Question: Who is up for a food/meal planning-related January challenge? It’s a fraught area for many of us, so as always, it would be optional and you can stay off the thread if it isn’t a good place for you.
I know a lot of people would like to cut back on eating out after the holiday season, or (in my case) do more meal planning and batch cooking. Food is a huge cost for many of us!
I know many people do Uberfrugal january which dove tails well with many food-related budget challenges.
I targeted reducing food waste a few years ago - that may be less of a trigger for some, but still a good goal.
YES
I worked so many hours in December I totally fell off all my preparation type wagons.
Ok I have started my planner for 2020 and made a list of medical appointments (that I can remember) to schedule once I get my new insurance card!
Week 4, Final:
I got everything done to a point where about half of it still needs an hour to actually complete. Christmas took a LOT more of my energy than I expected. I’ll finish in January.
5/9 DONE
4/9 TBC in January
Snackuary is a thing:
All right, down to one, or maybe it’s a half, and given the cc company’s new policy about making me wait to get an online card before I have a physical card activated, I have to wait until I’m back home on the 31st before I can actually use my new card to pay the insurance. Which I want to do because that’s a little over a quarter of my planned minimum spend, I just hate cutting it that close since the insurance is due on Jan. 1st.
Maybe in for Snackuary, need to take a look at the calendar and see how much I’ll be around to know how useful it’ll be. The full-year 2020 goals are set regardless, though.
All done! We are staying with current insurance for now after husband did some hunting around. Have a box of about 25 things to go into the but nothing clothes bag and that’s about as much as I can get rid of now but I’ve more than made up the difference to 30 in other things around the house being decluttered. FI spreadsheets and tracking all up to date and I’m enjoying tackling daily expenses using money manager. I’ve got a skin check booked for March as that’s the earliest I could get. Have to call for an appt for husband tomorrow, they are super busy for the foreseeable future! I also remembered that we had a recurring dentist appt next year already that was booked in when we attended this year so that’s already done! Feeling pretty good so far going into 2020!
Final update:
Overall I’m calling it a success- posting here definitely pushed me to get more done than I would have otherwise
I… give up. I have not completed anything further since 2 weeks ago. Fail.
Hey you did things 2 weeks ago! That’s awesome! I’m also extremely behind on my last few tasks 
It’s true, but like… I literally have no excuse. I went nowhere for the holidays. I hosted no one. I have no job. And my list was not even that long or theoretically taxing. 
Week 4 update:
1. Log/File one year’s worth of financial papers (I usually do this in January, but it seemed appropriate for this month’s challenge) - I’ve sorted the papers! Now I just need to put them where they belong.
2. Get that $*&% IRA rollover done! - look at me, being all adult and stuff. Did my part in week 2, week 3 looked like I was too late and it wouldn’t be completed this year, but the transaction happened at the end of week 4. My first rollover is done!
3. Minimum spend ($2500) on new CC, to include 2019 charitable giving Did the donations ($2k). I lost this card for about 10 days and of course that was when I was doing the bulk of my holiday spending. Found the card in a coat pocket, but still need about $200 on this card. Its OK if I don’t finish this month.
4. Spend on cc with an extra bonus this month ($1200). Done!
5.
a. Figure out how much capital gains harvesting I can do this year
b. and actually do it. Done! I didn’t go right up to the limit - left some wiggle room, but I am happy with that.
6. Cancel cable, which was a condition of me signing up for Hulu during the Black Friday/ Cyber Monday special. No progress here yet.
7. Continue to track spending on holiday meal food and groceries for houseguests. Spent $217 on groceries/pizza for family events and holiday parties, $12 on special foods for my houseguests, and $65 on gifts.
I still have a few days to get the papers off the dining table and call the cable company. One of those things will get done.
Over here these two things are a direct cause of not getting things done.
But getting some of your list done is so much better than getting nothing on the list done!
ETA: I am finding these challenges helpful to keep me working on some small goals. Even using “low hanging fruit” for goals, and not many goals, I still don’t get them all done (e.g. Roth conversion in November). But better than getting nothing done.
I am breaking item 3 into two pieces for the purposes of this check-in.
a - figure out how much we have paid for Family Friend’s website hosting
b - send email to Family Friend asking for money
Part A is now complete thanks to motivation via this thread. Technically I still have several days for Part B.
My last update:
1a) Track items that I eat to look for patterns/problems: I’ve done really well here. Haven’t identified too many issues as I’ve given up trying to manage that while sick. Will look at removing problem foods in January.
1b) Aim for meals, not snacks: I did really well on this for the first two weeks, then I kind of fell apart. I do know that I feel much better when eating meals, so will keep working on this in January.
1c) Walk everyday (anything over a mile counts): Decent progress. I have walked more than half of the days. I’d have done better, but I got bronchitis.
Week 4 update:
I finally got renter’s insurance! I’ve been putting it off for… years. I still need to sign my policy, but I want to print it out and read and mark it up first, and I have a month to sign it.
I didn’t track my last couple of purchases for holiday gift spending. Overall, I found tracking gift spending helped me be more thoughtful with my purchases, and I wasn’t stressed out.
Posting my last update, though I wasn’t very productive this last week. Muppet got sick early in the week, so most of my week was dealing with that (with a few interrupted sleep nights mixed in). Thankfully, he’s feeling much better now.
No progress on any of my main 4 items.
No progress on getting rid of more large items. I did move things out to the porch, so at least it got out of my house. Things that no one wants on BN and don’t have obvious charities that want them just need another dump run after New Year’s. Figured out where I’m missing 1 piece that is important to an item that otherwise could be sold or donated.
A little bit of progress on going through new to me or maybe broken appliances to figure out what the next steps are.
Started to slip more on my limited streaming plan. It was helpful to cut down viewing, but last week I started to watch a few more things that I pledged.
My mother leaves tomorrow - I feel that I can’t respond to any of the activity on this forum with her here, too much going on! Tomorrow will be a bunch of updates.