January 25, 2009

It's been a week since I've blogged, I'll need to try to do better!

This morning I went to the cycling class again and really pushed myself farther than usual. It's been four hours since I got out of the class and I can tell my body is still exhausted! I was weighed the other day, and I'm still at 196, so I haven't budged past my starting point. I know that I work out enough, the thing I'm having a very hard time controlling is what I eat. That'll be my focus for this week. More white meats, vegetables, and water, and less bread, sugars, and carbs.

The good news is that Megan and I have done a really good job at keeping our costs down this month, so I should be able to completely pay off the credit card! Also, I'm finally getting in a lot of my end of the year tax information so I'll be able to file my personal taxes and get my refund back in February. And with that refund I should be able to get my monthly expenses cut dramatically. My entire refund is going to be put towards paying off loans and getting rid of those nasty monthly payments! Today I'm also going to put together my 401(k) investments and stock investments and see where they're going to be in 10/20/30 years so that I'll be able to adjust them now, instead of waiting until I'm 50 and figuring out that I'm screwed!

My focus was better this week, I got quite a bit done. On one of my projects I'm getting into the last little bits, so it's getting pretty painful and people are wanting to change things and it's costing my project money! So this week I'll need to talk to people and let them know exactly what I need them to do in order to finish up the project. I also need to get into the details of some of my other projects but I just don't have time! So I'll need to block off time this week to dive into that.

This week I read "Rich Dad Poor Dad Cashflow Quadrant". If you ever want to be financially free, you HAVE to read the Rich Dad Poor Dad books. They'll motivate you to take more control of your life and get things set straight. This isn't the first time I've read this book, but it always makes me think of things I can do in my life. One of the things that I thought about while reading this book is that yes, you need to take control of your money and do your research, but on that same thought you need to control your time. I'm not saying you need to plan all 24 hours of your day, but if you really want to focus on investing, you need to set time aside to do your research and planning. I have to spend time at my full time job, but I'd like to spend more time learning and researching the real estate market in the twin cities and watching how it's changing, so that when we do get enough cash to invest in another property, I'll have built up a wealth of knowledge. I'd also like to spend an hour a week on each of my investments that I have in stock and my 401(k) to make sure that I completely understand them.

Then today I'm going to spend about 30 minutes organizing the house and putting everything away, then that'll be all good!