Friday Celebration Post -the first!

[jamethiel]

I start early because I am early! It's the end of the week! Let Joy and Celebration be unconfined!

Come and tell me--what progress have you made towards your goals this week? Finances OR frugal living, or even buying something that you've saved up towards!

Comments

[inkstone]

My uncle dropped off my tax returns. (He does them for me every year.) I reviewed them, filled out the missing information and mailed them off. I'm due a very decent refund this year (largely due to the fact that I bought a townhouse last year & was a first time homebuyer) so that'll be something nice to replenish my bank account.

My kitchen renovation started this week. And while this does involve spending money (a good amount too since I pretty much gutted everything except for the floor!), I feel satisfied because I set a target budget when I first started planning & canvassing back in late January and pretty much hit it.

I spent many years saving up to buy a place of my own so it feels very good to see that goal not really reach fruition but to have my own personal vision of what a place of my own should look and feel like become reality. So for all the people saving up money for mortgage down payments and the like, be strong and keep your head down. I promise you it will feel very, very good.

[jamethiel]

Wow, that's fantastic. As of now I have... $243 in my home deposit fund. But given that I didn't have ANYTHING a couple of months ago, it's progress.

It's so hard to make progress on really big things. They just get overwhelming. Would you consider doing a post on how to keep your motivation when you've got a long way to go?

[inkstone]

I'll see if I can come up with something! I think I'm a frugal person by nature and was greatly advantaged by the fact that my parents taught me the dangers of credit cards at an early age so I never fell into that trap (and I can easily see how people could considering how hard credit cards were pushed during my first year of college on campus!) and graduated from college with no student loans to pay off, so my advice might not be useful to everyone but I'll see what I can pull together.

[inkstone]

*only, not really. Good grief, that completely changes the meaning of the sentence!

[holyschist]

That's so exciting! Kitchens are such an important part of a house, and I bet it will be amazing to have your perfect kitchen.

[inkstone]

I didn't really change much because I really liked my kitchen's layout -- it's what made me fall in love with the townhouse in the first place. It gets lots of natural light. It has a bay window. It has an enormous breakfast nook. But it was just old and outdated and there was quite a bit of dead, wasted space. The basic layout's still the same, just that some things have been shifted to give me more countertop and cabinet space. The kitchen area itself is small but it's very functional and maintains that lovely cooking triangle that's so often forgotten about these days! (Even my parents' kitchen, in a house built in the early 90s, doesn't have the cooking triangle and it's so inconvenient to walk around an island to get from the fridge to the sink!)

[holyschist]

A lot of kitchens don't seem to be very well-suited for regular use; it's unfortunate.

Natural light! I long for natural light in a kitchen.