Our meetup was a success!  Special thanks to three new members who showed up with art supplies in hand ready to share with the rest of the group.  Everyone brought in their magazines, posterboards, markers and glue and got to work on their vision boards.

This was the agenda for the afternoon:

Introductions

· Tell us about yourself

o Name, age, financial challenges and goals

SMART Goals Overview

Specific

• Start off by being specific in your goal. Clearly define what you are going to do. Include the what, why and how.

Measurable

· You must be able to measure your goal in order to manage it. I will lose 5 pounds by January 31st is much better than I will lose weight.

Attainable

· You must know that your goal is attainable, although it should stretch you to reach the goal. You can’t possibly lose 20 pounds in one week but you can lose 1 pound each week for 20 weeks.

Realistic

· A realistic goal is one that will stretch you but is not impossible. Completely cutting out all carbs in order to lose weight probably isn’t realistic. Planning to substitute a piece of fruit for a bowl of ice cream is realistic.

Timely

· A timely goal will give you a clear target to work towards. You may choose a week, a month, a year, just make sure that the time is realistic.

Importance of Writing Down Goals

· The act of writing the words on the paper triggers your brain that these are the goals you will work towards.

· Goals should only be written in the positive. Never write a goal in the negative, such as “I will not smoke.” Your subconscious cannot distinguish between positive and negative. Setting a goal in the negative will get you more of the same.

· Review your goals on a regular basis. Read your goals each morning as soon as you awake and at night before you sleep. Envision reaching those goals.

o This gets your conscious and subconscious minds ready to work on attaining the goals throughout the day. Your mind needs to be primed with these goals.

o Read your goals again at night, envisioning the attainment of those goals. This puts your subconscious to work. During the day, as you make decisions, ask yourself if the decision will bring you closer to your goals. Be mindful of how your daily actions affect the attainment of your goals.

· Take actions every day toward your goals. Just having a goal will not guarantee its successful achievement. Systematic and well-planned action is the key to attainment.

Goals Discussion

· Volunteers

o What are your 2009 goals?

o Why are they important to you?

o What gets in the way?

o How will you go about accomplishing them differently in 2009?

Create Your Goal/Vision Boards!

The top concerns were:

• Controlling spending habits
• Paying down debt
• Re-establishing credit after a bankruptcy
• Stepping out on your own and starting a new business
• Saving for retirement

We had many candid conversations about our struggles and also made a plan on how we plan to move through them this year.  How?  By doing something you haven’t done before.  Some members had self imposed shopping restrictions through June, some are working to engage other family members to start saving for the long term, while others are learning grace under fire when faced with losing a job vs. taking a demotion and a salary cut.

One thing I took away from this Meetup is that we have women who are incredibly resilient and continue to move towards their goals in cases where some would have quit and handed in the towel.  Failing financially isn’t an option when everyone depends on you or when you can only depend on yourself.  I admire their strnegth and resolve to keep pushing through.  These stories continue to inspire me to keep writing this blog and hold our meetups.  I thank them for sharing their lives with me in this manner, for that I am truuly grateful.

Here are some pictures from the event, click to enlarge:

Where else can you find an open bar, free goodies, good food and company?  At the Brazen Careerist DC Blogger meetup!  I was invited along with the other DC BC Bloggers for our first meetup where we shared good company and some good ole blogger networking.  This wasn’t my first time to a blogger event but this was probably the best one to date.

Some of you are probably wondering what is Brazen Careerist?  It’s the career HQ for all things related to generation X/Y.  I first came across the site after this post by Ryan Healy and it validated my feelings around the baby boomer vs generation x/y battle you see going on in the workplace today.  I was delighted to find that so many others my age felt the same way about their careers and actually wanted to see some change in how things are done within the realm of recruiting, retention, career development and adaptation to the generational differences.

After all, when baby boomer managers speak of our generation within a work setting, rarely have I found it positive.  So this is a community that celebrates the changes our generation steadily brings to the workplace and of course, advice on how we can adapt while blazing our own paths.

This meetup was right on time because rarely do we ever get to meet each other face to face outside of reading each other’s posts, emailing for blog advice and spending hours on Twitter talking about everything but our blogs.  Seriously, we had a good time.  And, I think what was beneficial to me was to be able to connect with other bloggers outside of my niche and still feel that we had so much in common.

Many thanks to Ryan Paugh, Ryan Healy and Penelope for putting together this awesome event for all of us.

We also received copies of Penelope’s new book, Brazen Careerist, The New Rules For Success.  Check it out!  Look out for my review in a few weeks!

We had our very first meetup on Saturday and it was fabulous! I would like to thank each and every one of the ladies that came out, I had an awesome time meeting and getting to know everyone! We shared our goals, challenges and disseminated information about budgeting, personal finance books, networking and played CashFlow 101. I met some old and new faces which is always great because you get to put faces to screen names and get to know them in person.

Some of our goals include learning how to effectively budget monthly cash flow and expenses, investing for the long term, debt reduction, real estate planning/investing and curbing out shopping habits. Amen to that because I can relate to each and every one. Moving forward I am planning with one of the members to have her financial advisor come out to talk to us about some of the above mentioned topics. What I love about the group is that we are all so varied in our goals and financial goals so we can all stand to teach each other a few things in the area of personal finance. This is great because I really believe this will evolve into a really supportive group who helps each other to their stated/desired goal. Towards the end there was some talk of developing an investment club and Im open to that, I just want us to get to know each other before jumping in. People get funny about money and I’d ideally want us to have established relationships with each other to make the process easier.

Bar Louie accomodated the group by giving us a room secluded from the rest of the bar in the back. It was elegant, music turned low with personal service given to us by 2-4 servers, like our own dinner party. We expected around 60ish women but ended up with 25, which is fine, the general manager took care of us as did the rest of the staff. The general manager came over and thanked me for our patronage and I would totally utilize that space again because you can’t beat great customer service and an elegant setting for a group like ours.

I am in the midst of planning the next 2-3 meetups which look really great should things play out as I hope they will. Feel free to join us if you’re in the DC Metro area-Girls Just Wanna Have Funds.

Here are some of the pictures from the meetup:

http://women.meetup.com/723/photos/