I definitely have a new approach to life, every bit counts.
I've taken this into account for the three highlighting themes of my blog. For instance, tonight I was planning on not running or lifting. I have been running 3 times a week and lifting twice, sometimes 3 times. But tonight was an off night. I finished eating and was perusing the WWW and realized that I was grasping for things to do. I decided to take advantage of the daylight and go for a quick bike ride. I had to hit the ATM up so I decided to bike it. It's about a mile away, but I got there and decided to take a trip around the block, Mt Washington. I burned around 250 calories for about 22:30 worth of time. That is 250 more calories I burned, further helping me reach my goal of 185 lbs by May 2008. My previous self would've plopped down on the couch and starting channel surfing or stalking people via myspace, facebook, insert your social networking site of choice. In the final minutes of my bike ride I started realizing that I've been making a conscious effort to make every bit count.
Another example has been in my quest to become debt free. I've only committed to this last week so it's still early but I'm making good efforts. I have paid off two retail, 0% interest credit cards in the last week, and have a balance of $0 on my Capital One credit card. I currently have around $25,000 in other debt: student loans, car loan, and legal fees. Yea, I had a run in with the law this past summer and am finally repaying the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Anyways, since I paid off the two retails cards, I'm using the money that was going towards those two cards to add to my debt reduction. By using the snowball approach to eliminating my student loan and car loan debt I am increasing monthly contributions from $402.57 to $650. By using this I will eliminate my debt in 41 months! It is not my ideal situation, but I plan adding to that as soon as I save $4,000 as an emergency fund. I currently have $2,333.67. So I estimate in about 6 months I will increase that total to about $1,000 a month, getting rid of my debt in 26 months! So it's a start and I will be tracking my progress here.
I am down to 194 lbs so I've lost 1 lb since my last post! 9 more lbs to go until May 2008. I'll be svelte for my trip to Thailand.
In other news...if you don't use Firefox, use it, you're wasting your time with IE7, I'm only assuming you are using this. If you own a Mac, I apologize...but Safari is good as well. Waiting for Firefox 3. Yes, I did mention I'm into computer so I will make one nerd statement of the day. It appears that the WYSIWYG Editor you use for blogspot is fckEditor, only reason I think so is because we have integrated this editor into our product at my workplace.
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Now playing:
Led Zeppelin - Trampled Under Footvia FoxyTunes
Welcome. I had many reservations to beginning a blog. I needed a place to write down my thoughts and have them easily accessible just in case I had a new idea. I don't like dwelling on minuscule details of my daily life. Thus the title of this blog: Fitness, Finances and Future. I tried to think of something profound but decided on the latter. The reason for this title is because that is what this blog is intended to highlight.
Fitness- I started taking this seriously in November 2006. Being two years and some change out of college, I thought I would be losing all the weight that I gained. However there was a reversal and I was actually adding to my college weight. In November 2006 after a well deserved physicial, I found out that I was up to 265 lbs. In reality I had the label of being "obese", I always joked about it throughout my life but it never got this high. To make a long story short, I needed to take action. I formulated a diet, workout plan and modified my lifestyle to reach my goals. My first goal was to lose 65 lbs in one year. So by August 2007 I had achieved the 65 lbs goal, 2.5 months ahead of schedule. So I am on milestone number two which is getting down to 185lbs by May 2008. It's currently March 2008 and I weight a little under 195 lbs.
Finance-This has become quite an obsession within the last few months. I've always been loose with a budget, purchasing using credit cards, and just not knowing where my money was going every month. I started by doing research on the WWW and got hooked on several blogs: Get Rich Slowly, I'll Teach You How to Be Rich, Me vs. Debt, and Millionaire Mommy Next Door, and also began using Mint to track my spending. I set a goal just recently to elminimate all debt(Credit Cards, Student Loans, and Car Loan). I actually eliminated all primary Credit Card debt but will be paying off a 0% interest Best Buy Card(bought a 55" TV) and a Littmans Jeweler Card(we'll talk about this shortly) later this month. I currently owe a little over $24,000 and have formulated a plan using the Snowball Debt Calculator have all this paid off by mid 2011. Also, probably discuss investment options when I get to understand this complex topic.
Future- I've hit a time in my life where this is starting to mean something and I need to prepare for it. I recently got engaged to someone who I love very much, and cannot wait to spend the rest of my life with her. We have set a tentative date of Fall 2009. I'm trying to get organized before getting married and I think I've done a hell of a job within 18 months. Lost some weight, started saving money, educated myself on the "real world", etc. This posts from this topic will probably be related to wedding plans, and other personals goals. This topic is open-ended so within this I will probably talk about Music, Books, Computers, and other events in my life. One which I am actively working on is reading more books. I started by setting a goal of books in 2008. If you know me, I'm not an avid reader. I went through a kick while studying abroad in Barcelona but as soon as I returned to the US of A, I was sucked into the world of mindless television. So I have already read 3 books and am almost done with my 4th so I decided to set this goal to now 12 books in 2008, 1 book a month.
Ok, first post in the blogsphere. I don't care how it looks but its a stepping stone to tracking my thoughts, goals, and ideas.
