Five goals for the new year

Happy new year, and welcome to 2022! I have set some goals for the new year, as I often do. Doing so does tend to help me focus on my priorities for the year ahead. I try to make my resolutions realistic and achievable, though. Anyway, I thought I would share, so here are five goals for the new year here at Shoestring Cottage.

1# Financial goals

I have reviewed and rewritten my budget for the year and set some financial goals. The first is to save at least £1000 to update our kitchen. 

We have longed to rip out the kitchen and start again since we moved here 10 years ago. However, it wasn’t top priority, we couldn’t easily afford it, and now we are thinking about moving house in a year or so. As a consequence, we have decided to simply tart it up a bit with some new cupboard doors and perhaps some different flooring. Other than that, it will just be painted.

I also plan to update my will. This is something that has been at the back of my awareness since covid hit, but I haven’t got around to it for one reason or another. I think it’s something that is easy to put off, since thinking about your own mortality never feels great. Nonetheless, I will get that done in the next couple of months.

The last of my financial goals for the new year is to regain the habit of tracking my spending to the penny. Over the past few years, although I set a budget, I don’t keep a close enough eye on what is actually spent. With all the doom and gloom over predicted price hikes, I need to get a very firm grip on our spending.

2# DIY goals

We probably won’t get the kitchen done early this year. As we will be saving for it first, it may happen closer to the end of the year or even into 2023.

What we intend to do this year in the way of DIY is to revamp the small spare room. This can easily be done on a small budget. I have already got curtains from the charity shop, so just need some bedding to go with it and to paint it. I am setting a budget of £150 for this.

The stair carpet will definitely need replacing before we can put our house on the market, but I think we will leave it until later in the year. If we can get a good deal on carpeting, we will take it through to the spare room as well.

It won’t be an expensive one, however! We have two cats that enjoy scratching it up or vomiting on it, plus Archie the dog. No matter how much we clean his paws after our walks, some much nevertheless ends up on the stairs. Still, at least he has given up chewing carpets now!

3# Health goals

With all of the dog walking I do, along with my morning yoga practice, I am happy with the amount of exercise I do. However, I have decided to incorporate some resistance into my routine to build some strength. I found a resistance band in B&M for £3 this week, and I already have some light, velcro type ankle and wrist weights, so I will begin to use these during my yoga practice.

The other thing I really want to sort out is my IBS. Keto and low carb were brilliant and definitely improved things, whereas eating a more plant based diet was an unexpected disaster! I had researched it quite a bit and many people raved about how it improved their gut health. For me, it made the situation much worse.

The trouble is that I find a low carb diet quite hard to stick to and also more expensive. I may have to revert back to it, but before that I have decided to cut out gluten for a while and see if that helps.

It has been a slow start up to now, as we are still eating things we have that we don’t want to waste, but I am planning to make my next meal plan gluten free.

4# Doggie goals

As you may know, we have a wonderful cockapoo called Archie, who we love dearly. However, he is such an anxious little boy, particularly when we attempt to leave the house without him. He was a lockdown puppy (not intentionally – we got him just before the first UK lockdown was announced) and has had us all to himself and at his beck and call for his first two years.

Now, he gets very distressed if he is left alone for any length of time, and as a result we just don’t go anywhere without him. This is clearly not sustainable in the long term. We would like to occasionally have days out or leave the house on our own!

So, we have begun leaving him for just 5 minutes at a time every day. This is going to increase to ten minutes, then 15 and so on, until he gets used to being by himself and realises we will actually come back. So far, he seems to bark the whole time we are gone. I do hope this stops!

The other thing we are determined to tackle is his barking. It is mainly in the car when he can see we are almost home or at our destination – he always seems to know! His high pitched excited noise is enough to make your ears bleed. Anyway, I invested in some spray bottles and now, when the barking starts, we give him a little spray with a firm ‘NO’. 

This is amazingly effective! It started to work on our first car journey, and he is improving after just a few days. I am also using it when he gets over excited when he spots a fox or another animal through the window, or when he jumps on the sofa and throws all the cushions on the floor. 

5# Time management and productivity goals

Finally, I am fed up with feeling like I am always running behind and trying to catch up with myself. The problem is that I do a range of different things to bring in a little income since I took redundancy a couple of years ago.

Don’t get me wrong – I love it! I enjoy what I do and feel so much happier than I was as a 9-5 wage slave. However, I have four jobs effectively:

• This blog – the ads I run help pay me for the blog posts that I write;
• eBay – I sell used items to make a profit;
• YouTube – I now have a channel monetised by ads, that make me a tiny bit of income. I am hoping to expand that over 2022, so please come and subscribe! 
• Freelance writing – I write a couple of pieces a month that I am paid for and occasionally get sponsored posts on the blog too.

These things all take time. However, I could manage them if I treated each activity like a job and got on with them, rather than getting distracted by other people and activities that are nice but don’t make me any money. So, this is my most important of my goals for the new year. I have written a schedule of tasks to do each day, with one day a week left for miscellaneous bits and bobs that I have been doing on an ad hoc basis. 

I need to be more disciplined and organised, which will hopefully improve my income and reduce my stress levels too.

Do you have any goals for the new year? Please share in the comments below.

’m linking up with this Cass, Emma and Becky in this week’s ‘Frugal Friday’ linky.