I really dislike New Year's Resolutions. The goals are always too broad and mostly unattainable. They make you feel like you have to do it or else. And they sound too concrete and unchangeable.

Goals should be more specific. They should be broken up into little parts to make them attainable. They should be reviewed and tweaked throughout the year based on those "little things" that pop up in your life and totally ruin or improve your progress.

So I'm not working on my resolutions. Instead I'm taking the opportunity to work on improving and updating my on-going goals for a better life.

Do I want to be debt free? Of course I do! But I'm not going to do it this year. I'm also not going to fully fund my emergency fund. I don't want to make my goals too tough that I just give up, but I also don't want to make them too easy either. I want them to be reasonable.

So my on-going goal updates for 2008 are (and will be changed as needed to be able to meet and hopefully sometimes exceed my goals):

1) I would like to reduce my credit card balance at least in half. Last year I would have said I'd pay it all off, but I knew we were getting a large tax refund and DH was getting a pretty good bonus. For 2007 we tried to reduce how much was taken out of DH's checks so we are expecting a much lower refund (hopefully not much at all if we calculated right, but DH did change jobs and that may have messed it up a bit). Also we are not sure how much DH will get for a bonus this February since he just started in August. If the tax refund and DH's bonus are higher than I expect then I'll adjust the goal accordingly.

2) I would like to increase our online EF (savings #2) by another $1620. Again I hope for more and it probably will be with interest added in, but all I need is one emergency and that goal would be shot! I will adjust through the year if I see we can do more.

3) My last goal is also part of my 2008 Financial To-Do's list in my sidebar. I want to work on a menu plan and grocery list, which should at least help in the area of high grocery bills. We seem to spend between $250-$520 each month, but it varies usually staying around the $300-$400 range. I think a lot of it gets wasted and I can bring that amount down. I also think making a better menu/grocery plan will help cut down on dining out, though we don't really do that as much as we used to. So I'm going to try to work on some sort of plan for at least dinners to start with since that is when we are all home together and tend to have our "big meal".

Those are my on-going goals. I have other goals that are not financial that I've been working on as well. I've tweaked them here and there as needed, too. I think it's great to have goals and something to work on, but people put too much emphasis on only making broad ones at the beginning of each year, which end up only lasting for a couple of months.