I’ve got a ton to be thankful for in 2019 from ringing in the new year with some of my best friends and one of my favorite bands to traveling to Austin to getting married, just to name a few things. Those are the obvious things to be thankful for when reflecting on 2019, but there are so many things that most of us probably don’t think about on a day-to-day basis that we should be grateful for as well.
Thanksgiving
Getting Back on Track
3 minute read
I’m going to go ahead and take a wild guess that you may have gone off the deep end over Thanksgiving. Let’s be real, Thanksgiving food is the best food and it’s so hard to resist, even when you feel like you can’t eat another bite. And, if you’re like me, then you went off the deep end multiple times at multiple Thanksgiving dinners. When things like this happen, we sometimes just feel like giving up on our diets completely. We feel like we’ve already blown it so we might as well just keep eating like crap, right? But that only makes the situation worse. What we actually need to do is realize that eating more than we should have over Thanksgiving is just a short-term mistake that likely doesn’t have a significant impact when we view our diets in the long term.
We don’t want to make it a habit to continue to do this and justify it as just a one-time thing that won’t have much of an impact over the long-term, because then it will become a habit and it will have an affect on reaching our goals. What we should is do not dwell on it and get back on track.
Another Holiday Mistake
Maybe you not only blew your diet out of the water over Thanksgiving, but you also blew through your budget. You didn’t plan on buying all of that stuff but then Black Friday deals and new and shiny and…Yeah, I get it. Unlike with what you ate, you can return the things that you bought and get your money back if you really don’t need or want them (hopefully, you don’t see that as an option for the food you ate, too).
However, if you could afford those things without affecting your progress towards your goals, and they’ll provide long-term value to you, then you can just keep them. There’s no need to worry or feel guilty about spending money that doesn’t negatively affect you reaching your goals because you’ve obviously budgeted to spend that money at some point.
Get back on track, follow your budget, and keep making progress towards your goals.
What you don’t want to do is to develop the “screw it” attitude and tell yourself that it’s okay to continue to buy things that you don’t really need or want because you’ve already screwed up. Well, I’ll just buy this one more thing that I really want. Oh, well, I really like that thing too and I already messed up my budget, so I might as well go ahead and buy it. The rabbit hole can be a tricky place to get out of.
Here are 3 tips to get back on track after overspending during the holidays:
Reevaluate Your Budget
Take some time to sit down and review your budget. Make any changes necessary to reflect your projected spending in December and create a plan for how you want your money to work for you. You could plan to spend less in the upcoming months to make up for your overspending this month, but how likely are you to stick to this once the time comes?
If you overspent significantly, then you may want to consider budgeting for these expenses beginning in January for next year. For example, if you think that you’ll end up spending $1,000 on Black Friday in 2019, then budget to save $91 per month from January through November.
Keep Your Eyes on the Prize
You’re going to see a ton of advertisements and “deals” in December. Don’t be tempted to go off budget and spend money on something that you haven’t budgeted for and don’t really need or want. If you needed it or wanted it that badly, then you would have included that within your December spending projections or, if it’s a big ticket item, you would have started saving for it a while ago.
The prize isn’t that new gadget that you see an ad for on TV and feel compelled to buy, the prize is knowing that you’re one step closer to reaching your goals and to financial freedom
Track Your Progress
Make a point to sit down each week and record your spending. Take note of how much you’ve spent in comparison to your projections and if you need to adjust to compensate for overspending or if you have some wiggle room to buy something that you haven’t planned on. Or, you could save any extra money and get a head start on your 2019 savings goals.
Proactively tracking your progress not only keeps you aware of where your money is going each week, but it can also serve as a weekly dose of motivation to make adjustments to make sure that you reach your goals.
Thanksgiving has come and gone – don’t worry too much about how many thousands of calories you ate that you maybe shouldn’t have or the money that you didn’t really plan to spend. Getting off track every once in a while doesn’t mean that you’ve ruined everything, but it also shouldn’t be used as an excuse to continue making the problem worse. Learn from the mistakes that you made, make them better if you can, and set a plan of action to help make sure that you don’t make those same mistakes again in the future.
Thankful
2 minute read
I think Thanksgiving may be my favorite holiday. Does that make me wrong for not saying Christmas? I’m thankful every day, but today is dedicated to giving thanks so here’s a little different perspective than maybe what you usually hear.
Yes, I am thankful for my family, my friends, where I live, and my health, among other things, but there are so many other things to be thankful for that I think most of us take for granted most days.
The United States is one of the wealthiest countries in the world with opportunities abound. No, money doesn’t buy happiness (well, not the way most Americans use it), but it can buy security and opportunity and a better life. Most of us who live in America have an infinitely better life than the majority of the world. A lot of our day-to-day worries and complaints are “first world problems” that people elsewhere would find appalling to complain about.
Every day first thing in the morning on my way to work or the gym I try to think about all of the things that I have in my life that many others, if not the majority of people in the world, don’t have. I wake up safe on a nice mattress in an apartment with heat, crystal clear running water, and electricity. I get up and brush my teeth, get dressed and put on quality clothes and shoes, and grab my bag to carry my things with me for the day.
I grab something for breakfast and something to take with me to eat for lunch. I close my door and lock it, making sure that all of the other things that I have in my apartment are safe and secure. I get in a safe vehicle that I don’t have to worry about whether it will run or if it has enough gas to get me to where I need to go. Depending on the day, I either go to the gym or the office that both have clean running water, heat, electricity, and everything else that I need to accomplish my goals.
At work I have access to a nice office, my computer, everything that I need to do my job, and food. At the gym, I have different set of clothes to work out in, a smartphone to listen to music and track my workout, Wi-Fi, headphones, and a full gym to use.
Every single one of these things that I’ve mentioned is something that someone else in the world doesn’t have access to. And I haven’t even scratched the surface. We have so many things to be thankful for and so many things that we take for granted. We complain about things like our phone not working properly or our internet being slow when there are others in the world who don’t have a place to live, water to drink, or food to eat.
Sometimes, for me at least, it’s best to take a step back when I’m about to complain about something and think about how fortunate I am and all of the things that I’m thankful for.
On the day that we’re called to be thankful, I implore you to inquire a bit deeper than you usually do on a normal day and consider all of the things that you have that others don’t. I think it may make you a little more thankful and hopefully less quick to complain about things that don’t really have that much of a negative impact on your life as it may seem in the moment.
