Evaluation and Accounting

There's a lot that we bring with us from the military life. One of the many regularities of military life is the frequent evaluation and accounting (personnel, money, time, etc). While the military does better than most branches of government (in my opinion), there is still much to be desired, mostly when it comes to taking action upon the information from evaluations.

I've just been working on a bit of family and personal evaluation and accounting. The past two years have brought us major life changes, and I think it important to do a little "check in" of where we are standing.

"Pretty well," would be a good summary. Though evaluations are completely subjective, in light of circumstances, we're coming along fairly nicely. Accounting tends to be a bit more factual and "involved" (thus, I'm not terribly great at it), and I'm not nearly done with all the accounting for both properties. I've done enough just now, however, to see that-- though I'm not totally happy that we're not further along with the work-- we're sitting pretty, again, given circumstances.

We've been able to accomplish a lot with both properties, and given the economy and whatnot, I think I've managed the finances fairly well and successfully achieved huge progress towards our goals

Just what does evaluation and accounting look like for our family?

1) Are the kids progressing with their schooling?
2) Are new, proactive habits being formed?
3) Is time being used wisely and 'productively'?
4) Is the money being spent to the best possible uses?
5a) Are we achieving smaller tasks headed towards a larger goal?
5b) What other tasks might be included to reach the goal?
5c) Does the goal need to be changed?

As you can see from the sample above, doing evaluations and accounting can get very involved, and that doesn't include any of the detail information (such as dollar amount for specific projects, etc). The samples above are merely summary type questions, and give a very generic rendering of current status.

To sum up current status in a single sentence: We are making significant progress towards family-oriented goals. Much more remains, both of information gathering and acting on information.

Speaking of which, writing this entry reminded me of something very important that I'm supposed to get done today! See how that works? Now before I forget. . . again. . . .

~Cedeham~