Frugal February: Refocus

I realized today being the first day of February and it being a Sunday, there's no better time than laying out goals to be achieved in the coming month. Yesterday's post is a recap, today's post will help to refocus.

Financially speaking, I still aim to make an extra 2-3k from side hustling, so far I'm positive about achieving the 2k mark. Now if you add the pocket money which will be gained (notice I didn't use the word "earn") during Chinese New Year, it could well go over the 3k mark. I need to drag myself up to work on a few bits which had been sat on forever. Oh yes and the blog sale, I hope with the 3 public holidays in mid Feb should help me iron out a bit of the logistics. If the sale went live, the extra income will go to March :-) 

One of my financial goals for 2015 is to better manage my retirement fund, well where should I begin? I'm waiting to receive a quarterly summary (of my account) from the company that manages my retirement account, so that I could create an online account platform to manage the fund. Why wait for the summary to come you may ask? Well that's because I don't want to rustle through my papers in the shelf...it'll work out easier for me to use the info from the latest report they sent me than finding my papers at home. After the account is created, I'll take closer look to their quarterly performance reports of various funds, this is the part I dreaded, but it has to be done eventually.

Since February is a short month, I'd be hitting the jackpot (literally) if I manage 14 NSDs - aka half of the month I won't be fishing a penny from the wallet. I can't quite say whether it is too ambitious or not, since there are some scheduled events coming up (big family dinner post-CNY, meeting friend from overseas, friends' gathering, office lunches, office expenses, shipping gifts overseas), but here's to hoping! Contrary to traditional practices of stocking up pantry before CNY, I will be looking out for post-CNY sales, mostly food! Many of the shops will close on PH or worse, they open but will charge you more than what normally was, dining out during this period is akin to an extortion. I'll make sure we have enough variety of food during the holidays so it won't drive me crazy to eat the same things three days in a row. It's quite dreadful coming to think about how long the CNY stretches out to be: restaurants would start having "regular" price meals just weeks before the holiday actually is, and continue for a week after the actual holiday ended. Hence the food (and variety) we need to have ready at home needs to cover more than just the handful of days(!), if we want to stay frugal and sane.

Health-wise, I'd struck gold if I can manage to hit the park 4x within this month. Meanwhile I always try to walk a lot and walk far, to make up for times when I couldn't make to the park. I'll try to make sure to keep an early bedtime during the holidays though! Unfortunately, festive holidays also means a period of indulgence when it comes to food...the festive cakes, puddings and various delicacies. Will try sticking to whole foods as much as possible. On a personal care level, I've been keeping on with moisturizing in January but need to up the ante this month - so is conditioning my hair and masking! 

In other areas, I should probably get the book reading back on the bandwagon, and finish it ASAP. I don't have to make myself read if it's an interesting book - but it isn't, but it's a useful read. As far as the housekeeping / decluttering goals is concerned, if I can map out the basic logistics of the blog sale, that's part of the decluttering done already. The other decluttering work I foresee will be in March or April when the weather is really sucky (read: humid, foggy, cold, drizzle, grey skies, hazy) and I'd do anything to stay indoors. This, together with food supply (meals at home), shall be the key in March. Oops...got sidetracked! February I will be seeing an overseas friend and perhaps a group of friends, that's enough for my schedule already but if anyone wants to meet, I may consider that...or not. It'll depend on funds and time.

Before this gets too lengthy, I'll end it with weekly goals:

- schedule dental check up after CNY (remind DB about this since we attend appointments together)

- update the balance on passbook as well as the progress bar on the blog

- set up an auto-transfer for the paycheck in Feb to the "yearly replacements" account

- start small on a side hustle

- read 12 pages on the unfinished book

- top up transit pass $200

- be in bed by 2330
- get distilled water and blank masks

Hope February will treat you to a good start!