So much can change in just a few months! Three months ago when we set our Q1 goals (you can read the post HERE) I had no idea that the whole world would be so impacted by the Coronavirus.
I’m particularly glad we had just the quarterly goal for 2020 so that we can be flexible now with goal setting and not have wrecked a full year’s worth of goals.
I know I’ve said it before but try to be flexible with the goals you set. It’s not good to beat yourself up if you need to extend a goal deadline or change or quit a goal. Goals are meant to help motivate us. If they are no longer relevant and if they are no longer motivational, it’s okay to let them go.
Some of these goals got away from us. I’m reminding myself too that that’s alright.
Some of these goals we knocked out of the park anyway! I never thought about it before right now but it is good to have a combination of lead measures and lag measures for your finances. For example, one of the goals below is to keep meeting every Sunday to go over our finances. This goal was not impacted by the pandemic at all since it isn’t outcome based which made it possible to still accomplish.
Without further ado, here’s each goal and review.
Q1 Financial Goals Summary:
Goal 1: Husband Finance Takeover/Role Swap
Status: Success!
Notes: This was such a fun experiment that we both enjoyed and got tons of value from. We both feel better knowing that he now knows where all of the accounts are held and how to log into each one (I built him a spreadsheet a long time ago but I didn’t have the URLs so some of them he wasn’t sure where to even go to log in). I enjoyed playing the “Yes Man” even though it was short lived. The hardest part for me was about 3 days before the end of each month when I started itching to know how our net worth had changed. It was hard to keep my hands off of it so that he could fill in the spreadsheet. It surprised me how obsessive I felt about it.
He wanted to try using just my old cash management strategy instead of budgeting and it seemed to work well (total spending is listed below). He didn’t enjoy the longer-term planning or the categorization of actual spending since it is a tedious task. Overall though we are both happy that we did this and recommend this experiment to other couples.
Goal 2: Account audit and simplification (of our 30+ freaking financial accounts!)
Status: Partial Success
Notes: Three accounts eliminated with another account that we are working to transfer money out of and hope to close soon! Plus I resisted the temptation to open about 5 new accounts that I learned about and wanted to sign up for (2 super high interest rate savings accounts, a cryptoassets company called eToro and 2 futures investing platforms…I might be addicted to trying out financial services products…). While there are still a lot of accounts we did review each one and identified the purpose behind each one that we decided to keep.
Goal 3:Online security audit/Password Manager setup
Status: Success!
Notes: Mr. FinanceRox and I are both really pleased that we took the time to work on this project. We updated all our passwords and setup a system using a Password Manager app. We used either the autofilled gibberish password or a long password phrase plus a short password added to the end of all of them so that the Password Manager doesn’t even have the full password. It took awhile to get used to adding the extra characters to the end of the autofilled password but it is working great and we feel comfortable that it is very secure.
Goal 4: Clean up our financial trackers/spreadsheets
Status: Success!
Notes: This goal was set intentionally vague. I wanted to give Mr. FinanceRox the flexibility to choose which spreadsheet(s) to focus on once he dug into this as part of the Husband Finance Takeover. He ended up revamping our Cash Forecasting tracker and his feedback was really helpful. It’s funny how you can use a system for a long time and then when someone else starts digging into it, you can suddenly see gaps.
Goal 5: Have 50 “No Spend” days
Status: Not completed.
“No Spend” days: 49
Nooooooooo! We were so far ahead by the end of our No Spend January that I didn’t look at February or March days until April. Plus, with Coronavirus basically every day has been a no spend day. I’m really surprised we came up short. We could have easily delayed our last grocery trip in March. Stings a little to get so close and not get to mark this achieved. I’m still happy with 49 days though since my 2019 goal was 100 days so to do ALMOST half that in 3 months is progress.
Goal 6: Monthly couples’ massages
Status: Not complete (0 Massages)
Notes: We had one massage scheduled but they called the week before to let us know that they were closing due to COVID. I’m not upset about this whatsoever; massages are a “nice-to-have” and certainly there is more to worry about than not hitting a relaxation goal.
Goal 7: Limit restaurant spending to: One dine out and one dine in per month
Status: Success!
Notes: We went to 3 restaurants and had 0 order in’s this quarter. We have been nervous to order food even though we could based on the guidelines. We will make up for this once the risk is down. Believe me, Mr. FinanceRox isn’t going to be forgetting that we are 3 deliveries short on this goal.
Goal 8: Continue to meet each Sunday for our “weekly household meeting”
Status: Success!
Notes: We skipped two Sunday’s this quarter and since I don’t expect 100% adherence, I’m counting this as a win! We both really enjoy our Sunday morning routine so this goal was easy to stick to.
The first time we skipped was due to having a meeting scheduled with a FinanceRox client that I needed to prepare for and the second time we skipped was so that I could work on completing my business taxes (which should probably count since it is part of our household finances). Other than that, we enjoyed our homemade lattes every Sunday!
Goal 9:Validate/review one of our longer-term calculations
Status: Not completed.
Notes: My original hope for this goal was that Mr. FinanceRox would double check either my calculation on amount needed for retirement or time it will take to reach financial independence.
I thought at the start that Mr. FinanceRox was on board, but he couldn’t be convinced. He doesn’t find value in this kind of analysis and I have to respect that. It is difficult to accurately project future income, expenses and investment returns. It is quite a bit of work for not much payoff if you end up having to re-estimate down the road which is pretty much inevitable. I don’t mind crunching these numbers and doing the estimates so we will stick with my calculations for the time being.
Goal 10: Generate side hustle income of $4000 (my personal goal, carried forward from 2019)
Status: Not completed. Total side hustle income: $3823.69
Notes: I need to get better about reviewing this mid-cycle as well. Had I known I was so close to hitting this I could have sold some additional stocks to hit the number. I’ve been meaning to talk more about side-hustles for a while; this mostly consists of stock trading, dividend income, interest income, personal finance coaching and cash back programs (which isn’t income from an accounting standpoint but is money we wouldn’t otherwise have).
Goal 11: Keep spending at $10,000 and save the rest
Status: Success! Total Spent: $4769
Notes: We technically spent $7478 but that includes $2709 of travel that we are working to get refunded due to cancellations (thanks Corona). Quarter one is always a low spending quarter for us. If the quarantine restrictions are loosened in May, I expect we will spend a lot more in Q2.
For Discussion:
How was your Q1?
Have you tried setting quarterly goals instead of annual goals?
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