This month has been a very productive month for me. I never thought that I can still stick to my ideal routine despite of doing it alone. Now I conclude that being consistent for six months will definitely give you a guaranteed changes in your life.
For this month, let’s take a quick recap of the things that I failed to do last June:
And again, this goal is still on halt due to the lockdown that was imposed by our company. Now, I’ll slowly work on every Friday to continue this plan so I can hopefully start blogging about it.
To give you a glimpse of my daily routine, here’s an illustration of my weekly schedule which I strictly follow:
By doing this schedule, it helped me to manage my time well and to finish whatever task I have. It serves as a guide for me to have a well balance day for my work and for myself. I also realized after doing this ideal routine, that the only one who can stop you to decide for a change is you. If you really wanted to pursue something, you need to work hard and put your heart to it. Don’t let stay as a plan but make it happen.
Now let’s see the status of my goals and if I were able to anything from this month.
My 2021 Financial Goals
For the month of July, I had a lot of expenses and it’s due to the onetime payment for my insurance/investment, family needs and my own expenses due to the lift of the lockdown. Almost 16.6% of my salary went to my expenses and the rest went to my insurance/investment savings. Gladly we received a bonus which help me to compensate the amount I put for my insurance/investment account.
Since I already settled the amount for my two savings plan this year, I can now focus on building more of my emergency fund and my passive income fund. Hopefully I’ll stick to my current expenses so that I’ll accomplish my target funds for this year.
For this fund, I had already transferred a good for one year payment for my insurance this month. The amount I transferred can be pay up to November 2022 (16 months) which can help me to focus on my other savings fund.
To come up with that amount is really hard knowing that I have a tight budget this year due to my planned passive income source which is house rental. Thankfully I was able to secure the amount by saving for seven months and by spending a maximum 3,000PHP only per month!
Now, all I need to do is by the start of next year, I need to secure another one-year payment so that I can be at ease that my insurance/investment savings will be safe if any challenges may arrive.
Here’s the detailed savings I did for seven months to accomplish this year target amount for this fund.
I had read in one blog, that if you ever want to achieve something, you need to have a detailed plan on how you’ll be able to have it, things that you need to do and a time line for it. In short, you need to be more SPECIFIC. Upon realizing that, I started to make a detailed plan for my target business which is house rental.
Here are the things that I planned that helped me to be more motivated in achieving this goal:
I started to print some house interior and exterior designs and layout, make a target house rental numbers and the income purpose of each, a timeline for me to purchase, and many more other things that necessary to achieve this goal. By doing this, I felt like I’m only a few steps away from this goal. Even though I’m not even on its halfway, a part of me became more eager to achieve this dream of mine.
Even it will take time, I am very excited to make all this plan happen.
I WILL MAKE IT HAPPEN!
Due to the sudden expenses needed by my family and the one-time payment for my two savings fund which are the joint account and insurance/investment, I used up all of my emergency fund amount. It was really sad to know that there’s nothing left more, but I just think that at least my savings funds are all secured and up to date.
Now, since I already settled the two savings funds, I can now start to focus again for this savings. Now I already planned to stick on my budget for me to achieve my target amount which is P60,000. I still have 5 more months to achieve it and I think that I’ll be able to do it.
As of now, the amount in my local bank account is entirely for my business fund. Since I used up all my emergency fund, I need to work on it in this last five months of the year to settle all of my funds. This is only possible if I’ll stick to my budget and to lessen my expenses.
In this table you can see the summary of amounts I save and spent for the month of July. As of this month, I can say that my savings are all doing well and my emergency fund helped me to make it possible.
One of the things that I’m very proud of starting this year is my own selfcare goals. I’m so grateful that I find more time for myself and make sure to take care of my physical, mental, spiritual and emotional needs.
It was a large step for me to change how I prioritize things and gladly the results are amazing. Everything went ok as soon as I shifted into this new mindset. By doing that, I also started to influence people around me to take care of their own selves, they started to do some home workout, have their own journal and many more other things.
One thing that also make me feel happy is when I succeeded adding on my selfcare routine the things I planned last June. These are the current progress of each:
By starting this, I felt so complete as I the week. I feel like all my worries and fear vanished and it was change into excitement on whatever things that I’ll be facing every day. I feel less regretful and more grateful on how I see things. I also became more motivated to reach my goals and see to it that I’m having progress every single day. As of now, I’m currently doing two Novena that I prayed every Wednesday and Friday. They are the following:
Friday Prayer: Efficacious Novena for the Sacred heart of Jesus (Until October)
Wednesday Prayer: Novena for Mother of Perpetual Help (9 Consecutive Days)
How I hope that younger generation will also start shifting their minds into praying. Rather than worrying about what kind of future awaits for them, praying will give them the peace of mind that they need.
I can’t really get away from digital things knowing that it requires for my job. But one thing I did for me to effectively lessen my time in social media, is to leave my mobile phones in my room as soon as I reached home.
My usual routine as soon as I reached home from work, is to leave my things in my room and start my home workout routine. As I finished my 30-40 minutes workout, I’ll prepare for my dinner and interact with my flat mates. It will be around 8:00 pm that I’ll be able to finish my dinner and I’ll start my night time skincare routine. By doing that, it will only give me about an hour and a half maximum to browse on my phone before I sleep (10:00 pm).
One thing that I realized upon doing this, the best wat for you to have your digital detox is to inhibit yourself on checking your phone as soon as you reached home. You need to engage first on the things that you must do so that you can ensure that you finish all you task for the day. It’s proven effective since that’s what I do.
Since I failed last month in this plan, I make sure that I won’t fail again in this month. Now what I did is I strictly need to consume fruits/vegetables every single day. Whether its apples, bananas, avocado, any fruits will do as long as I’ll take it every day. What I need to do is to stick to it so that I can be consistent on this goal.
Negativity will always be there in any conversation, what you can just do is to prevent yourself to absorb it. And that’s what I did. Rather than taking it by heart, listening and letting it all go is the best way for you not to be affected.
The thing is, you cannot just simply avoid it since wherever you go, it will always be there. So, you just need to be strong enough not to be affected and see to it that you won’t engage to it especially if it involves someone.
“Let them do the talking and everything. Just listen.”
This month I started my new Pinterest account. This is because I forgot the password of my previous account which already reached 100+ followers. It was sad but I need to let it go and start a new one so that I can ensure its future engagements. Even though I need to start again, I find it very interesting to have my own personalized pins. Now, I’m in the process of making pins that will redirect to my website and Instagram account.
As of July 18, I reached a 88 total monthly views for my Pinterest account. I will continue to update all social media accounts so I can be consistent on this weekly target.
Now let’s go back to my personal goals progress.
As of July 2021, I’d officially finished the whole nine modules of Diploma in Events Management in Alison (Online Certification). So up to this day, here are the certifications I gained:
Since I already finish one diploma course, I planned to worked on Micros Training (Hotel Operation-Reservation) during my off. This is for me to be equipped in basic software for hotel operations.
As of now I was able to finish one module which is,
I’ll slowly worked on the rest during my off so I will be consistent in gaining credentials as I ready myself to my target position.
For this month of July, I officially finished the 28 days HIIT challenge (growingananas), and started the hip dips and more HIIT/ cardio workouts. For your reference, here’s the schedule I did last July and the one I did for the month of August.
For this month of August , I planned to do this work out plan:
Unlike last month, I planned to finish the 28 days HIIT harder challenge and focus on Hip Dips workout.
Actually, I was really into to HIIT Exercise that’s why I wanted to focus on that, but since my flat mates requested for us to do Zumba, I put it on our weekly routine three times per week. Sadly, they just joined one time and I don’t what happened next. I just found myself doing it alone again. Anyway, I gave up asking them to workout with me and it and just continued doing my initial workout plan alone.
Here’s the 28 days Hiit Harder Challenge that I did for this month.
28 Days HIIT it Hard Challenge- Growingannanas
As of now, I incorporate my usual HIIT exercise with hip dips and arm workouts. I still stick to 30-40 minutes routine which I’d been doing since last March. Now here’s the current progress of my workout.
1st Workout Plan (Hard Exercise)
2nd Workout Plan (Soft Exercise)
By doing workout consistently, I became more confident in myself. I found an outlet of stress and increase my self-esteem. Now I believe that doing something consistently for six months will give you big progress, but you just need to be disciplined enough to stick to your plan.
I also feel happy since when I started uploading my workout journey in my social media accounts, I noticed that some of my friends started to do their own home workouts as well. I feel so proud and happy for them that they found an inspiration to do something for their selves. I will continue to inspire more and motivate people around me to make their goals possible.
Since I already reached my target weight which is 47 kg, I did some changes in my meal plan last July which I planned to continue on August.
Below is my meal plan for the first four months:
Below is my updated meal plan in this coming month:
Since I reached my target weight already, I just wanted to maintain it and focus on developing my muscles. I’ll keep a record of my measurements as I do arm and hip dips workout this month so I’ll be able to know if it’s effective enough.
Since we’re allowed to go out now, I can finally start my travel plan for this year. The catch is, I need to make sure that I’ll stick to my budget so that my savings won’t be affected. I also planned to buy a camera so that I can put quality pictures for my travel blog. I feel so excited because this will be my first expensive purchase but I know that it will be worth it.
Hopefully I can start blogging about beautiful places here in Qatar and who knows, maybe in a long run, I can also be a digital nomad! Kidding aside, it’s just my dream to travel around the world and maybe I can be like that if I’ll start to do it now.
As I started to do target exercise, I’m really looking forward that I’ll have a progress especially on the places that I badly need to work out. The month of July and August will be an indicator if the workout will be effective. So let’s see on the next month what will be my weight and measurement after doing target exercise.
This is my current weight and measurement details at the end of July:
I’ll keep doing a tracker of my weight and measurement results every month so I can easily see my progress.
This month has been a very productive month for my social media accounts especially Pinterest. I made a new Pinterest account since I can’t retrieve the one that I used to have. Actually, it is still active but its just that I forgot the password I used so I was left with no choice but to make another account.
My Instagram reels & feed is currently doing right now and I think that updating consistently helped me to draw more visitors in my account. For my Facebook account, as of now the only post there are the shared one from my blogs. I’ll slowly work on posting my activities as soon as I get my new camera!
For the month of July, I succeeded on posting a total of seven blogs which reached my monthly target. You can check the blogs I made for this month below:
June Goals Review- Life Journey
Once your end is set- Unspoken Poetry
My Mid-Year Changes and Goals Review– Life Journey
Is it Possible to Get a Life Insurance w/ a P20,000 Salary? – Live to Inspire
Hiling– Unspoken Poetry
Ways to Get Rid of your busy Mindset– Live to Inspire
Taken for Granted- Unspoken Poetry
This month I started making my own illustrations for my blog. This is for the purpose of easily sharing it on my Pinterest account. It was really hard to every illustration and blogs alone but I still find it very enjoyable. I used the Canva application for my pictures, and I started publishing it directly to my new Pinterest account.
Although I just started, I can see that it helps me in marketing my website. This strategy is very effective and even it will take time for me gain more subscriptions, followers and viewers, it will still be worth it in the end.
The total followers that I have is 94 with 4,125 over all views from September 2020 to July 2021.
As of July 19, I had gained +14.5 % content interactions compared to the last 30 days. The total account that I reached is 6,226 and with +1% gained followers. Uploading reel, tagging the location and consistent upload helped me to gain this achievement. All I need to do is to be consistent on it so I can gain more for the next month.
My Facebook account has been one of my platforms in sharing my blogs. By doing that I was able to gain readers and extend my network. For this month, I loss followers compared to the last month which 1,208. Now I planned to post my activities this month of August so that it won’t be entirely blogs only.
As of July 19, the total followers I have is 1,203 with four uploaded posts from my blog.
I will also slowly build my page (livingherownlife) so that I can directly share there my blog post about Financial Management, Self-Care, travel, poetry and my own life story.
In this month, it was a tough decision to do a new account since I already gained followers from the previous one that I have. I was thinking that it will be riskier if I invest on it and won’t be able retrieve it in the end. Although I need to start again from the top, I still find it enjoyable to make my own pins and linked it to my other social media accounts.
As of July 31, I gained 329 viewers and 3 followers after a one month making it. I’m in the process of making my own pins which will redirect to the blogs I did in the past. I also made it more personalized so that it can attract more visitors in a long run. Now I can see the progress of it given the short period of time I made the account.
As I make more illustration for my blogs, I hope that it will give me a more positive result in making my website well known. Although it requires efforts, I feel excited to look forward on how it will affect my blogs.
Working employee wherein blogging became my side hobby.
Creator of Living Her Own Life which aims to touch people’s heart and inspire them to achieve their own goals in life.
Writing has been my passion for almost 15 years. Last 2020, I made my very own website where I can share all of my thoughts and stories in life.