Ultimate Challenge. 457 days / £16600!!!

duesouthtwin2

Lurking.... it's too late to text you now so CONGRATULATIONS!! xxx

Living_a_good_life

Hi Kat,

Apologies for absence - first time l have been on here for a while.

Anyways - just wanted to say a massive CONGRATULATIONS for making your DFD!! Brilliant news

All good in LAGL land - still in LAGL cottage - we will see what the new year brings

Have a fantastic Christmas and New Year and I hope your travels are everything you hope them to be!

Love LAGL xx

NinjaSavingKat

Well good day to you diary hunters....

It's been a little while since I posted as I have been filling up my own little paper diary with thoughts and mental notes about what I would like to achieve in 2014....

As I am sure I have rattled on about before - the New Year kick off is very important to me as a way to start afresh where mental notes are taken and set in stone never to be broken until either the year is up or the challenge has been completed.... this isn't always a good thing...:o

1. I have dumped boyfriends before the New Year who I knew I wouldn't see the following year through with.
2. I have made very specific lists for what I wanted to accomplish and been able to tick them off as I moved through the year - goals fulfill me...(loser).
3. I have stayed in on NYE for a few years running because I need to be alone and mentally switched on to what my year will be without the interruption of drunk fools and people I don't like...

My moto (....nuth'in, whats a moto with you...:rotfl:).. is start as you mean to go on.....

So I have created an 11 page spreadsheet with a page per month and formulas to automatically update for my savings battle - which is what it shall be referred to from here on in. It's the battle to save while living in a world that wants me to spend. I have the intended savings goals written down and pictures on each page in order to keep me focused of how amazing the world is and how much more important it is to see this planet of mine than buy useless items... Experiances not Materials.

But I have goals for me as well simply because I believe every person has room for growth and we should never stop striving to be a better version of ourselves....I have made lists for the following..

• Personality traits I don't like = being too quick to judge, and I don't just mean people.
• Personality traits I do like = the ability to help people realise their potential and teach them the skills to do so.
• Thoughts about myself that aren't healthy = people only socialise with me because they feel they have to, nobody actually wants to.
  
• Thoughts about myself that are healthy = I am eternally optimistic about what happens to me, everything is for a reason.

So my aim is to apply a little psychology. I have given you one example of what I am adding under my titles and no doubt there will be a long list for each.

They say that it takes 21 days to acquire a new skill and for it to be a habit and easily integrated into your life. I have completely overhauled my excitable sarcastic self into a more relaxed empathetic one. But I know there is more to be done.

I intend to research each list, the possible reasons for it's appearance in my life (how a thought has manifested or personality trait developed ) and actively aim to reverse the negatives ones and enhance the positive ones. This is not something that will be done in a matter of months obviously - as I have accumulated my "being" over many years, experiances, and place etc and everything is so integrated in a persons head that the removal of one "trait" might make room for another whether positive or negative - and I don't wish to put to much pressure on myself.

But I want to be a better person. This is how I aim to do it.

This is on top of accumulating £12000 in 9 months. I am not sure what my new diary will be called in order to see me through but it has to be a visual representation of what would happen if I fail OR a title to motivate and focus my attention when there is technically no debt to bust and no real pressure. I must allow "some" pressure....

My spreadsheet is called "The Ultimate Savings Tracker" - although that is SO dull.... I shall keep thinking!

Onwards and Forever Upwards!!!

Sazzie23

Hi Kat

Congratulations on debtfreedom. I have lurked on a few of your challenges as I lack the focus and dedication that you have. However I have found them inspirational in many ways and I am grateful I was able to learn from your ideas.

Good luck with the savings plans

Happytogetdebtfree

Hello kat, haven't been on much but saw this and wanted to say huge congratulations 2014 will be an amazing year WELL DONE XX

NinjaSavingKat

Hello diary hunters...

It's so close to the end of the year that I am not considering titles for the saving challenge of a lifetime. Having cleared £16600 in 394 days I now have to find £12000 in 304 days. This is ONLY if work will push my leave date back to the 1st October instead of the 1st September.. I need that extra month.

It will be okay for me to put away around £1000 a month if I am careful - then OT to cover the rest.......... again with the crazy work schedule.... Sometimes I wonder what I am doing to myself but realise (like this month) if I don't have a goal and an aim no matter how small/large I feel lost....

So I have my personal diary out and sat beside me now. It's the paper one I carry with me to fill in when things take my fancy. I have yet to construct a full list of what I want to achieve but I realise I need to be less hard on myself and even my mother has asked me to look after myself a little better..

I have a few things ticked off already.....There are a few dimensions that I think I could investigate in order to become a more adequate human being. I don't believe we can all be "well rounded" as we have the things we are good at and those things we are not good at should be undertaken by people we surround ourselves with - too many cooks in the kitchen spoil the broth - especially when someone needs to be laying the table...

That might not make sense by there is a book called "Strengths Finder" which enables you to locate 5 strengths out of a supposed 35. These are the ones you should look to focus and build on - with the other remaining strengths being part of you but not as dominant. In saying this you should find people who help you in life and aid your work / personal life and balance you with other strengths. Although I would never say to ditch friends it has certainly helped me assess some so called friendships I have....

Anyway I digress...............again.........

My aim.. is to add certain dimensions to my life in order to gain a better understanding of me - because doing things entirely for yourself does not create a good human being - it creates a self-centred one...

So I need the following and have thought of / discovered themes for each one.... There are 8... I can tell you are excited..:rotfl:

1. The fun Dimension - archery lesson booked for the 6th January. Ha!
2. The Charitable Dimension - DD for £15 to two charities set up for the 1st January 2014 and ready to go.
3. The Sociable Dimension - propsed lunch with a girlfriend once a month for us and any other like minded postive females we might know.
4. The Helpful Dimension - possibly 1-2 days a month volunteering somewhere which could be the food bank , a special needs school if I am allowed or an old peoples home. Undecided yet.
5. The Health Dimension - we all know what this means...although I am cancelling my gym membership and will be relying on my own equipment.
6. The "Get out of your Comfort Zone" Dimension - at least one Skydive. Although this is subject to price.
7. The Personal Growth Dimension - although this incorporates all of the above I still have other things that I can improve on that I mentioned in my last post....
8. The Relaxation Dimension - massages. That's all. I want to be massaged. I am not sure how often I could have these but Groupon might be able to help... I have some serious tension happening in mu shoulders.... funny that...

Yes I am this boring, I like to know my aims and iron out my goals - that means the year ahead is spent achieving and not worrying about what I want to do..... I don't tell other people about this though just you lot!:rotfl::rotfl:.

My friends might hear about my archery lessons but I don't tell people about charity work, why I am doing things and why I respond differently to criticism / gossip and negativity - I just hope they see the difference.

SO there you go.. this is what I am trying to iron out.

£12000 in ten months = £1200 a month. Anything over this will be used to live a little. I will aim for a further £100 a month which means £300 has to be earned via OT each month - which is doable...

Phew... I am off for a nap....#meow

apple_muncher

kat, no way is this boring! No way are you boring! You lay yourself bare to us and take us along with you, improving us and helping us be better than we imagined! Thank you!

killerpeaty

[please be aware that I'm not feeling great so if I'm not making sense, or for some reason am insulting, please forgive me ]

Hey Kat, been wondering where you were.

We all love to hear your plans (genuinely), you're so ambitious with your aims and that's great. I love setting up my aims for the year, just like you. Yes it is an arbitrary date to make up aims, but without an end date I wouldn't be able to track my process and wouldn't keep it up. I'm looking forward to seeing your (and my) progress.

You could always hit two birds with one stone and skydive for charity..

I'm very pleased with myself, I finally plucked up the courage to call the phone people and upgrade my phone/contract. I have more minutes, more internet minutes, same texts, free under 24s internet minutes and within the network minutes for over £10 less. Plus, because I called up, the initial contribution for the phone was waived! All I had to pay for was the delivery! I did lose my insurance though. Not that I ever needed it.. I had no haggling to do at all, she just offered it, no pushing from me at all!

NinjaSavingKat

Dearest darling AppleMuncher you are so kind... I feel sometimes if I lay myself right out there I will actually aim to make things happen. Like Peaty says it's a date to set goals...

I had a nap there and what's weird is that I thought about a girl who caused me great pain and another who followed pretty soon after that. They and a few other things caused me to start re-thinking my life. They were both friends who needed help who I reached out to - because I felt I had to - and they subsequently left my life with ... mainly because I think I did not come across as someone who wanted to help....

When I think back to how I dealt with them in my life I realised I was forcing myself to be excited and friendly with them - one of which actually moved into my house from America and caused so much of a problem when deciding to move out it caused me to give up my flat and start living with "live in landlords" as it alleviated the issue of ever having to find flatmates. I recognise now that her OCD / bi-polar that only became evident when she arrived ( I had known her when we were children through church hence the immediate and unquestioned trust I had in her) coupled with her deep rooted insecurities about her faith and her own self made for a very mixed up young woman. She shook me to my core. There were warning signals before she arrived in the country and I didn't see them....

Following this was another young woman ( I talk about these friends like I am some old crone recounting the youth of today - ) who I had known again through church and had felt guilty about falling out of contact with. After getting to know her I invited to my home in Ireland for a week for a holiday of being fed / watered and entertained by my poor family where my father took days off work to bring us places ( he is self-employed) only for her to turn around a few weeks later having barely spoke to me for those weeks to accuse me of being a certain many things of which one was "in-genuine" - if that is such a word....

I realised thereafter that when I force myself to speak to someone, cringe when they call me and find visiting there house a chore this will manifest in behaviour that can indeed be seen as not very genuine. I didn't feel comfortable around her and I think she felt it. But didn't feel she could communicate this as an adult and got vicious.

When things like this happen ( one in the winter of 2011 and the other in the Easter of 2012) you cannot help but look at yourself. Coupled with a recent break up with a boyfriend (that was just back from Afghanistan) of two years (yes this all happened at once) and the flat move, a new motorbike, and a very misguided obsession with a man who showed me a little kindness I was at rock bottom...

From there I snapped when another friend told me simply "You have lost perspective" - that was it. I was on the up. I set about changing, challenging and refocusing on the person I wanted to be not the person I had been shaped into by bad circumstances.. I was the only one that could change my circumstances and I was about to stop blaming other people...

It's weird that I sit now two years later wondering who that person was. I am debt free as well which is pretty cool...

So yes... I am laying everything bare. I need to refocus on why people are in my life, why I react certain ways to people and what I want to do with my life.... so far so good. But there is always room for improvement. I know I am not a bad person and the general consensus is that I am rather witty and cool to be around ... can you imagine one friend even referred to me as inspirational...:o:o:o:o

Now I realise my motorbike is the only interesting thing about me and I need to change that....:rotfl::rotfl::rotfl::rotfl:

Peaty.... you are never offensive. Don't ever think you are. You are very focused, determined and I love your input into my thread.

You are right though. I like to have an end date. I think achievable goals on a monthly, six monthly, yearly and such like are vital... you will have to share what your savings goals are for the year when they are sorted and set in stone so to speak....

I was thinking about skydiving for charity but kinda feel guilty as it's something I really want to do..:rotfl:... I have an acquaintance that is a sky-diving instructor at Netheraven and I might be able to score something from her. Depending on how I take to it I really want to make it a regular thing although it's super expensive and more a one time goal for this year instead of something new to take on. My friends husband is up for doing it with me...

I am all for shaking myself out of the norm and doing something that will freak me out and make me feel alive.. does that make sense - it makes you feel you are on this planet with scaring the living cr*p out of yourself right...:T

So there goes my wittering again... I am terribly sorry. My brother is home and he has just put candy canes on the tree to satisfy my childish desire for the tree from Home Alone in the toy store...

I am off to steal one....:T

apple_muncher

Just remember to take the plastic wrapper off the candy canes before you crunch them!