Tracking Your Progress in 2014

New Year. New beginnings. New possibilities. So, now that all the New Year celebrations are out of the way, how are you managing with your goals so far? Are you still on track to attaining them or are they just a distant memory by now? As for me, if I'm being totally honest, it's a little bit of both. I'm on track with certain goals and I've fallen off the proverbial bandwagon with others. So much to do, so little time, I tell you!

For this reason, I've come up with a little something to help me stay on task and track my progress in different areas of my life (not reinventing the wheel, just customizing that bad boy to fit my life).  Take a look.....

It's one thing to write a goal down. It's a completely different thing to make a plan on how you are going to reach that goal and then track your progress along the way. That is why I created the following sheets to help me tackle the areas in my life that I am focusing on this year.

Let' me break it down and give you a brief synopsis of what I'm up to this year. First up is my Debt Repayment Sheet:

Here I list all the creditors we owe from smallest amount owed to greatest amount owed, the balance as of the beginning of this year, the interest rate we are currently paying at, the monthly payment we will be applying to the balance and when we hope to have it paid off by. I will be using the Debt Snowball Method strategy taught by financial guru Dave Ramsey, who uses biblical principles of money management.  I'll also be posting a copy on our refrigerator as a constant reminder of our goal. 

In order to pay off our debt, we will have to cut down on eating out. To help me in this area, I came up with a monthly Menu Planner. Mothers all around the world know that half the battle of cooking every night is trying to figure out what to cook. It also cuts down on the kids asking me everyday "Mami, what's for dinner?" I printed it out and hung it on our refrigerator. Coming up with the weekly menus was definitely time well spent and I recommend it wholeheartedly. It also helps when you go grocery shopping to know what you're shopping for.  

Below is an example of the one I filled out. While I was planning out the menu, I thought about fun ways I could refer to the days so it would be easy for the kids to remember.  Here's what I came up with: "Pasta Mondays," "Steak-ful Tuesdays," "Sloppy-Dog Wednesdays," "Pork-ful Thursdays," "Fajita Fridays," "Casserole Saturdays" and "Pot-full-of-rice Sundays." (Shoot me now, I'm a nerd!)

Cutting out the fast food will help me in attaining my next goal. As you may know, I had a baby 11 months ago and I'm officially done with my child-bearing years. That means its time to start working on my health and physical fitness and this time for good. See, in the past, I've been successful at loosing weight but then I get pregnant, gain all the weight back and all of my hard work goes out the window. Oh, my struggle! This time, however, I look forward to loosing it for good and maintaining a healthy lifestyle.

To aide me in this area of my life I've created a Weight Loss sheet that tracks my weekly progress and, along with this sheet, I'll also be keeping a food journal and checking in every Monday morning. 

So there you have it. This was just a glimpse into how I will be tracking my progress this year.  My hope is that it will help me direct my focus on these areas, thus producing upward progress.  I'll keep you posted on how it goes.

What goals are you working on this year and how will you be tracking yours? I'd love to know!