A major success on the weight loss side marked the fourth stage of my Wealth, Weight and Wellbeing Plan as the end of the 26 fortnight ambitious and hopefully long term life changing challenge comes into view.

You can find the first check in here (15 April 2021), the second here (25 June 2021) and the third here (02 September).

Wealth Update

I’m right on track to pay of my home loan at the end of this challenge. In fact I’m so confident I’ve started the paperwork with my Bank and tentatively set Thursday 10 February 2022 as my freedom day.

Living on a restricted budget of $776.12 per fortnight is becoming just a little easier. Mostly as now that I have surplus funds saved I can more easily navigate the fortnight that need more money by moving funds around. How people live on such a small amount with no savings to draw on as needed astounds me, people in these situations and earning even less income face too many financial challenges and must be stressed most of the time.

It’s definitely not easy living on this restricted amount, and post lockdown 6 in Victoria I did end up buying a few more items, especially new some new clothes that reflected my weight loss situation. I’m hoping to delay major clothes purchases until after Christmas with the Boxing Day sales.

Outcome: Successful (ahead of schedule $100)

What I learned
That impulse purchases are your enemy. Several times I bought items I wanted and needed but on impulse instead of doing some research on the best cost options. Nothing terrible but still a bad habit to get into during a wealth challenge.

I continue to see the benefit of research and waiting. You can save 20-30% on purchases by having patience and sometimes even buying in advance when an item you 100% will have to buy is currently available at a significant discount.

Weight and Wellbeing Update

The aim of this 26 fortnight weight challenge was to loss 1 kilo a fortnight. During this fourth stage I successfully reached the yearly goal! More importantly I’m no longer considered obese under the Body Mass Index.

Outcome: COMPLETED (ahead of schedule by 8 kilos)

What I learned
That with focus and some discipline weight loss is possible.

Since 1 August I’ve managed to do 20,000 steps per day. This starts with my cats waking me up around 5.30 or 6 am and I then go for 1.5 hour walk setting up the today with almost half my goal steps done before breakfast and work. A bonus having cats who want breakfast as soon as some light is outside, I used to think their early morning wake up calls where a curse!

I’m now going to aim to continue to loss 1 kilo per fortnight. It gets harder the more you loss and also motivation might be a struggle now that I’ve completed this goal but I want to be very far under the BMI ‘obese’ category (which 33.4% of Australian men are in) as possible by the end of fortnight 26.

New Challenges

– Continue to loss 1 kilo per fortnight
– Start booking and paying for my big post challenge reward a July 2022 trip to the Kimberleys and remote Western Australia (and keep saving to pay for it).