The Mom Weekly Volume 73: December 31, 2024
You can read this, or any other previous Mom Weeklies, by going to the home page here.
What’s on Your 2025 Bingo Card?
The last few years, social media is rife with the meme or concept “well, that wasn’t on my bingo card for …..” this year or a certain time. For example, not on one’s bingo card: a pandemic, social distancing and shutdowns, a president dropping out of the race just before the election, swarms of drones flying over New Jersey.
Do you notice how it is almost always bad news that is (not) on the bingo card?
So I thought, wouldn’t it be fun to create a bingo card that includes only good items? And then, through the entire year, to try to cover the entire board by seeing that those good things could happen. All the items, of course, would be things mostly within one’s control—so, for instance, winning the lottery would not be an item.
We know the unexpected bad things are going to happen. No one has them on their bingo cards. When they do happen, we can rue that this didn’t seem very likely to happen. Who knew?
But good news, or accomplishments of one sort of another, can be a fun challenge.
An Alternative New Year’s Resolution List
I have mostly gotten away from the concept of new year’s resolutions. But years ago, I did what I found very satisfying new year’s resolution, and also attainable with a good bit of effort.
That year, I set a goal of running a half-marathon each month. They didn’t all have to be official “races,” but at least one run of 13.1 miles or more, each month. I started in January with the Naples Half-Marathon– I think I have run that race six time or more! I had a few other races sprinkled through the year, so I could easily do a training run of the amount. It took effort, but it was “doable.”
So this year, I’m going to go for the “bingo card” concept, in the hopes that I can enjoy getting to mark items, for the satisfaction of filling in the entire board, or at least most of it.
I’m going to include a blank bingo card as the image for this weekly, and you are welcome to print it out or download it and add your own items. (Also, in a timely design choice, the background color of the bingo card is Pantone’s color for 2025—mocha mousse.)
No one will be surprised to hear that many of my bingo card items are travel related, but I also have goals related to organizing, spending intentional time with friends, and volunteering.
Have fun with yours, and feel free to share your items, or your entire bingo card, with me!
Remember how much I love you,
Mom
Interesting/Notable:
You Don’t Have to be Injured to Benefit from Physical Therapy—NY Times (gift link)
NY Times Quiz—Do You Speak 2024?
I love quizzes like this. I didn’t do well, but probably better than other people in my age range.
An Action Item: Get Ready for Your Quarterly Net Worth Update
It’s not just the end of the year, it’s the end of the quarter!
Remember that at the end of each quarter, the action item is to update your net worth. December 31 is the end of Q4 (or the fourth and final quarter of 2024!).
Repeating my regular script:
This may take slightly longer this first time, if you have not done so. But I promise you, over time, you will be happy that you do this.
The reason I hesitated is that, especially for younger people, it could be pretty likely you have a negative net worth, largely because of student loans. But that’s will be so temporary (over the long haul!) that you should not be discouraged by it.
When people begin to track their net worth, they call it “getting back to zero” when they have a zero net worth. That may not seem promising, but it’s a great accomplishment for those who have paid off a significant amount of debt, whether student loan debt, credit card debt, or other types of debt.
And it can be very encouraging to see an improvement in your net worth over time.
Here is a super-simple net worth spreadsheet I put together. There’s no formatting with cool colors and such, but it works and completes the calculations for you. Let me know what you think about it!
A couple of notes:
*Unfortunately, Google Sheets does not allow password-protecting of items. I prefer to keep this information, and most of my spreadsheets, in a format I can password protect. Think Microsoft Excel, Apple’s Numbers, etc. You can even do this on paper if you want, and store it somewhere safe.
*There are two “sheets” in the shared spreadsheet —the first is a blank one, and the second is a sample with random numbers that I have included. I have added in pretend numbers to the sample sheet, so you can see how the numbers change over time.
*Sometimes people do not add in their vehicles or mortgages. I do, because you can see how much equity you have in the house or vehicle. But I mentally don’t include them the same weight as other assets, since they are not liquid and it’s not likely one would sell them for living expenses, in retirement or not.
What are you doing this weekend?
You may have noticed that I’ve dropped the weekly item of “what are you doing this weekend?”
That’s because I found it just extra filler, and since it was the same text each week, probably all of you skimmed over it and didn’t actually read it, much less do the suggested action (plan your weekends ahead of time).
But I thought I would add it in occasionally, in the hopes that you will plan your weekend, at least this week, and when you see how positive it is.
I’m also writing to myself, because the action items I include are often things that I want to do and accomplish. And this week, I’m going to make a good effort to plan things out.
So, now that it’s Tuesday, what are you planning for the weekend? I’m going to suggest trying to cover four “F”s to get ideas flowing:
*faith—when are you going to Mass?
*friends—what friends will you see or connect with?
*food—any fun recipes you plan to try, or restaurants you plan to visit?
*fun—anything interesting you are going to play, watch, or do this weekend? Now’s the time to think it through, and put it on the calendar (even informally).