Audacious Goals -- Percentage hacking my way to home ownership

I have wanted to be a homeowner for a long time, but to be totally honest, I've frequently placed my energy on other things with home ownership as a back of mind aspiration. Twice I've given it a lot of focus though . . . until I let other things take over my mental space.

I think part of my issue has come down to not having a plan. Or having a plan with steps that are too grandiose and too difficult to mentally comprehend and achieve. 

Today, I was thinking about my home ownership desires and, more broadly, about Dan Harris's book, 10% Happier. I started to wonder if I could approach becoming a home owner through a series of steps based on percentages. 

If you don't know, Dan Harris is a news reporter who had a panic attack giving a national broadcast and decided something in his life had to change -- ultimately, he wanted to feel happier, but that was too vague and too big of a goal. He decided that feeling only 10% happier was achievable and set out to do that which led to writing a book about his experience. While the book goes into a lot of detail about meditation, Buddhism, anxiety, and so on, I think his idea of trying to be 10% happier can be applied to many other things, including incremental steps towards home ownership.

It got me thinking, what can I do 10% more or less of this week to push me closer to my goal? 

Just a few of the many things that came to mind:

• Pay 10% more with every debt payment
• Replace 10% of my coffee and soda drinking with water, and better: replace ALL of my purchased beverages at work with water from the water station at work (thus, it would be no added water on my household water bill!)
• Put 10% more of my next paycheck into savings
• Spend 10% more time every day on my Etsy and Mercari shops (with the goal of selling more)
• Spend 10% more time every day working on finishing my networking e-book for shy, anxious, introverts
• Use 10% less of household and hygiene products (as long as doing so doesn't impact their effectiveness)
• Figure out how to use 10% less energy to lower my electric bill

I had many other ideas come to mind, but these are the ones that felt most readily and easily doable. 

Only 10% over the next week won't make a huge impact, but I believe it will compound over time as the weeks go by. Notice that I didn't say months or years -- frankly, right now, thinking about habit changes and goals over the course of months and years sounds too big and too hard. But, a few weeks? That's easy. 

My goal isn't a huge home, but the housing market fluctuates a lot, so I'm not getting too tied up on details other than knowing I want at least:

• Two bedrooms and two bathrooms
• A patio or yard that's about 100 square feet for a small sitting area and a small garden
• A lot of natural light
• Close to public transportation

I don't feel like that's asking too much of myself and I do think it is achievable, even as it feels like life is more and more expensive and it's harder and harder to get by. 

What incremental changes have you made towards achieving your goals?

30 Days of Financial Action: Day 1 -- Getting Started

I haven't blogged at Paying it Off One Penny at a Time in a really long time! I've just had so much going on, as well as a bit of (a lot of) anxiety and depression. 

But, I recently got my mojo back and am here to embark on renewing my journey to financial freedom!

Today, I am committing to blogging for 30 days about my DAILY financial freedom actions.

So, what have I done today towards my financial goals?

• Some online data entry--my goal is to cross the $30 earnings mark today (I'm at just under $28) which is the minimum required to be paid. {{Edited: I crossed the $30 mark!}}
• I added a few items to several craft supply destash bags that I have listed on local Facebook buy/sell/trade groups.
• I made coffee AT HOME instead of going and buying a drink.
• I did my own yard work until it warmed up enough for some bees to come out and start hovering.

My goals for the rest of today, financially are:

• Bump up my Facebook buy/sell/trade listings.
• Add my Facebook listings to NextDoor App and Let Go.
• Keep on the data entry throughout the day, even if I cross the $30 mark.
• See if a job I want has posted, and if it has, apply!
• Get in touch with my accountant about some things he was supposed to send me.
• Get in touch with my lawyer about my uncle's estate and probate issues.
• Work on listings for one of my Etsy shops -- The Crafty Hermitress.

How about you? What are you working on in your financial freedom journey?

Come back tomorrow when I blog about online data entry--I found a LEGITIMATE online data entry company!

30 Days of Financial Action -- Day 3: Resisting temptation

The hat was so cute!

I LOVE a good hat and I only have two...what's one more?

It was sooooo cute!

I clicked on "add to bag" and put the hat in my virtual shopping cart. I browsed some more and added a meal planner to my cart. I added a sticker sheet. I browsed some more.

Then, I clicked on my shopping cart and saw the total.

NOPE! Not going to buy anything!

Does that happen to you too? You see a great shopping haul video on YouTube or a cute pic on Instagram and next thing you know, you're mindlessly adding things to virtual shopping carts and making purchases without really thinking about it!

Ugh!

Thankfully, I had a sudden flash of cash flying out of my bank account to make this purchase and I stopped myself. I had almost $100 of products in my shopping cart, and it would have been so, so easy to enter my billing details and check out!

Instead, I tried to remember my desire to be debt free, to own my own home, and go on amazing adventures around the globe. I can't do any of that if I'm mindlessly spending money.

Does this moment of resisting temptation mean I've been perfect lately? Nope. I did spend more than I planned at the grocery store two days ago -- largely because I took my son with me and that almost always means going off-list. And, I did buy take away coffee last night and the night before on my way to work.

Overall though, I've been doing pretty well with minimizing my spending the past two weeks. And, since that blip a few days ago, I've been even more conscious of my spending habits. Last night, I almost went to Subway on my way to work for a sandwich, but instead, I remembered all those off-list items I'd purchased at the grocery store and found something in my freezer to take to work. And, instead of getting a snack from a convenience store on my break at work, I packed the second half of a smoothie which I'd stashed in my freezer two days ago.

My spending habits aren't perfect, but I'm trying and I'm doing better at curbing mindless spending and avoiding temptations.

How about you? How often do you cave in to temptation?

Other posts in this series:

The exceptional value of a penny

A penny is worth so much more than it's literal one-cent value. If you think about it, in the United States, no other denomination of money has any value without the penny.

So, I want to know -- do you pick up pennies when you see them on the ground? Do you keep them and count them up? Do you always make sure to have four pennies in your pocket, just in case?

Or, do you think of pennies as annoying wastes of space or having little value?

I ask because I recently watched THIS Marie Forleo video in which Marie spoke about money habits, including habits like picking up change if you see it in the street or organizing your money neatly and in order in your wallet.

I started thinking about the vast difference between how I treat my money versus how my ex treated money while we were together (and I suspect his habits haven't changed much).

My ex used to HATE pennies. He hated them so much that he would literally throw them out the car window while driving or in the trash if he was at home or out walking somewhere! Can you believe that?

He was LITERALLY throwing away money!

We kind of had a constant ongoing argument over pennies. I believe a penny is much more than simply one-cent. A penny is a lot of value that can add up quickly -- one penny alone may not be much, but ten pennies is a dime. 100 pennies are a dollar. A thousand pennies are ten dollars. And so on...

Pennies have extraordinary power and value that I cherish. 

Every time I saw my ex throwing away pennies, I felt a rock drop in my stomach. He saw himself throwing away a nuisance. I saw him throwing away our financial stability and our son's future (like, throwing away college tuition). 

Next time you see a penny on the sidewalk, pick it up. Take it home and drop it in a cute piggy bank, jar, a box, or whatever receptacle makes sense for you. Make a habit of dropping all of your change into this container! It will add up faster than you might think and it could potentially save your financial butt or at least ease a tight financial spot.

There have been times when money was tight and my little piggy bank (that actually looks like a monkey) has gotten me through. I may not have had enough paper dollars to buy all of the groceries we needed or to get gas to drive to work, but because I have the habit of tossing ALL of my change into my little piggy bank, I was able to see myself through in a pinch. Right now, I have almost ten dollars in change in that little coin bank with another couple of dollars in change in my wallet that I'll be dropping into the bank soon.

And, this may seem silly at first, but lately I have been working on changing my mindset around money from one of stress, dread, and worry to one of appreciation and blessing. Every time I drop coins into my little bank, I say to myself, "Thank, you Universe for this blessing" before inserting each coin. At first I didn't notice any effect from this habit and it seemed like it was just wasting my time because I don't just say it once and drop in all of my collected coins. Nope, I say it for each individual coin I put in my little bank. Now, however, after several weeks of doing this, I find that this ritual helps me to slow down, calm down, and appreciate that I CAN and I WILL dig myself out of my financial hole.

Getting debt free is about baby steps, persistence, and understanding that I can do it -- even if it's one penny at a time.

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Did you like this post? Check out these posts as well:

• Paying debt one penny at a time
• Zero food waste and my budget

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DEBT TRACKING:
Original total: $110,000
Paid off yesterday: $0
New total: $109,950 

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Coming soon -- a blog post about how I am using coloring to motivate my debt pay off plans. Want to join me on my coloring to debt freedom plan? You can get your coloring pages in my Etsy shop -- it doesn't matter which pages you select; what matters is that you get started. Look for that blog post later this week!