fidgiegirl

is having a whole sunny wonderful Saturday morning all to herself



I'm doing 36 things
 

fidgiegirl's Life List

  1. 1. Increase and Track My Water Intake
    2 entries . 3 cheers
    2 people
  2. 2. get out of debt
    61 entries . 107 cheers
    10,985 people
  3. 3. Enjoy both my Grandmothers and see them as much as I can
    9 entries . 41 cheers
    2 people
  4. 4. Enrich our garden soil
    2 entries . 4 cheers
    1 person
  5. 5. Exercise
    2 team members . 6 entries . 4 cheers
    1,603 people
  6. 6. Cultivate positive thinking by daily reflecting on one thing that makes me happy
    7 cheers
    2 people
  7. 7. Have a dozen mini-adventures before the end of 2009
    4 entries . 2 cheers
    1 person
  8. 8. Be a more planful teacher
    2 entries
    1 person
  9. 9. appreciate people and tell them
    3 entries . 12 cheers
    2 people
  10. 10. One by One, Donate to All the Orgs in My "Places I'd Like to Donate To" Folder
    4 entries . 1 cheer
    1 person
  11. 11. Get over the feeling that I will fail at any health/fitness goal I set
    4 entries . 11 cheers
    1 person
  12. 12. Fight for health care reform
    8 entries . 13 cheers
    1 person
  13. 13. write a legislator once a week
    6 entries . 21 cheers
    1 person
  14. 14. Do!
    7 entries . 8 cheers
    29 people
  15. 15. shop, spend and invest ethically
    3 entries . 37 cheers
    2 people
  16. 16. narrow and organize my "memory" stuff from high school and other experiences
    14 entries . 13 cheers
    1 person
  17. 17. find some outstanding resources about socially responsible investing
    2 entries . 8 cheers
    1 person
  18. 18. Work to Grow Professional Connections Among Early Language Educators in Minnesota
    4 entries . 3 cheers
    1 person
  19. 19. become a professional interpreter
    3 entries . 28 cheers
    6 people
  20. 20. visit all the State Parks in Minnesota
    13 entries . 23 cheers
    4 people
  21. 21. learn french
    25 cheers
    10,556 people
  22. 22. learn Swedish
    3 entries . 6 cheers
    636 people
  23. 23. Try geocaching
    7 cheers
    192 people
  24. 24. Read the Bible
    1 entry . 12 cheers
    3,217 people
  25. 25. go to sweden
    1 entry . 4 cheers
    125 people
  26. 26. follow the steps of Your Money or Your Life (YMOYL)
    18 entries . 20 cheers
    8 people
  27. 27. Create
    5 entries . 7 cheers
    292 people
  28. 28. Plan a marching band reunion!
    1 entry . 4 cheers
    1 person
  29. 29. Drive the Lake Superior Circle Tour
    1 entry . 2 cheers
    3 people
  30. 30. donate 10% of my income
    1 entry . 6 cheers
    2 people
  31. 31. Make my reusable household item ideas a reality
    2 entries . 1 cheer
    1 person
  32. 32. Ask rather than tell
    3 entries . 3 cheers
    1 person
  33. 33. Fill in the Family History book I got for our wedding
    1 person
  34. 34. Make beautiful wedding albums and prints
    1 entry
    1 person
  35. 35. Eat down the pantry
    2 entries
    1 person
  36. 36. Finish that ESL License
    1 person

How I did it
How to quit drinking coffee
It took me
4 weeks
It made me
healthier.


How to plan my ESL practica
It took me
1 year
It made me
pleased.


How to pay off my undergraduate student loans
It took me
8 years
It made me
feel adult.


See all "How I Did It" stories...

Recent entries
follow the steps of Your Money or Your Life (YMOYL) (read all 18 entries…)
Has been on my mind lately 16 hours ago

YMOYL has gone far from my daily life. At one point, I was working with a high degree of dedication on several of the steps. Slowly and one-by-one, I have stopped. That doesn’t mean I’m not intuitively doing them, because the exercise of doing them for as long as I did transformed my thinking completely.

But I think it might be time to revisit . . . when I put up this goal, I was single with no inkling I’d ever be with anyone and no plans to be. Now I am married and together, we are still working on paying off my debt (it will happen so soon!). Two factors have brought YMOYL back into my mind. One is the marriage. It’s not just my future I’m planning for. The second is the fact that if all goes according to plan, we will be out of debt except for the mortgage within six months. Then what? We have some direction from Dave Ramsey, so we will be making a 3-6 month EF, but what about the bigger vision? If each asked our own life purpose, could we answer?

We are both teachers and as far as I know, pretty happy in our jobs. So we are not feeling a desperation to exit the workplace anytime soon, but I also do not feel that this is my life’s calling. I mean, I do not feel I will be doing it for my entire life, at least in this exact form. Maybe I’ll be involved in education for a long time – it is fulfilling, challenging, and you can make a living at it. I know he doesn’t want to work the whole way to the grave, either, but we are having a hard time articulating what our actual goals are. It’s like neither of us actually believes we could leave paid employment earlier than the requisite 55 or 62 or whatever the magic number is. See, it’s so far off I don’t even know! But I think we could, and if we don’t work toward that, then we never will. We’ll just fritter our money away on other stuff and never make it happen because we won’t be trying to make it happen.

And then there’s our house . . . even paying the payment amount only, we could be paid off in 8 years. That’s an amazing feeling and would get us that much closer to Financial Independence. But I am feeling kind of tempted to look at other places right now, especially since this tax credit was offered to already-homeowners. A few months ago, DH was the one into looking at other houses, so this isn’t just my nagging thing – his is just laying more dormant at the moment :) There are definitely some things we aren’t in love with about our house, but none that make us hate living here. There are lots of things we like, too, and my husband has put a lot of money and sweat into the home over the years (he’s owned it for 8). So the questions maybe should come into play . . . is a different house worth the life energy it would take to buy it? Is buying a different house just getting us further from our (undefined) goals? Or is it making an investment in a place we truly want to be, where we truly feel at home, is truly all the things we want it to be for the long haul?

Big time soul-searching update! As always, the 43T perspective is appreciated.



donate 10% of my income
Currently 16 hours ago

We give some small, one-time donations, but my recurring donations amount to, let’s see, 2% of my monthly take-home income. And he doesn’t have any, so that’s probably less than 1% of our combined take-home income. So we have a way to go, but it is always on the radar.



visit all the State Parks in Minnesota (read all 13 entries…)
Split Rock, Kind Of 16 hours ago

We got a stamp, but we went to the historic site rather than the park. Would like to go back and check out the trails, go down to the lake, find the hidden views of the lighthouse.



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