Today for the first time I will be sharing my mid-year life update. 

In this post I will be focusing on the personal goals I have set for 2020, habits I wanted to build and how I’ve been overall in the first six months of the year.

Let’s begin. 

2020 Highlights and Wins so far

The first six months of 2020 have been such a blur. With the pandemic still in place, life as we know it will never be the same. 

We are now living in the “new normal” and as to how long, only God knows. 

I think what’s important right now is to be gentle with ourselves. To prioritize our health and be as productive as we can. Maximizing this so-called gift of time with our family and rebuilding broken friendships (if any).

Again, I hope you are staying safe throughout what’s happening.

To begin with this Mid-Year Life Update I would like to count on the good things and make a list of my highlights and wins so far. This step is also how I start when it comes to planning for a new month. 

For the first six months of 2020 here are what I’m most proud of:

1. I got a promotion. This is something I’ve been praying for three long years and it finally happened. 

2. I launched The SavingsPinay Podcast. Before April 2020 ended I told myself I will get this whole “start a podcast” project done.  And it really happened. I got my first four episodes live and feel so happy. If you feel like listening to any of the episodes you can check out the show on Spotify and iTunes.

3. I began a One-on-One Money Coaching  with two paid students currently. Wow. This is such as a milestone for me. I’ve been meaning to sell this service for years and now with the newfound time from working-from-home, it finally materialized. 

4. I started sending out email newsletters again to SavingsPinay email list which now has over 3000 members. Great!

5. I got  really into content creation A LOT. Whether it be writing post, maintaining my social media accounts, podcast episodes, and more.

6. I’m halfway through my own eBook! I am really hopeful I get to release the eBook before -ber months begin. 

7. I’ve been maintaining some of the best habits ever since the whole COVID-19 situation happened. I’ve blogged about them here including other great habits I’d like to adapt.

Areas of My Life Update

In the beginning of the year I did a 2020 Goals page and divided it into eight major areas of my life - Personal Development, Finances, Spiritual, Work, Fun/Bucket List, Physical/Health, Blog/Business and Habits.

Here are some mid-year updates: 

In the area of Personal Development I’ve been close to my reading challenge goal although I’m definitely not that consistent in reading and finishing two books a month. So far I already read 9 books which give me a lot of hope that I’ll be able to accomplish my goal of reading 20 books this 2020. 

I’ve also been attending online courses now. I’m currently taking a Korean Language Class and a Digital Content Creation Class. Both are with Coursera. 

Developing healthy routines are definitely easier now that I’ve been working from home. There’s just so much freedom now and I Iove it! 

For Finances, I’ve already hit my emergency fund goal which took me yearssss to achieve! I am also keeping my investment percentage making sure I’m staying invested no matter how volatile the current market is. 

It has been great in the area of finances ever since the work-from-home set up began. Commute and food allowances are two of the hardest categories to budget. I will always find myself overspending in those areas. I feel both grateful and privileged to have my job in the midst of what’s currently happening. 

Spiritually it has been a great six months as well. I am far from perfect in my journey to Christlikeness but I’ve grown a lot. 

I’ve been spending quality time reading and studying the Bible. I saw this great plan in the Bible App which helped me go through the New Testament chronologically. ⁣

I realized how important reading and studying God’s Word is now that I am able to do it on a daily basis.⁣

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By the power of the Holy Spirit, we can be spiritually disciplined and grow our walk with Jesus. It is really more of how bad do we want it.

At Work I’ve been promoted which feels A-MAZ-ING!!! I’ve been waiting for this promotion ever since I started working in the company in 2017 and it finally happened. 

I’m also thankful for the major salary increase I received because of the promotion especially with the current situation. 

Last June 2020, the company’s Facebook account reached 50,000 followers which was such a milestone. When I first handled the account we were at 33,000 followers and now after a year of hard work I managed to add up almost 17,000 new followers. 

My goal is to continue adding in the number of followers for the rest of the year. The biggest goal is 75,000 followers across all social media accounts of the company. 

For my Fun/Bucket List category I haven’t had anything done due to the pandemic. 

Physical/Health has been quite good as well. I’ve been doing more exercises compared to last year. The biggest reason for this is because I’ve been home a lot. I like to maintain working out five times a week mainly Mondays to Fridays. I’m also planning to do the whole Chloe Ting Abs Routine since the main area I wanted to change was my tummy. 

I’ve been doing well as well in the Blog/Business category. Because of the newfound free time I’m able to release more posts than before. I also started scheduling my posts in bulk which I haven’t done before. 

Although I haven’t had any major breakthroughs in terms of number of followers I am working hard in this area a lot. This July I’ve been doing a  30 day Instagram Challenge where I will post every single day for the month of July. I am trying if consistent posting will help me gain some new followers. 

I launched new platform during the quarantine period, The SavingsPinay Podcast. 

I am also currently doing a One-on-One Money Coaching Program which is a paid service I’ve been meaning to do for years. Finally, now I have the time and the confidence to do so. Without the official launch I already have two students. 

For the Habits, I’ve been waking up at 5am consistently which is awesome. I’ve also been keeping myself as productive as I can working from home. 

Other habits I’ve been working on are daily morning devotions, morning pages and exercise. 

What I Want to Achieve for the Rest of 2020

2020 taught us that no matter how much we plan our life, it’s still God’s plan that prevails. And so, I don’t want to be too hard to myself in terms of accomplishing everything. 

I’m setting the things I want to achieve for the rest of the year as I want to make the most of the last six months of the year. 

1. Read 20 books. For the past years, I wasn’t achieving my reading challenges and I want this year to be different. With so much time on my side now, this shouldn’t be a problem anymore. 

2. Flatten my stomach. Again, I’m planning on doing Chloe Ting’s 2-week shred challenge just to test out if it would work for me. The rest of my body is already slim but not my stomach and I wanted to change that. 

3. Upload new YouTube videos again. It’s been two years I think since I last uploaded a video on my YouTube Channel. I don’t know why, but I have all these excuses why I can’t do a video. However, every single day that I watch videos on YouTube I will always remember my channel and be inspired to vlog again. 

4. Release my paid eBook before the year ends. This is a major goal for me and something that has been a long time coming as well. 

5. Get at least a month ahead in my blog posts. Doing this will autopilot the success of both SavingsPinay and IzzaGlino this 2020. I’ve been doing well in getting one week ahead of posts so the next thing on my py plate is tro try to go at least a month’s ahead.

6. Work on my extra income projects more – From launching the One-on-One Money Coaching Program to releasing digital products such as an eBook and eCourse before the year ends.

Overall

2020 has been such a surreal year to be honest. I still can’t believe what's happening. If being productive gives you  a sense of achievement in the midst of the pandemic, do so! But if you are someone who’d rather slow down to cope up there’s no wrong with that. What’s more important for now is to stay healthy and to stay safe. 

Thank you so much for reading this post.