Presence NOT Presents
Dec 17, 2017
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!
With just over a week to go until the man in the red suit arrives I thought I would do a quick post and then sign off for a few weeks while I take a holiday. It’s mostly going to be a staycation because summer in Central Otago is always fantastic. I’m hoping for lots of sun, swimming, running with my dog, cherries and long overdue catch ups with friends and whanau.
I thought I would quickly update the progress on my Hairy Audacious Goal that I set back on Jul 9th 2017. If you haven't read it, check it out here: Hairy Audacious Goal
We are currently on track and should just sneak in, JUST! I have been trying to save and invest an additional $15,000 by Christmas because I wanted to reach a very particular total on my savings spreadsheet. I’ll update you in January if/when I actually get there. But I have employed all the strategies I talked about:
We both worked a little bit more at our jobs
I finally got my side hustle going, my podcast, and that has earned me new income
I have consistently invested money over the last six months into funds that are performing well
And I got around to submitting my tax return and just received a payout. Yay!
Wish me luck for the remaining two weeks!
Jonny put a remarkable proposition to me this last week, he wants us to go away for a night and have an Annual Review and intensive planning session! SO ROMANTIC! This will be a new thing for us and I can’t wait! We are going to have a night away and look at the past year and what we want to achieve in 2018 in all areas of our lives so I’ll keep you posted.
My podcast has surpassed my expectations and it turns out my hunch was correct, people want to hear about the money journey of other people because very few of us get the opportunity to talk to our friends and whanau about the money in our lives. I’ve been bringing you a diverse range of people and my hope is that after this series of 12 podcasts there will be more to come. I might even manage to coax a few of these shy Kiwi’s to let me record them! I’m working on it! I hope YOU take the opportunity to talk money these hols, I suggest you don’t lead in with “how much are you worth Great Grandma Betty” but maybe start more gently with “I’m going to start investing in XYZ, do you have any suggestions to help me do this?”
On the subject of podcasts. If you are interested in PF, which you clearly are because you are reading this, and you have not already worked out that PODCASTS are an amazing resource, then listen up y'all! There is a podcast out there for every single interest you could ever hope to have! Seriously, there is. THE most niche one I found was one devoted entirely to the Thermomix!
If you are like me and use an iPhone, just go to the App store and search for the Apple Podcast app, it’s free.
You then just search for what you are interested in and any podcast that fits that description will pop up. You just subscribe to it and every time the author releases a new one it will automatically download to your phone. You can listen whenever and wherever you like, skip the boring bits, speed up how fast they talk and stop and start whenever you like. Commutes to work suddenly get a whole lot more interesting AND you can drown out that incredibly boring relative who has come to stay for a week over Christmas! Seriously, you are missing out if you don’t get involved.
To help get you started here are my favourites for 2017:
50 Things That Made The Modern Economy
Be Wealthy & Smart with Linda P Jones
Smart Passive Income with Pat Flynn
Writing a blog is hard work and when I started I knew I needed to be a regular writer if I was going to last the distance and I’m happy to say that I still love blogging, even after all this time! The whole point remains to provide useful content for you to read, learn from and put into action. And it continues to motivate me to stay engaged in PF and try new things so I’m excited to see what crops up next year!
And a huge thank you to all of the people who have contacted me this year. Although I love getting comments posted on my blog that everyone else can read and respond to the majority of you email me directly with comments and a lot of exceptionally great questions. I will always answer every single email to the best of my ability and I always appreciate the fact that you have taken the time to get in touch with me. My goal in 2018 is to have more meet ups with people, a hard thing to do when based in Alexandra I know, but it is not impossible. If you are passing through this summer look me up! Dependent on the time of day I will either put the kettle on or offer a cold glass of wine.
We make our own Christmas crackers and I had suggested that this year we put a tiny pencil and piece of paper inside with all the other bits and bobs and we can each write a thing that we LOVE about the person to our left at the table. This marvellous heartfelt suggestion was promptly shot down in flames by the men in the room who were clearly not feeling the love that I feel for my family at Christmas! But despite this my gift to you is to remind you not to waste your hard earned dollars on crap presents that people will donate to their favourite charity two days after you leave, so put the credit card away and just go and spend time and be present with your friends and family instead.
Have an ABSOLUTELY FABULOUS festive season.
