Money, Diet, and Exercise
I was doing some searching in the I-Tunes store and saw a new category of podcasts labeled something along the lines of “New Year’s Resolutions.” Out of curiosity, I clicked on it. I was not surprised to see podcasts related to money, diet, exercise, and learning new languages. I still would love to be fluent in another language but money, diet, and exercise are more of what I’ve been focused on lately.
For the record, my New Year’s Resolution is to go through all my anatomy notes and edit them in hopes that doing so will not only help me review for boards, but make it easier for me to study when I have to take anatomy again when I do the prosthetic program. What I am getting at is managing money, diet, and exercise are more life goals and less of a year goal.
Money: As you may or may not remember, my goal was to have my only expenses on the credit card be gas for the car. I knew this was going to be impossible, especially since I still had Christmas presents to buy, but I thought even if I tried I would end up significantly reducing my spending. In general I would call my experiment a success. For one of my goals, I was going to try to not buy groceries for a month. It was definitely interesting. I wasn’t as stocked up on food as I thought I was so I did go grocery shopping once about 2/3 of the way through the month. Even though I didn’t meet my goal, I learned a lot and saved a lot of money. The main principle I learned and hope to continue to apply is what key ingredients I like to keep on hand. For example, I realized how valuable onions are to have on hand. Other than Christmas presents, I allowed myself a few exceptions: 1. my favorite knitting store was closing so I bought some needles and a book I wanted that were now on sale 2. I went out to eat 3 times. The first was in celebration of a friend graduating from nursing school, the second was when I was diligently studying at a coffee shop with my perpetual student husband, and the third was January 3rd at work after I returned from my holiday travels and hadn’t thought ahead the night before. 3. Since I saved so much money, I added personal money to Christmas money to finally buy a smart phone.
So overall I was happy with my progress. I hope to continue to plan meals ahead and keep certain food items on hand, continue to reduce my eating out to a couple times a month/special occasions, and continue not talking myself into buying items I don’t need.
Food: Candy has been my downfall at work and home, especially when holiday-packaged candy goes on sale the day after the most recent holiday. I thought if I bought a bag of mini Snickers bars, I would be good and only eat a couple every now and then. I was wrong. Here are my goals for the next few months:
- If I buy a special treat, keep it in the car as opposed to at work or in my apartment. That way I can’t eat it all the time.
- Make changes one at a time. Each week I am going to set a new food goal for myself so over time I am eating better and better.
Exercise: My exercise routine has been completely thrown off by all of my holiday travels and it’s time to get back into it. Just as with food, I am going to set a weekly goal and slowly ramp up my exercise routine.
Money, diet, and exercise . . . man those are tough areas of life to manage.
