi got a new toy from PetSmart but it was his birthday this week!!

The one thing I do love is catching foxy sales. The weekly e-VIC special (one or two items on super sale for one day) from Harris Teeter (our supermarket) is something I look forward to every Friday. And I admit, I get super excited when they have toilet paper for less than $5 on there like this weekend. That’s $10 and 24 rolls of TP into my savings right there. Bam! Yes, I go Bam! over toilet paper deals. Man, I feel old! 🙂

I also try to throw trips to Aldi instead of the regular super market in for kitchen staples (and hello Aldi pro-biotic yogurt 4 pack for ~$1.70 compared to $2.50 for that active sounding brand elsewhere.). I’m really not an intense couponing chick that monitors triple coupon week and buys 3 copies of the Sunday paper (in fact, that scares me) but when one comes up online for something I use anyway, you betcha I’ll try to cash in on that. They usually have pretty awesome printable ones here.

Of course y’all know about Groupon, Living Social etc by now but I almost find I save the most by not purchasing them at all unless I have very specific plans! 😀

So as you can see I don’t have a strict budget but just having a formal goal for me has been the working quite well and hopefully this New Year’s Resolutions Goal will be reached throughout the year! #That-Grown-Up-Thing-Where-You-Set-Financial-Goals

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Not even two full months into the year and I am already behind one of my resolutions: Blogging twice a month. Well, twenty-four times that is so I suppose I can still catch up on that one! 😉

A few years ago in 2013 I created a great New Year’s Challenge and it really helped to make a conscious effort to live life more to the fullest. The intentions had always been there but who doesn’t love checking off boxes after tackling a task or reaching a goal. I did lovingly subtitle the 2010 project “Sandra’s semi-neurotic quantification of New Year’s resolutions – a year long project”. It was great fun and I did complete quite a few of my goals.

Being 30 and turning 31 in ’13 feels like a great time to reflect on my life and make a conscious effort to live an even better one so I decided to have another challenge this year. There are a few goals that are repeats (like FINALLY running a 5k race) and a few are completely new (like the jewelry making related ones).

This year’s categories are: Health, Home, Fun, Sannipanni Jewelry, Finance, Personal Development and Miscellaneous. Stay tuned to see what I’m up to and what goals are in those categories! What about you? Any goals for this year?

Every few years I actually make new year’s resolutions and then I more or less stick to them. A couple of years ago I bought a lovely, big notebook to keep track of them all (I made a TON of resolutions, or rather wanted to do a lot of things, that year) and actually enjoyed checking the items off the list. It included fun things like “Go to the beach – 2x” and more resolution type things like “save $100 each month”. In the latter case I then made 12 check boxes to tick off when I completed a goal.

I pulled it off the shelf the other day and amusingly enough I had it subtitled “Sandra’s semi-neurotic quantification of New Year’s resolutions – a year-long project” Kind of a fitting name but hey. It was a really awesome project with lots of inspirational quotes and graphics from magazines:

Last month I finished reading Gretchen Rubin’s Happiness Project and she had come up with a similar fun chart to track her goals. I thought about how much fun I had making my New Year’s Resolutions Book and checking off accomplishments. OK it also sucked to have a constant nagging reminder that I STILL hadn’t run a 5k and a few other things but overall it reminded me to be conscious about taking time to do things that I wanted to do for myself to live an active, healthy, and fulfilling life.

This year my resolutions were the exact opposite of this rather specific goal setting (hello MBA) and I believe they were to travel more for fun and to make home-made Christmas gifts. Pinterest sure helped with the latter and I’ll have to dedicate a post to that after the holidays when my friends unwrapped theirs. I also traveled a lot more for fun or made work trips more fun so I call this year a 100% success year in terms of (granted, very easy) resolutions. Pat on the should, Me! (I’m sooo vain… I bet I think this song is about me…)

For next year I have a lot of ideas for several areas of my life so if the world doesn’t come to an end when the Mayan calendar becomes outdated I might just whip out my purple note-book again and fill it some more. I think it’d be fun.

What are your resolutions / plans for 2013?