Follow Up 5: The List

It’s been a little more than two years since I made my five year plan (updated in June 2012), so I’m checking in to see where I stand.  I’ve crossed some more items off the list  (exciting!) and, as I did last year, I’ve updated a few of the items (again, noted by italics) to make them more reasonable. Here’s where things stand now:

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Personal:  (3/8)

• Live independently.  March 1, 2012 (approximately)
• Get LASIK.
• Become a member of a church that I enjoy and nurtures me spiritually.
• Have no boxes in any form of storage (including a garage).  February 18, 2012
• Join a gym and establish a weekly exercise routine.
• Plant, maintain, and use items from a vegetable and herb garden.
• Do some kind of Habitat for Humanity/Samaritan’s Purse project. (Don’t just give money; give skills and time.)
• Subscribe to a newspaper.  April 4, 2013

Travel:  (0/3)

• Go on a trip with Glenn.  (Just us.)
• Go on a trip with friends.
• Go on a trip with mom.  (Genealogy trip?)

Note:  I made this section a lot less specific.  I took the locations out of the “Go on a trip” items to make them more attainable.  International travel would be a wonderful thing to do in the next three years, but I can’t guarantee that I’ll be able to afford something of that magnitude.  It’s much more likely that I’ll be able to go on a road-trip with my mother while she/we research(es) our genealogy.  Still a trip, still a bonding experience, but much more easily attained than going to the Middle East and more reasonable for me to expect myself to be able to do.  I also took the items “Visit friends in Southern California once a quarter” and “Visit friends in Sacramento once a month” off this list entirely because they are ongoing goals (and therefore hard to really ever achieve) and being able to visit someone is not something I can control independently.

Career:  (2/4)

• Obtain Paralegal certificate.
• Become a Notary.  February 20, 2012
• Have a job that allows for a healthy work/life balance and satisfies me personally.  May 13, 2013
• Research/decide about MBA.

Financial:  (2/4)

• Pay off all current debt.  July 16, 2013
• Open a savings account with a credit union.  February 16, 2013
• Get some kind of investment plan going.
• Have three months of living expenses set aside in savings.

Note:  I removed the “Carry zero balance on JC Penney account” goal from this list because, again, it’s an ongoing goal and therefore impossible to cross off.

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After two years, I should be 40% of the way through this list.  There are 19 items on the list and I have completed seven of them, which means I’m pretty much on track.  Here’s an update on some of the items on the list that I’ve started but not completed:

Personal:

• Become a member of a church that I enjoy and nurtures me spiritually.  I’ve found a couple of churches that bear further investigation.  I just need to find the right one.
• Join a gym and establish a weekly exercise routine.  I joined the gym near my house at the end of January, but I’ve only gone once.  Some very wise person once told me that if it’s not something you like, you won’t do it, no matter how good it is for you. While there are people out there capable of disciplining themselves into a gym routine and eating broccoli at every meal, I’ve got almost eight months of hard evidence telling me that I’m not one of those people.  So my plan is to cancel the membership at the gym by my house that I never go to and join a gym that I know I’ll go to regularly. I’m going back to my climbing gym. It may be literally five times more expensive than Fitness-19, but if I actually start doing something physical again because of it, it will be worth it. (I also recently discovered some parkour gyms and classes nearby, so that might happen too.)
• Plant, maintain, and use items from a vegetable and herb garden.  I’m in a mostly contemplative state for this one; planning which herbs/vegetables I want to plant and researching whether or not they’ll actually grow at my house. (My yards are mostly shady, which makes growing herbs/vegetables a bit more difficult than it could otherwise be.)

Travel:

• Go on a trip with Glenn.  (Just us.)  I discovered roadtrippers.com a couple weeks ago and have since been (obsessively, compulsively) mapping out a potential two week long road trip to visit Glenn’s brother in Tennessee. The Roadtrippers website is absolutely fantastic and I’m having way too much fun there. Now that I know about this site, planning all kinds of trips (like a genealogy research trip with mom) should be much easier.
• Go on a trip with friends.  Chelsea recently brought a two day, somewhat local adventure to my attention and we are trying to plan a bit and see if we can make that work. If not this year, it’s more than likely this could happen next year.

Career:  

• Get Paralegal Certified.  I had previously decided which program I wanted to enroll in and on July 9, 2013 I registered UC Berkeley’s program.  I’m now enrolled in two classes (Essential Paralegal Studies Part I: Foundational Skills and Paralegal California Procedures). The UCB program has to be completed in one year, so this one should be crossed off the list soon!

Financial:

• Get some kind of investment plan going.  My new job offers a 401K, but I’m not eligible to enroll until I’ve been here for a year.   I’ll be getting more information about this from the Office Manager when she comes back from vacation.  So this one should be checked off fairly soon.
• Have three months of living expenses set aside in savings.  I have about a month and a half of living expenses in my MC Hammer (“can’t touch this”) savings account, so I’m halfway there on this one.

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So that’s it.  Two years in and I’m pretty much on track for achieving everything on my five-year plan.  Go me.