I haven’t been writing regular posts because I have been feeling… uninspired. I haven’t been on any great trips or read any super amazing books so it had been days since I felt energized enough to write a post. One great thing happened to me this week I wanted to share and it has to do with my personal training experience at the gym I exercise at. After doing an In-Body machine *which calculates your muscle & body fat* I gained a pound of muscle. How cool is that!? All the hard work I put into my sessions has literally left me feeling stronger.

I talked about why I decided to hire a personal trainer in that blog post so I won’t go through that here. For me, my goal is to put on more muscle mass because muscle is so important since it can deteriorate as we age if we don’t use it. I would like to decrease my body fat, but I’m not necessarily ready to be super strict with myself. For example, if I go out to a happy hour with friends, I will have one drink but try not to exceed two. My body fat went up .2 which I’m not too concerned with. I carry about 53 lbs. of body fat which you might think is a lot, but not really. I love my curves! I don’t want to be skinny because I like having some body fat on my frame. I would like to see this number decrease, but it’s not my main concern.

I can tell I’m getting stronger based on how I complete the workouts. Before this, I couldn’t do a push-up on my toes. Now, I can do multiple push-ups in a row on my toes and go farther down into the push-up. I have upped my weight in dumbbells doing 20 lbs. for a shoulder press. Also my stamina! I feel I have more energy to go along with my day which means I’m decreasing the amount of coffee I drink and increasing my water intake.

Overall if you have been exercising and haven’t been seeing results, hire a coach or personal trainer. Getting toned is tough to do on your own, so allow someone to help assist you in getting the results you need.

We talk about physical and mental health quite frequently in society, but what about financial health? Financial health describes what your financial state is. This includes emergency savings, and retirement along with how much disposable income you have. Disposable income is important because to fuel the economy we need to purchase stuff. I wanted to share a couple things I’m doing to help me out financially.

Creating a Travel Savings Account

My financial adviser suggested doing this to help pay for travel without digging into my “emergency savings.” Plus if I know my money is directly going to fund my next trip, it gets me more excited to stay in if I know I could fly somewhere new in the next couple of months. I’m using Ally and I opened a high-yielding savings account to help accrue more interest. I’m looking forward to seeing this account grow and which trips I can personally fund out of this account.

Make all minimum payments on credit card debt

Before, I was throwing as much money as I possibly could pay my credit card debt which led to me draining my checking account too easily. Instead, I will be putting 15-20 dollars from each paycheck to my credit card. I narrowed down my credit card debt to around $100 which means I’m so close to paying it off.

Put anywhere between 10 – 20% in the emergency savings

I tried putting 20% of my paychecks in savings and find that’s not working with all of my bills I have to pay + having some discretionary funds to buy comics/books, go shopping, or go out to eat. I’m playing around with how much to put in my savings so that I still have some leftover fun money as well.

Create a Budget

I used Microsoft Excel to lay out all my bills for each month. This keeps me organized and helped me cut some expenses I didn’t need. For example, I dropped off some of the virtual coaching I had been doing so this left me with an extra $80 a month. I also forgot about some of the extra random bills like car tabs once a year and my Xbox Live yearly subscription. This budget has helped me immensely into becoming organized with my paychecks.

I’m always looking for ways to save money and be financially smarter. So leave a comment below if you have any other tips/tricks with money.

Happy Easter! Easter has never been a big holiday in my family, so me and the boyfriend decided to drive to Milwaukee to spend this holiday with his family. It’s nice to get out of my regular routine every now and then. Spring is right around the corner hopefully, though when I look outside I still see brown grass with dirty snow piles everywhere. Let’s recap the month of March:

Increase my Roth IRA deposit from $50 to $100 FAIL *ish* 

Last month I made an appointment to meet with a financial adviser from Thrivent about my finances and spending. I learned a lot about how to save for my future. Instead of bumping my Roth IRA, I’m more focused on having more money in my emergency savings. My adviser calculated I was $1000 short of what I should have in that account… yikes. I chose to keep my Roth IRA at $50 a month until I reach my savings goal. If you have never made an appointment to meet with a financial adviser, I highly recommend it.

Move at least $100 from each paycheck to Savings PASS 

I also moved my federal refund from my taxes into my savings as well. Saving money has never been difficult for me.

Watch Season #2 of Jessica Jones PASS 

I even wrote my review under my Bizarre Brunette Binges section, check it out if you haven’t already: Jessica Jones Review

Catch up on my Comics Pile PASS 

I finished Moonstruck Issues #3 – #5. I still have Saga and Paper Girls to read, but I did read a lot more comics this month.

Finish Lego Marvel Superheroes 100% PASS 

I unlocked all the achievements besides the 100% achievement. I know what you’re thinking, technically I didn’t meet my goal, right? I realize there are many video games out there for me to play, there’s not enough time to 100% every single game. I collected all the achievements I wanted to, but now I’m playing Uncharted Drake’s Fortune. 

My goals for the month of April:

Plan out my Boston Trip with family.

In May, me and my family are driving out to Boston! I’m pumped about it because I love road trips and I haven’t been to the East Coast before. We haven’t really planned a whole lot of it yet.

Create a Travel Savings account

This has been on my mind for a while, but I want to create a new savings account specifically for travel. I don’t want to dip into my emergency savings to pay for something extra. I’m thinking of going to Ally because they have higher-yielding savings accounts versus other typical banks.

Finish Uncharted Drake’s Fortune & Start Uncharted #2 Among Thieves

A couple months ago I bought the three games remastered on one disc. When I bought my PS4 back in November, I knew I wanted to play The Last of Us & Uncharted because they were huge titles on the play station.

Visit One Brewery I Have Never Been To Before

I don’t drink often, but if I do it’s usually a beer at a brewery. Breweries are chill places to have a pint and a genuine conversation with friends. Minneapolis / St. Paul has way too many breweries to count, but I want to visit one I haven’t been to before.