Hey everyone! I hope everyone had a great weekend. Saturday was a really relaxing day, and we went to see The Conjuring. I thought it was scary but W thought it was stupid. We also had a family get together yesterday and that was a lot of fun!
July was another great month. The weather has been awesome and I've been busy, busy, busy. I went to a bachelorette party in Chicago a couple of weekends ago and it was a lot of fun. My best friend gets married next month!
We also bought bikes last month and have been getting decent use of them. We would still love to one day bike from St. Louis to Kansas City on the Katy Trail.
Definitely need to prepare for that though. Have any of you ever done long distance (200 miles and over) bike riding? Tell me all about it if you have!
August will be a fun month as well because we are going to New Orleans with another couple. None of us have ever been and we are all super excited.
I also finished paying off my student loans in the beginning of July and it still doesn't feel real. I thought my goal of paying off my student loans wasn't very realistic, but I still tried really hard. It's weird having so much extra cash flow every month, and we are still coming up with a plan for everything.
Before we were throwing EVERYTHING towards student loans.
We are still thinking about buying our next house, but we haven't found anything that we absolutely love. Since we already have a house now, we definitely don't just want to buy something just for the sake of buying it. We want to live in it for quite some time, and not just a couple of years (like our current house). So unless the perfect one comes up, then we will be waiting.
Waiting to buy is also good because we will have more time to adjust to the self-employment lifestyle, and also save up for a larger down payment.
I've also been thinking about posting something related to our net worth. I want to keep our privacy, so I'm not sure what I will do. Any ideas? Or should I just not do that because net worth updates are boring? I honestly like them so I still do want to share them.
My July extra income post will be live tomorrow, so make sure to come back!
July Goals Update
- Pay off student loans. DONE! 🙂
- Run 20 miles per week and lose weight. Meh… I did pretty good with being healthy but I could definitely be doing better.
- Make an extra $9,000 this month. PASS! I made a really good amount last month. And I keep hearing from everyone that things should start picking up even more starting in August/September, so that is good also. I spend a lot of time on my extra income, and I also worked for free for quite some time also, so not all of this is easy money!
- Replace the garage door. FAIL. We didn't even look into this.
- Get carpet for the living room. FAIL. We didn't look into this either.
- Decide on my freelancing switch day. I have a date in mind… 🙂
- Read 2 books. FAIL. I didn't even start a single book.
August Goals
- Run 20 miles per week and lose weight. COME ON MICHELLE!
- Make an extra $10,000 this month. I definitely think this is possible. I have been doing very good with my extra income lately. I still do want to diversify my extra income methods a little more though because I want to be ready for anything that happens once I make the freelancing switch. So much of this extra income goes to taxes, and you also have to factor in benefits that I am losing when I am 100% self-employed.
- Replace the garage door. We want to do this soon. We will probably do it ourselves because a lot of people said it shouldn't be too hard. I'm sure the labor costs are high if we hired it out, so I would rather do this myself.
- Make an actual plan for my switch date. I have of course been thinking about this a lot, but I need to start writing everything down and have a positive plan for things I need to do before I leave my job.
How did you do in July? What is your top goal for August?
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debtfreeoneday says
August 7, 2013 at 3:04 pmWow you did amazingly in July! I can’t wait to read about how you get on with your goals for August. July was good for us, we managed to pay off our largest payment so far towards our debt (just over £1000). So we’re making progress!
Michelle says
August 8, 2013 at 12:14 pmGood job!
Gary @ Save Money & Live Better says
August 8, 2013 at 12:28 amCongrats on such a successful month!
Last month I started simplifying my meals as a way to loose weight and save money. It was inspired from Tim Ferriss’ 4 hour body. My meals during the week consisted of chicken, lentils, and veggies, and on Saturday I ate whatever I wanted. Was the diet boring?…YES, but it was very effective. Last month I ended up losing 8 lbs, and saving over $100 on food cost. 🙂
Michelle says
August 8, 2013 at 12:15 pmWow that is amazing Gary!
SuburbanFinance says
August 9, 2013 at 3:33 amTake food to work. Ever counted how much money you throw away buying food at work daily? Start preparing your food for the day on waking up: Get up earlier, Eat a solid breakfast. Prepare your food for work in the meanwhile. Total time 30 minutes. No stress during the day about what you’ll be eating & you get healthy food while sparing money