Things are going along pretty normally right now around the house.  Much of my time has been focused on work and church-related activities, which is a nice refreshing rebalance of my priorities.  I am learning to leave stress at work when I go each day, and using the rest of my time to focus on my family and helping others.  Unfortunately, due to a fairly demanding Lenten season of church activities, I have not made it to the dojo as much as I would like.  This week is my anniversary and my next-to-last week of That Man Is You on Friday morning, but after that I hope to make a few workouts before the end of the month.

Eve is getting much bigger and more active.  She finally broke her cycle of hovering near the statistical bottom of the weight chart, and is just on the verge of learning how to walk.  She had a minor meltdown at church today, those are usually very rare and far between.  We think it was a combination of being too tired and some diaper rash that she’s picked up over the last few days.  Or teething.  It could also be teething.

Speaking for a moment about my 2012 goals… my book-reading goal has been struck with some attention-deficit disorder.  I have several books underway, opting to read a few pages each night.  One is close to being completed now, and before long I will have strong motivation to finish my guitarbuilding books since I will be starting on a few of those projects as soon as the warm weather is consistent.  The short of it: expect to see some progress soon.

I am trying to get into the habit of blogging again, but honestly participating in life is taking the place of actually writing about it.  Please excuse any long expanse of whitespace here, know that I’m out in the world doing interesting things and I will eventually return here to write about them as time allows.  It is often much more convenient to use social media (such as Facebook, Twitter, etc) to provide a day-to-day view of what I’m doing.  More soon!

First, an update to the money goal:

Goal 1: Save 3-6 months in an emergency fund.

Task 2: Get taxes prepared (hope for a refund!) and save $500 more this month.

Success on both parts of this goal.  We were able to save $500 since I set this task up, and today we got our tax return prepared.  Thanks to an increase in charitable donations and the arrival of Eve, we got a pretty fat return this year.  This brings us much closer to our overall emergency fund.  Once the direct transfer hits, we’ll have to do some math and see what the next task will be.  In the meantime:

Task 3: While waiting for the tax return to hit, budget aggressively and put a set amount in the emergency fund each month.

Onward to the Reading goal!

Goal 3: Read more books, targeting 10 non-fiction books for the year.

Tonight I finished a book by Joan Carroll Cruz called “Eucharistic Miracles“.  Like the title indicates, this is a collection of history surrounding the many miracles attributed to the holy Eucharist.  This book was pretty dense, since most of the chapters were only a few pages long and each story was unique and interesting.  I found out about this book from a guy in my That Man Is You! group, who was reading it himself.  I would strongly recommend this to any of my Catholic friends and family.  If you’re interested to find out more about the book let me know.  I got a lot out of reading it, and it compelled me to volunteer to help with the Eucharistic Ministry at my Church.

I’m only going to give myself half credit for this book since I technically started it last year.

Total Books Read in 2012: 1 / 10

Since this wasn’t one of my scheduled non-fiction reads this year, I’ll just keep with the same goal that I made last time:

Task 3: Finish reading Ervin Somogyi’s ‘The Responsive Guitar’ for half-credit.

That’s all for now!

I’m happy to report that I successfully achieved my first money task of the new year!

Goal 1: Save 3-6 months in an emergency fund.

Task 1: Survive until February, sticking to the budget and conserving money where possible.

Since it’s February 1, this task is complete!  We even ended up with about $400 left over in our emergency fund.  I’m happy to report that the new water heater is continuing to produce hot water, so the money was well spent.  I’ve looked back at our budgets for the last few years (yes, I keep them… pretty sick, I know) and our budgets remain pretty slim through the first quarter.  I suspect that is going to happen again this year, as we have budgeted for tax preparation and Teddy needs a phenobarbitol levels test too.

Task 2: Get taxes prepared (hope for a refund!) and save $500 more this month.

Onward and upward!

It’s update time on this one:

Goal 3: Read more books, targeting 10 non-fiction books for the year.

Task 1: Finish reading ‘Leadership Gold’ by John C. Maxwell, for half-credit.

I was able to complete this task, I finished reading the last of ‘Leadership Gold’ while airborne between Omaha and Denver.  Many of the lessons that John Maxwell talks about really resonated with me, especially given the current condition of my workplace.  It is very interesting to read leadership books sitting in my current job role, where I am aware of the decisions and the decision-making process of those above me but also in touch daily with the results of that process.  This book really crystallized some of the anecdotal evidence that I’ve been collecting about where leadership fails at my workplace.

Not being one to consider myself perfect, I also had to take stock and figure out if I was contributing to the problem, either in mindset or by my actions.  I took away a few corrective actions I can make now, and a wealth of cautionary tales.  Whether our not my own leadership chooses to make changes, I hope that the experience of reading this book will help me be more educated and not repeat the mistakes that I can observe.

Now it’s time to set a new task so this goal keeps on a-rollin’:

Task 2: Finish reading Ervin Somogyi’s ‘The Responsive Guitar’ for half-credit.

This one is in support of my guitar building hobby as well as my desire to finish up reading books that I have started.  This one may take a bit longer to complete, since Somogyi’s book is considerably academic in nature and can be a more difficult read.  I really want to make the effort to get through and understand this one before I move into his next book and get further into completing my first guitar (see previous goals post).

Total Books Read in 2012: 0.5 / 10

I’ve decided to change the format of my goals for 2012.  Instead of an enumerated out list, I’m going to have a goal statement with actions that I will revisit on a semi-regular basis.  To start I will state the goal, give a little background, and set an actionable task that I can achieve.  The idea is that this will keep me more motivated toward progress.  We shall see!

Goal 1: Save 3-6 months in an emergency fund.

Too much time has passed since we paid off our last debt.  The next step is to save up a 3-6 months rainy day fund, and we fell woefully short of that for a variety of reasons.  We were doing very good until the baby came, then hospital bills, a new (used) car purchase, and the continued reliance on some comfort spending to deal with stress has led to a less-than-ideal state.  On top of that, we just had to replace our water heater so that makes setting the first task easy.

Task 1: Survive until February, sticking to the budget and conserving money where possible.

Goal 2: Build another instrument.

This year I want to continue my foray into learning to build instruments.  Last year I spent the lion’s share of my time working on Dad’s ukulele while I saved up enough cash to make a purchase of tools, tonewood, and an acoustic guitar kit.  The purchase happened late in the summer last year, and I wasn’t able to execute quickly enough to begin work before the weather turned cold.  I want to start out this year working on my own acoustic guitar kit (from StewMac) and as the summer warms up I will add into the mix my project to build two Les Paul guitars alongside a buddy of mine from work.

Task 1: Set up spindle sander and purchase template wood for acoustic project.

Goal 3: Read more books, targeting 10 non-fiction books for the year.

My previous desire to read has slowly perverted over time into spasmodically checking Facebook and reading just enough to get by when solving problems at work.  I have noted a very disturbing trend of comfort in my current set of skills and interests, so this year I want to get back to reading.  I have accumulated a small (large) pile of books that have either been started or ignored after purchase, and I will begin by finishing off some of those from my reading pile before moving on to new endeavors.

You will notice that I am targeting non-fiction books, but I am non-specific about the content.  I suspect based on my reading pile that this will run the gamut of professional development, religion, guitar-building, and programming… so be prepared for some variety.  Also, given my past record of reading voraciously I stand a very good chance of blowing this 10 book target out of the water, but only time will tell if I return to old habits or if I am destined to eat my own words.  Just in case you’re interested, I will post the titles and authors of what I’m reading.  If you have follow-up questions, feel free to hit me at any time and we can have a nice discussion of literature.

Task 1: Finish reading ‘Leadership Gold’ by John C. Maxwell, for half-credit.

That’s all the goals I am setting for this year.

There are several other areas that I want to continue developing in or rekindle, but I don’t feel a specific drive to set a goal around them and have to track them throughout the year.  These include, but are not limited to: continuing my spiritual/charitable development, getting back to karate, blogging, taking less work stress home with me, getting some weight off Teddy by walking him more, and spending quality time with Tasha and Eve but again… these are cross-cutting activities that are hard or annoying to track.  It’s not that these things are not important, in fact in many ways they eclipse the goals that I have set… I just don’t want to get so bogged down in tracking things that I lose time to actually do things.

So there ya go!  Expect an update periodically as I finish tasks and set new ones.  Questions and comments welcome!

Personal

1. Have a baby.  We’ve got a pretty good jump-start on this one.SUCCESS!  In case you’ve been living under a rock, Eve Marie Dalcher was born on March 23rd.  She is awesome, and here is a photo album to prove it.
2. Give more.  Tasha and I aim to give 5% of our income to charity this year.SUCCESS!  We hit that target, and then some… including donations of our time to charitable causes.
   
3. Save 3-6 months of expenses in our big emergency fund.FAIL!  The baby, the new car, and several visits by Murphy have reduced our emergency fund to below the 3 month mark.

Recreation

1. Train at the dojo as often as possible.  I’m going to shoot for more workouts than last year (53).FAIL!  Because of my lack of blogging (see below) I don’t even really know how many workouts I got in this year, but I can tell you that it’s around or less than last year.  The trials of new parenthood and the demands of the office were the primary causes, as well as a general lack of motivation that I’m not proud of.
2. Build a guitar.  I’m going to start with a StewMac kit and go from there, starting as soon as the weather gets warm.SUCCESS (kinda)!  Instead of building a StewMac kit, I built a ukulele for my Dad instead.  It features a French Polish finish that took 3.5 months to apply, and it went very well.  I’m counting it.
   
3. Daily blogging.  Same metrics as last year.FAIL!  This one fell prey to fatherhood as well.  The numbers aren’t even close enough to count, with entire months going by without a word here.  I have become more active on Facebook, less so on Twitter so I am still sharing… it just hasn’t been here.

Here’s my 2011 goals, at long last!

Personal

1. Have a baby.  We’ve got a pretty good jump-start on this one.
2. Give more.  Tasha and I aim to give 5% of our income to charity this year.
3. Save 3-6 months of expenses in our big emergency fund.

Recreation

1. Train at the dojo as often as possible.  I’m going to shoot for more workouts than last year (53).
2. Build a guitar.  I’m going to start with a StewMac kit and go from there, starting as soon as the weather gets warm.
3. Daily blogging.  Same metrics as last year.

You will notice that several items fell off the list.  It’s not that I don’t want to do some of these things, I just don’t want to make them explicit goals.  I considered taking daily blogging off the list since I’ve built up a very good habit here, however I don’t want to give myself the room to stop doing it.  I find it key to my unwinding, venting, and relaxing.  I have no idea if others find it valuable or not, but I sure do enjoy it.

I’ll probably have a few other things to keep tracks of this year, but I’ll go with this list for now.  More soon!

Debt Freedom

1. Refresh financial goals by going through the 13-week Financial Peace Home Study again.  Target for completion: April 2010.

   SUCCESS! We did this one right on time, completing Financial Peace Home Study with Tasha and our friend Kanika.

2. Secure debt freedom by paying off my final student loan.  Target for completion: September 2010.

   SUCCESS! This is the one I’m most proud of: we are DEBT FREE except for the house, and we got there on March 31st (way ahead of our September target).  You can read more at the link on our reflections after achieving this monumental target, but I would like to take a moment to thank Dave Hickman for giving us The Total Money Makeover book when he saw my goal to pay off credit card debt way back in 2006.

3. Begin on full emergency fund of 3-6 months of expenses, saving at least two months of expenses by year end.  Target for completion: December 2010.

   FAILURE! (Kinda) Thanks to a certain special addition to our family, we didn’t quite make as much progress on this as we had hoped.  Right now we’re sitting right around one month of expenses, but this one is going to rate high on the goal chart in the coming year.

4. Continue keeping grocery budget records.  Target for completion: December 2010.

   FAILURE! This one also became difficult with the new addition… and we got lazy.  I kept many of the receipts for 2010, staying diligent through June but at this point I don’t care enough about tracking this to slog through 6 months of receipts.  I plan to track this in 2011, but it’ll fall short of being on the goal list since we’ve kept a fairly good handle on our food budget.

Personal Development and Recreation

1. Increase karate workouts, averaging twice a week at a minimum. Target for completion: December 2010.

   FAILURE! Only made 53 workouts last year, I aim to do better this year.

1. Complete TotallyGuitars.com‘s Acoustic Genius series. Target for completion: December 2010.

   FAILURE! (Kinda) I made it a fair way through the Acoustic Genius series, and then I got distracted on other songs and guitar stuff… there was too much information on the site to remain focused.  I have been playing a lot more often, which was the intent of the goal but in black-and-white terms this is still a failure.

2. Create a “man cave” for myself in the basement. Target for completion: June 2010.

   SUCCESS! (Kinda) The furthest I got on this goal was clearing out the basement and setting up a small area to relax.  After July, however… the basement became a dumping ground for boxes of stuff displaced from the office, which will become a nursery in March.

3. Daily blogging this year, metrics remaining the same as last year. Target for completion: December 2010.

   FAILURE!  (Kinda) I missed 6 days of blogging this year, usually due to not paying close attention to the time.  I made 375 total posts throughout the year, taking the grand total to 2,903 as of this writing.  Another interesting metric thanks to the WP Word Count plugin: my blog contains 587,300 words.  Using National Novel Writing Month standards of 50,000 words, that’s 11.74 novels from a word count perspective.  Notice how I do not compare myself directly to actual writers here, merely using word count to put some context around that number.So despite the fact that I once again failed to blog every day this year, there’s still some good stuff going on here.

That about wraps up 2010!  I don’t like seeing so many failures in that list, but I am comforted by the fact that many are just partials.  Stay tuned for my 2011 goals soon.  Here’s a preview: there’s likely to be fewer. 🙂

Today is a proud day!  I just got done pushing the button to send the last payment to ol’ Sallie Mae for my student loan, wiping out the last of my non-mortgage debt.

Tasha and I started on this goal together in January 2006, and received some quick help from our friend Dave Hickman in the form of Dave Ramsey‘s “My Total Money Makeover” book which guided our trek to debt freedom.  At the time, this process began more out of necessity than anything.  We had racked up some significant credit card debt while in college, and we hit a point where transferring balances around wasn’t cutting it and the minimum payments were taxing our budget.

The big key was the constant, intentional budgeting.  Controlling where the money was going and focusing on one debt at a time until it vanished was actually fun for me in the beginning, the hardest part was keeping up the pace.  Denying ourselves some of the small luxuries in order to get this under control was hard, but we’ve gotten very used to it over time.  We lost a bit of focus as we got here to Colorado with so many fun activities to do, but we made it!

I’ve rarely spoken about numbers during this process, but now that it’s behind me I will.  We paid off nearly $130,000 in 52 months.

That includes credit cards (paid off and canceled), both cars, computers, a debt consolidation loan that Tasha took out during college, an emergency furnace replacement in our old house, and all of our student loans.  It was hard work, but totally worth it.

What’s next?  Saving up an emergency fund of 3-6 months of expenses, then onward to investing and paying off our house!

Today is my last day as a twenty-something!  I had a pretty great decade, which contained a lot of major events: getting married, landing my real job, buying our first (and second) house, moving to Colorado, becoming an uncle… all really great things.  I had a training class today, which got me to thinking how great it was that I was ending this decade by learning something new and that got me thinking about what I wanted to do with the next 10 years of my life.

So without further adeiu:

My Intentions For My 30’s

Family

Tasha and I have built a great marriage so far, and I suspect this will be the decade that we start a family.  RELAX Mom, this isn’t any kind of announcement… but since we don’t want to be old when our kids are heading off to college, I suspect we’ll be getting started with kids before too long.

Also in this category is staying in touch with my family back in IL.  I suspect this decade will also see me returning triumphantly to Central Illinois, however there’s no real plan for when this will occur at the moment.  I’m looking forward to being closer to the family again.

Wealth Building and Giving

Something I want to focus on over the next 10 years is building wealth and giving more.  As you can tell from the text widget on the right, we are very close to becoming debt-free (except for the house) so I want to focus on retirement investing, paying off the mortgage, and giving to worthy causes.  We’ve spent a great deal of effort over the last four years to make it this far, I don’t want to squander this progress by not following through and using the extra money that we’re privileged with wisely.

Career

I love what I’m doing, so I’m going to keep doing it.  Hopefully the hits will keep on coming and success will continue.

Personal Development and Fun

This is the fun category.  I want to continue focusing on my own health, exercise (karate/gym), learning, and… well… fun.  I know as soon as the family starts, this parameter will become harder to satisfy but going to concerts and continuing to learn the guitar would be two things I want to continue.  We’ve got a great social network of friends and coworkers out here, and many people are in the same stages of their lives so it shouldn’t be hard to keep fun stuff rollin’.  I want to make an effort to enjoy what Colorado has to offer… I want to camp more, ski more, and see the sights more over the next few years.

Getting older is No Big Deal

Everyone has been asking me if it bothers me to be turning 30.  The answer is a resounding: NO!  My buddy Paul says it best: the cool thing about the 30’s is that you’re just getting into your own.  You’ve got your own money, career, and life and you’re still young enough to enjoy it all.  Age is just a number, there’s no reason for it to get me down!

I’ve already gotten some early birthday wishes, thanks to everyone for the kindness!