The New Year's Post That Never Was

Everywhere you go over the past few weeks people are touting New Year's Resolution, fresh start, get organized, new beginnings .... blah, blah, blah, blah. I'm not really much of a big new year resoluter. Every January I have to circle the parking lot at my gym to even find a parking spot. Smelly sweaty men crowd the room at my yoga studio. By next Monday the crowd will be thinning out and there will be plenty of parking spots and lots of room to spread out in the yoga studio.

I do, however, like the idea of a new fiscal year for my business because, to be honest, this year has to be more profitable than last!  I may not have any personal resolutions but I have definitely made resolutions for my business.


I resolve to:
Stop undervaluing my services
Outsource when appropriate
Travel less
Not work between the hours of 3pm and 8pm FOR REAL
Save all client files on BOTH external server so that I never lose another opportunity like I did while I was away over the holidays!

I had a phone meeting with my BOTH personal adviser last week. I've blogged and vlogged about BOTH over the past few months. BOTH is Back Of The House, a service designed for freelance/consultant types like myself. My personal adviser wanted to talk to me about closing out my 2008 books, getting things in order for tax time, and to help me set goals and budgets for 2010.

Set goals? Uh Oh.... what should my goals be? What should my budget be?

Our conversation on budget was interesting and made me realize that I'm in a very good situation. When I started back to work last year it wasn't for financial reasons. We've always budgeted tightly so that I could stay home with our kiddos.  Extra money would be fabulous but our basic needs are covered by hubby's income. My children are all in school now and I truly love what I do.

Yikes! When I step back and look at my business, I am working entirely too much for the limited funds that are coming in. I'm undercharging for my services. I'm undervaluing my work and it doesn't make sense to continue down this road.  It was hard for me to come to terms with this but my adviser was adamant that I needed to take a really good look at how I'm charging for my services and how much time I'm taking away from my family by working 24/7.

So, how do I budget?

Well, what do I want to do with my income? If our basic needs are covered by my husbands income then why not put the money into savings? Well then, how much do I want to save? What is my savings goal? This is how I decided on my budget. I determined the value of my time and the amount I wanted to earn for savings .... and there it was - I had a budget!

I have a financial budget and my goals for the year take this into consideration.  I'll share some of my goals with you in a future post!