Fabulous Financials & Fitness

This is a question people ask me at least 3x per week.  In response, I’ve written, deleted, re-written, edited, changed my mind, deleted, and re-written this post several times in the past several weeks. This time, I’m going to roll with it, but I’ll try to keep it short.

Fabulous Financials is my online home and I miss it. But…I don’t miss blogging about personal finance every single day.  However, I love blogging and I love my readers, so I’ve been thinking about returning to the blogosphere with a different focus.

If you follow me on Twitter, you already know what I’ve been up to lately.  For those who don’t, I’ve committed to a permanent lifestyle change of health & fitness. Here’s my vision board for 2010.

As you can see, health & fitness is front and center in my life right now.  And you already know, when I set my mind to something, I live and breathe my goals and tackle them with unyielding determination.  Since the week of December 20th, I have made the following improvements:

• From thinking of food as comfort and convenience –> To thinking of food as merely fuel for my body.
• From drinking zero water –> To drinking at least 24-32 oz every day.
• From dining out 4-5x per week –> To creating weekly meal plans and preparing healthy meals at home at least 5x per week.
• From skipping breakfast and gorging on junk for lunch and dinner –> To eating 3 balanced meals per day followed by 3 healthy snacks.
• From reaching for a candy bar –> To reaching for a piece of fruit.
• From a sedentary lifestyle –> To exercising a minimum of 3x per week with other “fun” physical activities in between.
• From walking and being winded after 10 minutes –> To run/walk intervals for a minimum of 30 minutes at 4 mph on a 1% incline.  I’m about to begin Week 5 of the C25K running plan.  If all goes well and God is willing, I hope to run my first 5k later this year.
• And last, but not least, an 11.2 lb weight loss…and counting.

I still have a burning passion for personal finance.  It is a part of who I am and that will never change.  My financial goal is still to save and invest $47,500 this year.  But as I told my tweeps a few weeks ago, my new LIFETIME GOAL is to be Healthy & Wealthy.

I will return to blogging if you will join me on this new journey. What say you?  Free free to leave a comment below and/or respond to the embedded poll:

I rec’d a few emails and DMs from my FABULOUS readers because they heard about the metro crash in DC yesterday. I just wanted to do a mass response to let you all know that I’m here and I’m fine. Fortunately, I rarely ride the metro but I do hop on/off occasionally – primarily on the yellow or orange line, which is the opposite end of where the accident took place. My heart goes out to the victims and families of all involved.

And thank YOU so much for your concern, makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. :-)

I absolutely LOVE this time of year.  The lights, tree, Christmas cards, Christmas carols, holiday parties…ahem, my birthday…shopping, gift giving, family, friends, food, volunteering, donating to my favorite charities – the whole shebang!  I can’t get enough of it.  I’m probably one of those people who you wish would just shut up about Christmas already.  LOL!  And if you are, it’s too bad ‘cuz I won’t.  Ha!  I love Christmas so much, I’m going to spread my holiday joy onto the blog with a holiday theme. LOL!

Well, at least until January 1st. ;-)

Happy Holidays!

[get the above pictured Santa Sack for $2.99 (reg $24.99) at eToys]

Today is a very special day at Fabulous Financials. Want to know why?  I’ll give you a hint:

Here’s a summary of my 1st blogoversary.

Here’s a summary of my 2nd blogoversary.

…and today makes year three.

Yep.  It’s my blogoversary!  Today, 18 December 2008, Fabulous Financials is 3 years old!  Yay!!  Now I have to do the obligatory recap of my blogging year:

In mid-December, Mr. EC and I went on our first official date.  It’s been an interesting year and that’s all I’m going to say about that. LOL

At the end of December, Fabulous Financials’ readers completed the Debt Payoff Incentive challenge.  Of the 27 participants, I selected 4 winners for various prizes.  The 1st place winner paid off over $13k of debt and he chose the prize to have me as his personal finance coach for 3 months.  I stuck it out with him until he was completely debt free – over $25,000!  When the day finally arrived, I felt like his success was my success.  It was a proud moment indeed.  Occasionally, we keep in touch.  Last I heard, he’s still doing a fabulous job.  Hey Chris! *waving*

In January, Single Ma said goodbye to Blogger and purchased a private domain name.  That is when http://fabulousfinancials.com was born.  In January, the new home was opened to readers.

In February, BabyGirl landed her first real job, all by herself and no assistance from mom at all.  She also learned two very important money lessons this year – one about debt and the other about tracking expenses.  Hopefully, they will stick.

In April, I quit my job after only 1 year.  And boy, what a relief!  That was THE WORST supervisor I’ve ever had.  About a month later, I started a new job and I’m content…for now.

Shortly thereafter, I went through a very difficult period.  I felt like the cards were stacked against me and the stars were misaligned or something.  Everything was stressing me out – BabyGirl, work, Mr. EC, life, just everything.  It was so bad, I sent BabyGirl away for the entire summer and everything important to me was placed in a holding pattern.

During the summer, I vacationed in Hawaii and Vegas.  They were just what the doctor ordered.  When I returned, I felt like a new woman.

But the bad luck wasn’t finished with me yet.  At the end of the summer, I survived my first year of being a landlord.  After the horrendous move out inspection, I was angry and discouraged.  Somehow, I found the courage to try it again.

And did I tell you about my self imposed shopping strike?  How about the second one this year?  I’m barely surviving though.  I know one thing, I’ll never do that crap again! LOL

By October, I reviewed the progress on my 2008 financial goals.  Everything was going smooth, except one thing.  But I quickly fixed the problem when I opened my first Vanguard account.  This is my non-retirement investment account of choice and I will invest at least $3k into an ETF or mutual fund at least once per year.

Of everything I’ve accomplished this year, the most proud moment was taking my BabyGirl with me to the polls and casting my vote for the 44th President of the United States.  I’m still in awe.

Oh, and before I forget…actual blogging stats:

According to Google Analytics, the most popular posts this year were the following series:

• How to Maintain Fabulous Financials
• The Professional Woman

A very close runner up was 10 Phases on the Journey to Financial Freedom.  I’m glad you enjoyed the posts.  I’ll try to write more posts similar to those in the future.

The two PF bloggers who have sent the most traffic my way are Madame X at My Open Wallet and Boston Gal at Boston Gal’s Open Wallet.  Thanks ladies!

Fabulous Financials has had over 500,000 visitors and over 1 million page views to date.  I did a huge survey to gather information about who reads Fabulous Financials and the results were very helpful.  I review them from time to time and try to tailor my non-Single Ma PF posts to fit the demographics because this blog would not be what it is today without you – my fabulous readers.  So I thank you, thank you, thank you!

Now if you haven’t already, please subscribe to my blog to follow the rest of my journey.  Here’s to Year 4 and more fabulous financials!

A few weeks (or maybe even months) ago, I was tinkering around with something that I shouldn’t have.  Nothing happened so I forgot about it.  Yesterday, I received an email from Feedburner telling me that my feed bad been “moved” per my request.  Huh?  Then today, I noticed over 1/2 of my subscribers are gone.  Sheesh! Not sure what I did.  No idea how to fix it.  And unfortunately, no time to figure it out.  So I’ll just say: I apologize for the inconvenience.

If you’d like to subscribe to my blog or RE-subscribe to my blog, please use the New Feed Address.  For those who prefer to copy and paste, it is:

http://feedproxy.google.com/SingleMasFabulousFinancials

Or subscribe via email here: email subscription

Again, I apologize for the inconvenience.  No more tinkering for me!