Always working on improving

Do you make New Year’s resolutions? If you are like me, you can’t help it. Even if you don’t make “official” ones, you know you had some loose ones in the back of your head of ways you were going to be better this year. We all do it. There is just something about a fresh new year!

By now, if you are like me, most of your resolutions —official or loose—have fallen by the wayside. Except I have one that has stuck because it has been so easy. At least so far it has been. And it’s not too late if you want to join in.

I’m doing the penny challenge which is where you add the number of pennies for the day of the year that it is. You aren’t just putting one penny in each day but the amount of pennies for the number of days into the year it is. Make sense? So for Jan. 15, I put in 15 pennies. On Dec. 31, the 365th day of the year, I will put 365 pennies (or $3.65) into my jar. That is the highest amount of money I will have to come up with this whole year which I feel like I can do. But by putting in the set amount of pennies every single day, I set myself up for success as it all adds up to a grand total of ….$667.95!! How nice will that be around Christmas time?

By the time you read this column (depending on if it runs the first week or the second week of Feb.), my jar will be at $5.28 or $7.80 so you can jump in and join me if you want. You can check out this post for more on the penny challenge including how much you need to put in per month if that is easier for you to do than daily: https://www.thepennyhoarder.com/save-money/penny-challenge/.

I’ve been trying to be better about finances in general and am finding it trickles into other areas of my life. For example, tightening the budget has meant less eating out and convenience foods which means our trash output has been greatly reduced—I’m talking ¾ less trash than we had before. It’s a little embarrassing, actually.

And I’m making healthier food and just making better choices overall in so many areas, because I’m stopping and really thinking through things.

I won’t even tell you how much money I’m saving after I went through and canceled subscriptions and recurring fees I had forgotten about, because that is even more embarrassing than the trash.

If you want to learn a few more money-saving tips, I jotted some down here that might help: https://memod.com/LauraPaulus/saving-money-even-when-you-re-broke-5860.

I don’t think it matters what we work on as long as we set some type of goal and work at bettering ourselves one way or the other. Unless you are already perfect and don’t need to change a thing. I’m not there yet so I better keep going.

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