Hello 2025

Going into is honestly a bit scary. I have no idea what the future brings. All I know is I need more direction in my life. My hope is that by tweaking a few things, it will be one of my best years. 

This year, Chad and I will be working harder on our finances. We will be doing a no spend year (more to come on that). As we do so, we will work harder on paying off debt and building some sort of homestead on our kettle plot of land. I'm hoping this bring us closer together.

My crafting will have a new theme. This will be the gear of gifts. I will be making gifts for friends and family throughout the year. This will save money and break down my yarn stash a bit. I am already working on Eric's birthday present. I will for sure blog about this as I go as well as recap last year's theme, the year of the sweater, in future posts. 

I hope to finish my degree this year, but this is a very scary thing for me. All I have left is my internship unless I get procrastinate too long. Then, I will have to take a few more classes as well. I really want this to be done. I am just not good at being around new people and searching for something like this is terrifying. 

I will continue to work on my faith journey this year. I love that prayer and scripture reading have become a part of my morning routine. I want to incorporate General Confidence talks and regular "Come, Follow Me" study as well. My hope is to also make it to the temple at least once a month outside of our twice a month shift as ordinance workers. I am at a point in my life where I crave spiritual guidance. The more I learn about the Lord and His plan, the more I want to develop my relationship with Him. I hope I am in a better spot by the end of the year than I am now as I continue to grow my faith and knowledge. 

It is scary going into a new year. I hope that these goals will give me the direction and discipline I need in my life. 

Considering It

At the beginning of 2020, Chad and I had decided we wanted to do a "no buy year." I am not totally sure what made me want to do it. I'm guessing I had listened to an audiobook about it. (Knowing me, this is probably the reason.) This didn't last long because I sought retail therapy during the pandemic. Also, we had a few appliances break that had to be replaced. 

I am considering trying it again. We have gone too far into debt and need to find a way out. I think this will help us do that. We also want to lower the amount of waste we create. This is why we recycle and compost. We started cutting back on our consumption earlier this year, but I want to do it even more. 

What rules will we follow? First, we are canceling subscriptions we don't use or rarely use. I canceled an eBook subscription that was about 70.00 a year realizing I was not using it enough to justify the cost. (I buy paper books for the most part.) I am also going to cancel my gym membership because I rarely go across town to work out alone. If Planet Fitness still offered classes with a trainer, I would go more often and consider keeping my membership. We will have to look at other subscriptions to see if we use them enough as a family to keep them. Next, we will once again cut back on how much we eat out. Obviously, we will go out for birthdays if that is what the birthday person wants. I will also be going out with Michelle once a month because that is what is helping me keep my sanity while working from home. We will have to decide if we want to allow one outing a month for date night, but we haven't made that decision yet. Chad and I will have to sit down and decide on our other rules for this "no buy year." 

What will this not effect? We will still be traveling. One of my trips is already paid for and another trip will be to visit our parents. We have already told our friends in Florida that we will have to postpone our trip out there. Hopefully, we can find another exciting trip for our anniversary. 

If this year works well, we will review our rules and continue into the next year. 

They Ruined It

I have been using mint.com for my budgeting needs for a few years. It has been quite helpful when I use it properly. Recently, I got an email saying that I needed to switch my data over to creditkarma.com by a specific date with the assurance that everything would be working fine. Each time I logged onto Mint since this email there has been a banner at the top reminding me to switch over with the reminder that when I did so I would no linger be able to use that website. 

Today, I took the plunge and switched over my account. It was a disaster (in my opinion). My data was imported, but I can no longer use it to budget. It is just informational. How frustrating! I wasn’t using Mint just to see my credit score and transactions. I was using it to budget. They took away the main function I needed, and it took me forever to even find the basic data on Credit Karma that I can get on my bank’s website or app. Now, I need to find another budgeting software and start all over. I my just switch back to old fashioned spreadsheets.