January Book Report
1. Better Off: Flipping the Switch on Technology by Eric Brende. Eric and his wife spend 18 months living within a "Minimite" community and he details their experiences.
2. The Art of Eating In: How I Learned to Stop Spending and Love the Stove by Cathy Erway. Written by a 20 something New Yorker who gives up take out and dining in for two years. Great timing as I continue to cut back on restaurant eating and learn to enjoy cooking more. Bonus point: My first eBook loaner from the library! Highly recommend checking if your library system provides this service.
3. What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by Haruki Murakami. Loved this super quick read (maybe four rides on the Genenbus?) that details Murakami's thoughts as he trains for the 2005 New York marathon.
4. The Year of Living Biblically: One Man's Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible by A. J. Jacobs. A secular Jew attempts a literal interpretation of the Bible for one year. It's funny and interesting to see how his beliefs are shaped by his actions as the year goes on.
5. The Automatic Millionaire by David Bach. The inventor of the "Latte factor", or how your regular $3 (or $5 or $10) expenditures are costing you your retirement. The book was very basic (and frankly made me feel great about where I am with saving), but since I'd like to apply something I learned from the book to my life, I'm stopping all work vending machine purchases for the rest of the year. All my other "lattes" I'm fine with and choose to spend that money in those ways.
On a side note: When I looked at my financial goals for 2011, one of the places I realized I can really save money is books. I am not spending any money in 2011 on books and borrowed each of these from the SF Public Library.
I'm at 17% of my 30 books in 2011 goal. Last year started out really heaving in January and I barely finished 30. Something about when the weather gets nice and the sun stays out later makes it a lot harder to sit down and open a book.
I did, however, totally fail at one of my book goals. I'm trying to do three Bible studies this year. My goal for January was to get through the first two weeks of the first one. I managed one week. I'm not finding it terribly interesting but don't really want to spend money on a new one.
January Financial Report
House Fund: I ended the month at 29% of my total goal (I started the year with 25% already tucked away) and at 107% of what I had hoped to save in January. It will be awesome if this trend continues.
Travel Fund: I ended the month at 11% of my total goal, though in January I only saved 85% of what I'd planned. Back on track next month.
January Health Report
No races to report on for this month, but I've been training for the Austin Half Marathon in late February.
I ended the month with a loss of 2% of my body weight. Yeah! Unfortunately it's involved a lot of Smart Ones and I'm going to work on bringing that down next month. I don't think waking up thirsty every morning is a good thing.
2011 Goals
Since I didn't document these earlier, here are my goals for the year. I find it much easier to meet them if I create smaller goals each month.
- Read 30 books (including one personal finance book every other month)
- Complete 3 Bible studies
- Save 100% of my house fund (includes downpayment plus enough to cover all fees)
- Save 100% of the costs of the two big trips I have planned this year
- Run 3 half marathons
- Lose 16% of my body weight
February Goals
- Read four books
- Complete weeks 2 and 3 of The Patriarchs
- Save another 4% of my house fund and bring the total to 33%
- Save another 5% of my travel fund and bring the total to 16%
- Run my first half of the year
- End the month with a 4% body weight loss
I'm not at home so I'm not sure of the name of the book but I think it's called Asset Allocation. It's a fairly straight forward book about how to allocate your savings and how to balance them once a year. I've been using this techniques for four years and it really is hassle free.
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