theFIREstarter

Well we just got back from Madrid and it looks like unfortunately we didn’t bring the sun back with us 🙁

It seems to be very windy down in the South East of England and the landing of the plane was very interesting to say the least. Or in other words, I need to up my budget on underwear this month!

Anyway we had a fantastic time and managed to come back with some Euros to put towards the next holiday which is in only 3 weeks time – they are like buses for us this year! ¹. Enough personal waffle… onto the goals update…

I’m continuing with a Win/Lose/Draw to denotation how well I think I’ve done on each goal, should be fairly self explanatory!

I will only comment on any goals that have had or should have had some updates on to keep myself from repeating…errrm… myself 🙂 – If you want to read the full list of goals though go here.

Let’s get stuck in shall we?

financial goals

• Set up a bank account for my new company (ASAP) – No progress at all! I couldn’t find even one Saturday morning to get down to the bank. We are also very busy this month due to birthdays, a wedding and a holiday but I have identified May 23rd as a potential date to get down there and get this finally sorted and ticked off the list. Lose!
• Learn about and submit a tax form (April) – Didn’t get time! I didn’t even write it down on my To Do list which is clearly where I’ve gone wrong here. It’s now on there for next week so hopefully will get time to tackle it during the evenings. Lose!
• Increase Net Worth by £20K or ~30% by end of year bonus paycheck (July/August) – At the end of April I calculated our net worth much more accurately than before which is a good start for this goal but I still need to back date that accuracy somehow before I can really work out how well we are doing which is going to be a bit of a pickle. Using my figures on my net worth tracker page it’s gone up by £9,075 so we’ll call this one a draw again for now. Draw!
• Achieve overall savings rate of 60% (First Half) – This is languishing down at 44% average so this is definitely a fail right now. We’ll have to really dig deep to bring this up to near 60% again, I personally don’t think it’s possible but it’s still something ambitious to aim for. Lose!

home/garden goals

• Make my own composter – Done! See my DIY compost bin post here for more info on that one! Win!
• Make my own bike shed – No progress as such but it will be my next project so I’m bring this “onto the list” to get it onto my radar again. I also have found a local garden center which is giving away old crates which should do as my source for all the wooden parts.
• Garden spruce up (March/April) – Design and create new garden layout – Remove stones and put down small lawn, build up flower beds and create vegetable patch(es). 95% Done now! We’ve laid the lawn which is just about hanging in there – all of this rain has really helped while we’ve been away. We made loads of vegetable and flower beds with the old railway sleepers which look pretty cool and cleared out some more unsightly looking plants. All that’s really left is to actually plant some seeds, maybe get a few more flowers and to build up a raised bed at the side of the decking with some steps in between them, which shouldn’t actually take long. We have spent £496 so far which is a squeak inside the £500 budget, although we may end up spending another £30-£40 on seeds and flowers over the next few months the bulk of it has been done on time and on budget. Win!
• See some more pics below of the garden handy work! 🙂

physical goals

• Running goals – I’ve actually started running again in earnest and have signed up to a 10k in June.  Draw!
• Improve general body strength – Do at least 2 x 10 minute Sworkit App body strength work outs per week – Zero work outs so gotta be a lose on this one! I’ve been lugging round concrete slabs, railway sleepers, turf and all sorts in the garden so I’m not particularly fussed I failed big time on the work outs though as I am sure all of that has helped in terms of upper body strength. We’ll see when I come back to do some Sworkits this month! Lose!
• Get my golf handicap down to 20 – Played 2 full rounds, one could have been a sub 90 but putting let me down. Really feel I am moving in the right direction on this one so going to call it a draw again. Draw!
• “Get better at squash” – Hard to quantify but I played 3 times with “work guy” and only won one, and once with “home friend” and won once, so I guess that is a draw? Draw!
• Average 20 weeks alcohol per week or less – I realised I forgot to update on this last month as I never actually wrote it down as a goal, I was just mentioning it my monthly expenses updates and weenie for example thought 52 units per month sounded a lot in February. Anyway it now is most definitely a goal and I have updated the goals post with this! With a stag do in April this was always going to be hard impossible to stick to but I still don’t feel like I did much to counter balance that by being more sensible on the other occasions where drinking was involved (also had two birthdays and a leaving do at work, along with other drinks here and there). Anyway it’s clearly a fail but in April I consumed…. drum roll please…. 39.66 units per week. This is double the recommended amount!! This wouldn’t bother me quite so much but I think that if I continue business as usual I will be looking at around 30/week (March was 34.21/week for example) on a normal month so I really need to get back into the mindset I had in Jan/Feb where I was really thinking about consuming less of the stuff. Lose!

other goals

Write on average 2 posts a week for the whole of 2015  – I made 7 posts in March, which is close enough and I’m pretty happy with that. I finally dabbled with scheduled posts (two posts went up like clockwork while I was chilling out in Madrid, not sure if anyone noticed that?! 🙂 ) which was unsurprisingly incredibly easy like most things on WordPress – you just have to write the things in the first place 🙂

I now need to build up some fully ready posts in the bank for the holiday at the end of the month to keep this up or exceed it in May so the next two weeks will be a busy writing time for me.

Productivity – It felt like I whizzed through a lot on my to do list and ticked off a fair few things that have been on there and nagging at me for a while. It’s amazing how simply writing things down actually motivates you to do them so much more! Win!

TFS Challenges – I need to do one of these soon or won’t have time to fit them all into the year! Not sure which yet but will try to get one in at the end of this month or the start of the next.

conclusions

I actually thought I did OK in April as felt quite productive with the garden stuff again, but looking back up the page there is a lot of red on it, especially in the financial goals section 🙁

Maybe I am just a hopeless optimist after all!? 🙂

Nevertheless, things are getting ticked off albeit maybe slower than I’d wished. Doing this monthly update also provides a constant reminder of what shit needs doing and prioritises things so it’s been really beneficial to me to keep the updates going (as well as my beloved to do list!)

How did you get on in April!? Busy? Productive?

As what seems to be the usual case I will leave you with a few pics of the garden 🙂

This is a “before” pic of the area shown in the below photo from a slightly different angle…

Much tidier! Still some veg to be planted and fence to be painted though

The turf nearly done! I just realised I haven’t got any photos of it once we’d properly finished so I will have to bore you with some more next month! Lucky old you! 🙂