our 2018 family meeting

I love the anticipation of New Year's ... I find myself reflecting on the past year as well as thinking about what's ahead for us as a family. It's such an exciting time of year! :-)

For the past several years, in the last couple weeks of December, Eric and I take a day off work and have our annual family meeting. We talk about what we liked from the past year, what we didn't like, what we want to do differently, what big events are coming up, the purchases we need to be saving for, etc. It's always a really great conversation — without little ones to interrupt us — to get on the same page and set our overall family budget.

For example, one of the things we both loved from the past year was our Parent Time Off (PTO) system. One of the things we didn't like were all the unexpected car repairs we had this summer ($2,000 worth), which definitely kept us from reaching some of our financial goals.

Looking ahead to 2018, we want to take an anniversary trip, buy at least one new (used) vehicle, see Hamilton, become debt-free (again), and go to Okoboji as a family at least three times. We've found that we're less stressed about these things if we talk through them and then make a financial plan to work toward them. To guide our time, we use a workbook called The Family Playbook that Eric created for this exact purpose, which you can download here for $8.99.

After our meeting, we celebrated by seeing Star Wars: The Last Jedi. Have you seen it? We both really liked it!

P.S. One of my personal goals for 2018 is to figure out my motion sickness. I have used Dramamine in the past, but I don't like how it makes me feel. Please share your tips, if you have any!