Fly the plan

The new year is here, and I've looked forward to it. We had a nice long weekend, and New Year's Day brought the traditional lunch: collard greens, black-eyed peas, corn, pinto beans, stewed tomatoes and cornbread. Tradition has it you always make sure to eat a lot of collard greens on New Year's Day in hopes of bringing wealth in the new year, and I made sure to eat as much as I could. It was all good. And we spent time breaking in the new television we bought as a joint Christmas gift (since I'm the first to admit I'm difficult to buy for, I gave hubby my blessing to put what he'd spend on me into something for us both. And he chose wisely, selecting a television that should keep us happy for a long time).

Now the new year is officially going. I'm officially on my new budget plan. It may sound odd to say this, but given what it should let me do once I'm finished, I'm excited about it. The first elements of it clicked into place last week, and things are right where I want them. Everything I need to do has been budgeted, and everything is accounted for. Sure, there will be travel in the coming year, but it'll be on award tickets. I've accumulated a lot of mileage the last three years. Why sit on it? If I bought the ticket to Anchorage outright, it would be at least $1100. Or I could redeem mileage and get it for $10. No contest. I don't have the points for all my hotel stays, but I'm putting the cost of those stays into my budget, and they'll thus be paid for.

There'll be some things I'll do without in the coming months; on the other hand, there's a lot of stuff I have that I've never really given time to appreciating. There's a ton of books I've bought but haven't given myself time to enjoy, for example. The next year or two will be about savoring what I have. I plan, for instance, to designate a dozen books in my collection I want to have read by this time next year, and designate a dozen kits in the stash to have built by this time next year. And I plan to have fun with it all, choosing books I'll be excited to read and kits I've really wanted to build but put off for silly reasons. It's going to be great.

The hard part is done. I've figured out my destination and created the plan. Now I just have to fly the plan. (Best of all, the math is done. I never got along with math, so having that done is a hill climbed in itself.) I can do this, and I shall.