Every month I like to set myself aims for the month, to keep myself focused and to make sure I actually use the time during the month wisely! There are two sets of aims: Finance and Personal. July wasn’t that good for both financial aims and for personal aims so I’m hoping that August will be much better. I’ve also changed my aims slightly for August, as I’ll explain below.
Financial aims for August:
– Have 10 No Spend Days (or NSDs)
– Overpay our mortgage by the interest added on only
– Put £600 into savings
Our NSD aim for August is lower than previous months, as we will be on vacation for part of the time. As we have gone board only, we will need to eat all three meals out each day, so that means that we’ll spend each day. Obviously this will have an impact on the amount of NSDs we’ll be able to have during August.
Another change to our aims is to not set out a specific overpayment amount. As we’ll probably have higher spends in August, I’m aiming to overpay the mortgage by the amount of interest added on at the beginning of the month. On the 1st of every month, we get interest added on for the previous month. For August, this will be our overpayment amount.
I’m secretly hoping to manage to put more than £600 into savings for August, but again, as we’re on vacation, it depends on how much we end up spending there. We have set ourselves a budget for holiday spends but unexpected things might crop up whilst we’re there!
Personal Aims for August:
– make a lemon drizzle cake
– have a BBQ and invite family round
– go out for a bike ride at least twice
Lemon drizzle cake is one of my husband’s favoured cakes and I haven’t made this is a really long time. As it’s the summer and lemon cakes are more of a summer thing, I want to make one. I’ll have a bit of time when we get back off vacation so I will make one. I also want to enjoy the weather and have a BBQ with the family. We don’t actually own a BBQ so we’ll have to look at that. And finally, with it being light and hopefully warm, I am going to ride my bike at least twice. I am…!
Do you have any aims for this month? What will challenge you the most? I’d love to hear from you!
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Enjoy your vacation, Nicola! Are you going far?
We are! We’re travelling around Canada and American which I’m really excited about 🙂
Nicola,
Those are some awesome goals for the month.
I’ve gotta track my NSDs one of these days. I’m sure I have at least a few. There’s actually probably at least 10 days out of the month that I don’t even leave the house at all, as I’ll just spend all day writing and reading.
Have fun with that BBQ! I love BBQs. Good stuff. 🙂
Best wishes.
Thanks! I bet you have more NSDs than you think 🙂
Good luck with your goals Nicola! I love that your break your goals down into manageable tasks. Rather than saying, “Right I must go on a bike ride at least once per week” (and then failing), you’re instead putting a minimum requirement on that goal – “a bike ride at least 2 times during August”.
I haven’t set any financial goals yet but for personal goals, I would like to lose 6lbs in weight by the end of August. Trying to diet whilst on a budget right now!
Thank you Hayley! 🙂 Good luck with your weight loss in August – I’m sure you’ll do great 🙂
Good luck with your August goals and happy travelling! Lemon drizzle cake… yum!… let us know how it turned out and please share a recipe maybe? 😉
I will do if it goes well 😉
Lemon drizzle cake sounds amazing!
I will share the recipe if it goes well 🙂