couponqueenofcorning

Wow, it’s hard to believe that tomorrow is the first day of 2009! Crazy! I guess it’s time to make up those resolutions that I am determined I will keep. Because I do want to be able to keep them, I am keeping them realistic. Ever so often I will post on here about how I am doing with keeping these. Here they are:

• I have a tendency to procrastinate. Bad, bad, bad me! Only, of course, with the things I really HATE doing, like the dishes. LOL. I also tend to do it sometimes with school work, especially if I don’t know what I’m doing or I have a paper to write. I don’t think I’ve ever written a paper that a majority of it was not written the night before it was due! lol. So, I am going to work on starting things early and making a schedule for my class work. Dishes will be done first before I get on this computer or do anything else.
• I have some weight I need to lose. Having 2 babies so close together is one of the causes, the other is that I love chocolate and goodies. I’m addicted! My goal is to lose 5 pounds a month, so that I will be down to around 140 by the end of the year. Wow. I would be so happy - I would fit back into my old jeans. Yes, I did keep them. It really wasn’t all that long ago I fit into them. In order to achieve my weight loss goal, here is what I will do:
  • Food:
    I am going to concentrate on just eating better and eating smaller  portions. Because I know how I am, banning myself from eating something will only lead to my binging on it. So, every once in a while, I will make some semi-healthy goody (probably with chocolate in it or on it. LOL). If you have any such recipes, please leave me the recipe in  my comments.
    We will be eating more whole grains, fruits and veggies. I will be making more foods that are on the South Beach diet. I will also be using Dr Ian’s weight loss site in order to keep track of what I’m eating and my weight loss.
  • Exercise:
    At first, I will be concentrating on working out at least two times a week, and hopefully by the end of the year, be up to four or more times a week. Since our basement is not the best place for working out right now, I will be using the several dvds and videos I have. I will also try to maximize my calorie burning by doing things such as parking further away from stores, taking the stairs, etc.
  • Liquids:
    Right now, I am not getting enough water. I need to make sure I drink 2 glasses of skim milk a day and I will start with a goal of 4 glasses of water a day and work my way up to 8. I will keep my diet soda consumption at less than 2 cups a day

Both of these depend on getting a good schedule going. I also want to do up a cleaning schedule so that I am not trying to do everything on certain days. I will continue with the once a month shopping, as that worked out pretty good last month and seemed to save us money.

I also have some money / frugal goals:

• Savings:
  We already contribute $20 a week automatically to our online savings accounts, but I would like to boost that up to $30 this month, and up to $40 by the end of the year.
  I also want to get a baby emergency fund built up. So, any extra money we get will go towards building up to $1000.
• Debt:
  I am concerned with our debt and will be using at least some of our income tax return to pay off credit cards. We were very good this Christmas and didn’t use our credit cards, so that will help. I want as much of this debt gone as is possible before we move into our new house, sometime in early summer.
• Other:
  We will be reducing our cable down to channels 2 through 1, which will save us about $30 a month. With having  less channels, the tv will be on less, therefore, reducing our electric bill at least a little bit. I will continue stockpiling and using coupons to get really good deals and keep our pantry full. Work on getting Little Princess potty trained, which will save us tons of money in diapers. Limit eating out to once a month and try to get gift cards from MyPoints in order to do so. Find new recipes and try at least one per month.

Well there you go. There are my resolutions. They are fairly simple and seem very realistic, so I’m hoping I will be able to keep them this year.