Before I dive into this week's article, I want to share a celebration with all of you. Monarch Strategies LLC, my consulting firm, turned 2 on February 4!
Now, on with this week's newsletter which is a summary of the January monthly theme and a look forward at the monthly theme for February!
A Year of Manifesting Wellness
In the first newsletter of each month, I'll be doing a review of the previous month's theme and looking ahead to next month's theme. And, surprise, I'm changing the theme for February!
January Wrap up
January's theme was finances and I have to say, I did a great job with that theme. First, let's recap my goals for the month.
YNAB & Plan and Start Writing Financial Content
You Need a Budget is a budgeting and financial tracking software package. I'm a certified coach for YNAB. My goals were to do some brainstorming on how I could really launch certified coaching as a part of my business and to get myself back into a daily logging habit with YNAB. I also wanted to start writing financial content. I was pretty successful with both although my YNAB setup now involves three budgets - personal, business, and shared home budget. I'm logging at least one a day but haven't quite gotten into a rhythm of logging all three each day. I also launched an article series on Medium and in my Community around getting started with YNAB which has links to booking coaching with me. I've been pleased with interest generated from Medium before so we'll see if that holds true with this.
Audit Myself
I did a personal financial audit by going back through all of my bank statements and credit card statements for the year. As often happens, some subscriptions had crept in that I wasn't using. There were also some annual renewals coming up that I decided not to renew for tools I'm using, but not enough to get the value of the renewal out of them. Overall, I'm going to avoid about $150 a month in expenses if I equated everything I canceled to a monthly expense (which is how I budget for them in YNAB). I also used the rewards on my business card and was able to pay myself about $230 in rewards! Not bad for about 4 hours work over a couple of days.
Money Manifesto & Financial Date Images
I also created a couple of simple images that I will release at some point during my financial fitness article series, but I thought I'd share them with you first.
This line from my reread of The Happiness Project inspired me to create my money manifesto. Gretchen Rubin, the author, was telling a story about a man who wanted to learn to play tennis and bought an expensive tennis racket - which then sat for months. She said, "He should have concentrated on fixing his calendar, not on finding the right racquet." I know the same is true if I am going to start swimming again - something I love to do but haven't been able to enjoy for years. Now, post hysterectomy, I can enjoy it again. But, to enjoy it, I will have to make time for it. I'm medically cleared but the schedule with radiation is just going to be too challenging so instead of diving all the way into this now and taking on the costs, I'm waiting until May or June when my treatment is over and my body is coming back to itself.
I also had a good financial date with myself both for the business and personally. Gayle and I have a process of paying bills on the last weekend of the month together which counts as a financial date and this early on in the joint home ownership process we've only just started to save a little bit towards bigger projects so it's not really worth it to discuss big purchases at the moment.
Here are the images if you're interested.
What's on the docket for February
As a review, here are all my planned monthly themes:
January - Finances
February - Friends
March - Energy
April - Outer Order ← Tax time is always a good time to get things in order
May - Play ← Cancer treatment should be OVER!!
June - Body & Spirit ← My body has been through a lot. Time to give it some focus.
July - Family ← I’m headed out on vacation with the family at the end of the month
August - Health ← This is the normal time I do my “project health” month
September - Work ← Labor Day is a nice reminder to focus on work
October - Celebration ← I’ve got a big birthday this month
November - Awe and Wonder
December - Onward
As I reflected in my monthly review, January was rough. The grey winter weather didn't help at all. As a result, I've decided to switch some things up for February and combine Friends with Family in July and separate Body and Spirit from June and look at Spirit in February. So, here is the revised list going forward.
January - Finances
February - Spirit
March - Energy
April - Outer Order ← Tax time is always a good time to get things in order
May - Play ← Cancer treatment should be OVER!!
June - Body ← My body has been through a lot. Time to give it some focus.
July - Family & Friends ← I’m headed out on vacation with the family at the end of the month
August - Health ← This is the normal time I do my “project health” month
September - Work ← Labor Day is a nice reminder to focus on work
October - Celebration ← I’ve got a big birthday this month
November - Awe and Wonder
December - Onward
What's Planned for February?
Since I was racking my brain for how I was going to work on friendships, I'm a little behind planning this month and haven't started on anything specific. However, I just finished a book called NeuroWisdom which was excellent. I think I'll take a hint from that book and begin a daily one minute meditation practice (perhaps longer, but at least one minute). I've also been contemplating a writing series on faith and what it means to me so I may take that on. You'll have to tune back in at the beginning of March to see how it all worked out.
Some Things You Might Find Interesting
What I published: I had a good publishing groove going this past week and have articles and essays planned for the coming week. Here is a look at what I published this past week:
Keep Up With My Cancer Journey: I published my post on Chemo Cycle 3 this week. Cycle 4 starts this Wednesday. If you’d like to follow along in more detail on this journey, you can request access to my Cancer Journey website at https://www.mylifeline.org/invitation/Monroe4702670/c4d9a0945939697870a9267ec2cd951230b25b0e9f023ca466233659967b5e46
Building Outside the Lines: On Sunday afternoons, you’ll find Gayle and I watching home shows and doing catch up from weekly favorites. One of the newest favorites is Building Outside the Lines which is on the Magnolia Network. The father-daughter dynamic between Cappie and Alex is the reason we watch but the builds are fun too. We watch Magnolia on YouTube TV or you can find it on Max.
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