Monthly Wrap-Up: Feb 2015

February just went by in a blur. Have you noticed the lack of weekly goals post? Well, I got detracted once falling off the bandwagon of posting it weekly. Need to do better in this so the next 10 months won't go by without anything done. However as I've noted in the previous post, a few personal crises had crept up on my plate, and I found myself having poor sleep, cannot eat / no mood to eat, and generally feel immobilized due to weakness. There were times I would just sit and cry. My focus in March is on my relationship and family first. Nothing. else. comes. first. Period.

On travel-related matters, I've just realized the miles I've accumulated so far, is enough to redeem a round-trip ticket to Japan. This excludes the oil & fuel surcharge, various tax and airport taxes that I have to pay should I go, which can be often be ridiculous when they add up to about half the price of the ticket if I'd normally buy on its own! Nevertheless, free is free, as I have no plans to use the miles at the moment, I'll just let them sit for a while. Although some of it will expire in mid 2016. My original target might sound ambitious - but I was aiming for a 3x amount of miles before I redeem it - enough for a trip to Netherlands or Germany or something. But the credit card which I use to earn miles is basically earning peanuts when it comes to miles. I used to earn quite a bit of extra miles when I do my shopping via this card with a tracking website, but since I've cut the amount of shopping lately, a little bit of hacking (possibly switching to a higher tier of the card membership, dining at certain places to earn optimum miles), needs to be figured out. 

I've bought a plane ticket for April's trip and just got the hotel sorted out. It was a pain to select where to stay every time, it really is. I'm a no-fuss person and can happily sleep anywhere except on the street, but not everyone is, and I truly understand that. Crossing my fingers that the eating and getting around will be cheaper at the destination, no shopping will be involved. Even the tickets and hotel has been booked, I"m not sure if we're still going on this trip as I said, the personal crisis is major this time. 

On the extra income side, I achieved my monthly goal, am grateful for that. Also worth punching myself noting is, I need to get the blog sale up soon, the clutter is sitting around for too long. This, should be high on my list once the crises has been resolved.

Diet / healthy eating goal:

My diet has been a havoc in February, unstable schedules (both me and my mom) which means that while meal times are stable, the food I had was sometimes junk, sometimes home-cooked, sometimes eating out. This should raise grave concerns for my belly which seems to be getting more obvious. 

DB and I bought a cheese fondue pack to eat in the other night and it was a complete fail - the pack being too salty for my taste, and too alcoholic for his taste. Added to the pack we had processed food (smoked salmon and parma ham) which were way too salty for my taste. (I don't like parma ham to begin with, please don't hate me!) So the dinner was like salt on salt on salt. That's what I hate about buying processed food because I can't control what goes in there. DB suggested we DIY the cheese fondue sauce next time - we'll surely get around to do that as he loves his cheese! This will depend on whether the crisis will be resolved.

Exercise goal - absolutely zero. Again, this will be high on the list once the crises resolved.

Savings rate - dipped from 45% last month to 36% in February. This has to do with the travel expenses I made. Possibly something else, not in the mood to go through the tiny bits now as I'm near a major breakdown.

In other news, the doctor I pay regular visit to, has risen the fees. This is crap news and I hope I'll be getting better and visit the doctor less often, but for the near future I still need to pay regular visits to there. No way of getting around with it since I am sticking to this doc for now.

Hope March will be a better month!