Goals for 2012

After taking unplanned break from forming goals for 2011, I am back. I am again trying to work on lots of issues at one time. It will be a big daunting failure if I will not decide on some (???) goals for 2012. I did OK in 2010 thanks to this blog. Hope to ATLEAST achieve that much and I will be one happy gal.

So here go my goals for 2012:

Health:
1) I have a new responsibility in my life. So it’s high time for me to be responsible for my health. I gained quite a lot of weight while pregnant (:)) and lost most of it but not all. I would like to go back to my pre-preg day’s weight. Ideally I would like to achieve this by the time my baby is 1 year. But, even if I achieve it by EOY (end of year), it will work. This will do lot of good to me financially, that might enable me to fit in my pre-preg days clothes.

Financial
My financial life is at lowest point ever. In 2011 I was not able to save even 5% of our in hand salary where this household is used to save close to 30% of its in hand. :( Plus me not working for first quarter in this year is also going to be a big strain on my finances. So my financial goals are going to be more challenging than first one.

1) I want to bring our mortgage to such an extent where my house can service itself. To achieve this by EOY, I need to bring in close to 8L money. This is going to be tough.

2) Maintain my EF as 3 months of expenses once I join back my job.

3) If I can save for retirement as much as I did in 2010, that will be a good punch to future expenses.

Personal
I wish I could become a SUPERMOM. :)
But Santa (on Christmas) and Lakshmiji (on Diwali), both of them told me that no wishes for you for this year. :( So, let’s formulate some goals in that case:

1) I am a late sleeper. What I mean by that is I sleep by 2:00 at night and love to get up at 10:00 in morning (I wish I could tell you the truth that 10:00 is actually 12 :)) But once you have a baby and you plan to join your job and you also decide that you will cook morning meal plus lunch yourself, this won't work right? So have to start the habit of getting up at 6:00 in the morning. Only if I would have thought of this while in school, I would have been favourite of all my teachers. :(. But it’s never too late, is it?

2) I think one of the most vague yet most important goals is to maintain a WORK-LIFE balance once I join back my job. This is going to be tough as there will be lots of unknown (to me) hurdles all along the way, but I will need your blessings and I sure can do it. If I can't, then I can always quit my job again (of course first I have to join again) and live this ideal life of being at home all day with my baby. :)

So 6 goals in all, what do you think will I be able to surprise myself by achieving at least few of them?

Are you also crazy enough to form goals in New Year?

Cost of bringing baby on this earth.. Happy New Year

Happy New Year everyone. And thanks for not reminding me that I am 4 days late. :)
Well, I wouldn't have been 4 days late if Manshu from OneMint would have posted his article 4 days earlier which prompted me to write a comment which, I thought, can be used as a post on my blog as well.

His one of the reader wanted to know about baby related costs.
No I am not going to write about future planning etc. because that is something I am still figuring out. Rather, I am going to talk about costs of bringing baby on this earth. And by cost I mean financial cost. :)

So here is the response I left on Manshu's article, reproduced verbatim, only with spelling corrections done. I hope Manshu will not mind. :)

....

Well this is something I was thinking to write on my own neglected blog from some time. But I guess writing to you here is a much better option (can’t I go to Jupiter for some time. It has 72 hrs. a day)

Well I think I will list following things as necessary:

1) Have your EF in place, pregnancy can have lots of unexpected complications which will lead to lots of tests, implication lots of money spend. Hardly any medical insurance covers costs of these tests. In my case, this cost was approx. 10K every month.

2) Increased grocery bills. You will be eating and definitely wanting to eat better food. More fruits, less junk etc. Approx. cost, 5-10 K every month.

3) All the medical insurances, almost, cover maternity hospital charges up to 50 K. Have another 50-60 K ready in your EF as your bill might go over 50 K if you are going for private hospital. Sometimes, your chosen facility may not be cashless in your insurance. In that case you have to first pay hospital which will then get reimbursed.

4) If a girl is working, she will get approx. 3 months of paid maternity, in India. After that if you wish to take more time to spend with your blessing, you have to take loss of pay. So, do consider that in your financial planning.

5) Your baby vaccinations will cost you around 7K in first 4 months. Rest I will let you know once I incur. Also there will be other Dr visits and I am not aware of any medical insurance which covers all this.

6) If one has premature delivery then babies may need to be put in Nursery, consider its cost as well. I don't have exact idea as fortunately I didn't need it, but I estimated it to close to 1L at my time.

7) If you are living in a single family, then once you want to join back after having baby, you have to consider cost of making arrangements for your baby care. It can be day care or some aaya, again cost have to be considered.

8) Your small one will need clothes, nappies (or diapers if your choose that), cosmetics etc. Here I will suggest not buying lots of stuff as babies grow FAST. And keep in mind baby stuff is EXPENSIVE. There will be other baby stuff required depending on choices you will make, like baby cot etc.

9) Once baby will be close to 5M, you might need other gears, like stroller, walker etc.

10) And if you still are left with some money, you can plan to buy more than basic things for you. I mean more than required maternity clothes. Well I couldn't :(

And then yes, Hemant's article is good for planning baby's future. But you also have to consider cost of bringing baby on this earth.

My one last piece of advice:

Babies are adorable and so is their stuff. You will want to buy anything and everything on this earth for your baby once you step in those baby shops. So be very very rational and ask yourself lots of time if you will actually need it. And don't try to buy everything in one go. Initially only buy what’s most important and as your baby will grow you will automatically know what is needed.

My Blessing - that kept me away from here

This is one of the reasons that kept me away from my blog from so long and probably will not let me being regular even in future. :)

Yes, I delivered a baby this August.

Are you buying gold on this Diwali

Though I am missing from writing circuit from long time, but I always keep my reader well read.

The latest trend I see in PF circuit is to write about Gold. Everyone wants to predict whether Gold's Bull Run will continue or not or pros and cons of investing in Gold or how to invest in gold. This list can go on for quite long.

This advertisement provoked me to write about Gold.



Well that’s exactly my kind of strategy to buy gold. No matter how frugal you are, there will always be some occasion where you would like to buy something to make that moment memorable. For example, we Indians like to buy something on Diwali for home, buy something when a baby is born. So rather than buying something consumable, how about buying something precious like Gold or Silver?

Consumables will be of no value after you pay for them, but gold and silver is something that retains its value. No I don't want to predict or calculate whether it will beat inflation or not. I also don't support investing in Gold for retirement because of lack of liquidity. But how about buying Gold as mementos that you will do anyhow.

And we Indians know how much we love to wear that special earrings or bangle of our grandmother.:)

Life is not fair but you need to fight fairly

It’s easy to complain. It’s very easy to think that you are facing the biggest problems of life. But the fact is that I have never come across a single person in life who has no problem at all.

2011 has been a rough year, very rough year indeed. Not so much financially but emotionally and mentally. This has been a year of Murphy visits. I thanked Murphy for not visiting me throughout 2010 and I think that hurt his pride. He decided to be with me for a long time to come now. Between so many hospitals visits and all the bad NEWS from everywhere (and yes sprinkled with some good NEWS at times too), I started believing that I am having the toughest time anyone can ever have.

But then, I come across a guest post on Budgets are Sexy, one of my favorite blogs, by Ashley. To be very honest, I do read lots of posts but very rarely a post will compel me to read all the comments as well. It was one of those rare posts. Yes she is a very strong woman to go through such tough times when she was pregnant and I hope and pray that she never ever face any such problem again in life.

After reading what she went through, I felt blessed after long long time. I am so thankful that I always have food on table, that too of my own choice. I have clothes and well needed resting time as well. I can afford to leave my job for some time if situation demands it. I have money in bank so that even though I am away from family, I can or they can visit me, if health permits.

I am so thankful for her and J Money to host this post, because it gave me much needed motivation and hope to fight my current circumstances with more optimism. Thanks so much.

2010 Goals Tracking - Year End

A caution, this is really a long post.
We are in last month of the year. I am already thinking about things I want to achieve in next year. This year for the first time I am finding it difficult to find the goals, because from last 4-5 years my goals always revolved around money and I kind of do very well in that department without much of the effort. Hence, while setting last year's goal, I actually for the first time added some non-PF goals in my life.

This revealed one of my big weaknesses to me, something that I can exploit to improve me. I so much hate writing fail for any of the goal that I consciously started working on those things that I used to hate at one time. And I know this is a PF blog and I generally don't write about personal experiences here other than one’s related to money, but I think that my goals for next year will hardly be PF dominated.

Now I look at goal setting as the technique to improve those areas in my life that I really want to improve. So in my year end review, I want to visit not only how many pass vs. fail but also what was hidden motivation behind all my goals.

These are my goals for 2010:
1) Continue learning new dishes to cook. One new dish per week.
Result: 7 Pass vs. 5 Fail
I used to hate cooking. When I got married some 3 years back, I couldn't even prepare a decent tea. I am lucky enough that my in-laws and my husband in particular are OK with it. In NOIDA we had a cook since beginning and my husband will happily prepare breakfast and tea for me (and I am a tea addict).

What got to me to want to change it? LOVE. Yes honestly, I love my hubby and he loves food. He is a big big foodie. After 2 years of my marriage, I started getting those feelings that I want to cook for him, I want him to say good things about my food and so on. In fact, I tried doing this even in second year of marriage, but resolution never lasted more than 2 weeks.

Setting this goal helped me improve my cooking. And after moving to Hyderabad I realized that it’s very difficult to get a decent cook of our taste here. Now I cook dinner everyday which is a big achievement for a person like me.

2) Continue to be on budget.
Result: 8 Pass vs. 4 Fail
What can I say more than the fact that I love budget and personal finance else why will I have this blog. Plus I like to see my savings grow rather than expenses grow. I started with a set budget to spend per month and exceeded it by 10K as per the need (see I am flexible and not at all that rigid or was it like I hated idea of writing fail over here). But I stayed in budget for most part of the year.

3) Start saving for prepayment of mortgage. 2L should be saved for same.
Result: 9 Pass vs. 3 Fail
We survived a pay cut in 2009 and mortgage has been my first liability ever in life. So I realized the importance of reducing the mortgage amount by prepaying the same. This goal somewhere got modified as save 6 EMIs as emergency fund because my DH was not in favor of prepaying mortgage. I saved 9 EMIs as emergency fund, way more than my set goal.

4) Contribute to retirement as per the plan.
Result: 12 Pass vs. 0 Fail
Well, this part requires least of the effort as everything I do is automated. So I can hardly fail on it unless I don’t have funds in my accounts which have not happened even once in last year. Thanks Murphy and GOD for that.

5) Be less obsessive on daily tracking of things.
Result: 10 Pass vs. 2 Fail
I think I already confessed here that I was obsessed for tracking every penny spent. But then I realized that I should overcome my obsession or in fact was forced by my DH for same (he doesn’t like to be accountable for number of Pepsi’s he drinks in a day).

A confession, my life is stress free once I got rid of this habit. I still track how much we spend in a month but no need to know how much went for Pepsi and how much for other things.

And one last thing to mention on this point, I have started the tracking again because I want to get the idea of expenses we incur in new place and was suggested by DH himself but it is stress free so far.

6) Learn to swim.
Result: BIG FAIL
I love water and that’s why always wanted to learn to swim. And I have a sinusitis problem which once again made it impossible for me to swim. This will be in my list of things to do before I die.

7) Improve healthy eating.
Result: 8 Pass vs. 4 Fail
Though number shows another picture I can say that it is still close to failure. I need major improvement health wise. That’s one area of my life that I neglected till date (I was almost about to reveal my age. OMG). This area needs major focus next year.

8) Earning Rs 50250 (2010*25) extra in 2010
Result: 9 Pass vs. 3 Fail
I don’t do any extra work other then my full time job and house hold chores and I don’t pay myself for latter. This mainly comes from passive income, reward points and gifts. Yes I actually try to save all the cash gifts I receive and some amount corresponding to all the materialistic gifts as well from my budgeted amount. Did I hear insane? Well I’ll say it is just a mental technique to improve my savings.