Somehow I blinked and now July is staring back at me when I look at the end of this week. While I took a break from a lot of my summer side hustles this year, it’s not been all quiet on the money front this June. Without further ado, here’s the often-promised, never-delivered goal recap post for the first part of summer.
Write for money. MISS
I did zero things to attempt to monetize my blog this month. In fact, while I have visions of being months ahead in posts, I’m still writing most of them the night before. But not all hope is lost considering my intention was never to get paid for this blog. After a lot of back and forth and round and round–⸺okay, fine, it was two emails, but it was still obnoxious–⸺I got everything squared away to get a check for my new, possibly one-time, ghostwriting gig. I’m still not willing to count it a win until the money is sitting in my bank account, though.
Finish a grad class or two. HIT
I actually finished both of the grad classes that I had to double up on this summer. I’m hoping now that I won’t be spending all of my free time reading and writing for those classes, I can go back to blogging reading, commenting on, and sharing other blogs. The real excitement here, though, is the fact that I no longer run the risk of having to drop the classes and pay the $1,000 penalty to retake them at a later date. Oh, and I’ll get a pay bump in the fall. More on that–and the $14,000 we’re spending over the next year on graduate work–⸺in a future post.
Save at least 45% of our income. HIT
I haven’t calculated the exact savings percentage for the month because it’s not spreadsheet day yet. You say Friday, I say spreadsheet. Tomato, tomahto. But I do know from tracking our spending that we’re right on point with our expenses for the month, and we’ve had some extra income trickle in. As a result, we’ll pass the 45% marker for sure.
Keep decluttering. HIT
I realize I’ve let myself off far too easy when I talk about decluttering. Now that essentially nothing fits, I’m so much more motivated to ditch everything. My 100-item challenge was way too easy, so now I’ve got a new challenge in the works for July.
Get something from our garden. HIT
This year, I experimented with growing onions. Which basically means I followed the directions on the bulbs and watched some YouTube videos. Then, this happened.
I am now considering opening a subscription box company a la Birchbox for dried green onions. We’ve also been getting all of our lettuce from the garden. It’s delicious, and it’s actually growing at a pace that we can keep up with.
July Goals
- Write for money.
- Save at least 45% of our income.
- Touch everything in my house. More on that soon. It’s not as creepy as it sounds.
- Check in with all my credit cards and gift cards.
Final Thoughts
While these goal posts (all two of them) clearly have a financial focus, I want to push the bulk of my energy and focus onto other things and people. So even if I miss all of July’s goals, I’m not going to sweat it. But I will own up to it. Oh, and if I don’t get 97,000 new followers and a book deal out of actually writing this post, you are dead to me, goals. Do you hear me? Dead to me.
So Tell Me…What are your goals for July?
My goals for July are to touch every part of my house… with paint! We need to get this baby on the market, but it’s hard to find contractors for a few of the smaller jobs. Our goals are to not screw up the DIY we’re being forced to do! And not freaking out about all the money we have to spend to do all the repairs/remodeling – when I am not getting paid anymore. That’s the biggest goal 🙂
That sounds like a mountain of a goal, but you can do it!
Goals for July.
1) Reduce the grocery budget to $175 a week (I’m struggling with this)
2) Complete porch base and deck. (We recently had a 12 X 64 foot covered patio installed after having a cement pad poured. Gutters are being installed today. We’re adding a screened in, raised porch to one section of the patio.)
3) Get the two foot wide bedding border around the patio done and the heirloom gardenia bush we rooted from a twig and the two plum purple fringe plants we picked up on clearance for $5 each in the ground.
4) Build the temporary porch swing stand and get it and my swing up on the porch deck.
5) Skirting on the patio side of the house.
6) Declutter 31 items from the house.
July Goal: Survive! Just kidding… though we do have quite a busy July coming up (family wedding nearby, friend wedding 8 hours away, visiting friends, etc). I think my big goal will be to keep up with being prepared and eating at home. It is so easy in the summer to head out to the beach…then hit lunch or dinner time and grab food out and about because of the convenience. So keep prepared and make lots of on the go food for our summer adventures!
Great job on your savings goals and getting something from your garden! I have the least green thumb possible, so that is a win to me 😉
SURVIVAL. We’ve got some travel on the books, but we also have INTENSE work on the house this month too so I’m not exactly sure how we’re going to balance it. It’s mostly going to be survival tactics for the next several weeks and setting low expectations. If we’re all fed, alive, still on schedule, and not at each other’s throats by August 1, I’m calling that a win.
I love your garden, please do keep sharing your harvests <3
Hey, it sounds like you’re doing great with those goals! I feel ya on the blog woes. I don’t know what my problem is, but it feels like I’m always so busy/tired/lazy that writing falls to the wayside. Oops. I love the idea of decluttering; I think I’ll steal that as a goal for July for myself. 🙂
Congratulations on achieving the savings goal!
July is always a busy month of festivals and camping, with an out-of-town wedding thrown in this year to make it even more interesting. My goals for the month are to enjoy all of the fun things, keep up with my work and life tasks, and not stress over the fact that my income is going to be lower this month because of days off. I’ve made a conscious decision to work less in July so that I can enjoy all of the good things, so now I need to not make myself crazy when I don’t get paid!
I’m gonna go Uber-frugal in July. Daughter has my car for work so I am housebound with lots of diy projects that will keep me puttering and. It spending!!
I get a lump sum salary for summer (teacher) so I am gonna try to limit my impulse spending to put even more $ away for college tuition. Happily I made my savings goal of sophomore year tuition, property tax and car insurance so the big end of June goals were HIT!! Good luck to everyone meeting their goals.
Very impressive, Penny. How do you do all this with another human being growing inside you? You’re a modern day Wonder Woman! Thanks for the update. And good luck on the decluttering. We all fight a never ending battle against man-made kudzu.