2012 in Review

 I hope everyone had a great Christmas, we definitely did. We've both had a nice long vacation and were able to travel to Missouri to visit our families. I just wanted to take a minute and kind of reflect on what's happened in the past year and make mention of our goals for the upcoming year. So pretty much what everyone does on December 31st :)  

 Personally we've had a pretty eventful year. In April we got married, combined finances, and started learning how to live together. I'm not really a mushy person but I have to say I can't imagine what my life would be like without the mister. I'm so blessed to have married my absolute best friend who understands me and makes my heart turn to mush. Okay that's enough of that. Moving on!

  I started a new job in July and Phillip transferred departments last month. We both really enjoy our new positions. I don't have nearly as much stress as I did before, I mean I'm not worrying about someone dying while we're out on an outing or running away from me while we're shopping at Target. I do miss some of the people I worked with but I'm able to leave work at work and not worry about it while I'm at home. Phillip is now doing Web Development, so he's able to be a nerd for 8 hours/day and doesn't have to take phone calls from people who have let their loans go into delinquency and yell at him because they "don't have the money" even when they have an income that's higher than ours. His stress level has dropped a lot too. 

  Around July we got pretty intense on paying our student loans back and sticking with a budget. We have deviated from that a little bit in November and December with Christmas shopping and such but we paid everything in cash. This morning I got a little curious so I added up everything we've paid on our Student Loans this year.

Sallie Mae - $8,379.63

Chase - $1,709.90

Fedloan - $3,596.49

WellsFargo - $3,115.51

Total - $16,801.53!

  Considering half of that has been paid since September/October I think that's pretty darn awesome! 

  We haven't completely finished up our 2013 Resolutions but we are going to go back to a pretty tight budget and see how much we can knock off of our student loans next year. We're also going to switch back to eating a whole foods diet as much as possible, we've gotten pretty lax in this area as well. My personal goal is to try to like vegetables. Because essentially I'm this kid: 

source

   I did eat some celery the other day. So that's a start right? 

  That's enough rambling for today, time to start getting ready for our New Years Eve festivities. Happy New Year!!!