Cruise Control, Annual Raise, a Cleanse and a New D.I.E.T.

Cruise Control: So my retirement accounts are on cruise control.  Just getting the year-end numbers on our outside accounts and waiting for my pension to update with its annual contribution and interest to the cash balance portion of the plan. I've already upped my 401(k) and catch-up contributions to max them out by year-end.

Annual Raise: Next week I get my annual performance review.  Shortly thereafter we will be told our raises and our annual incentive bonus.  The raises are barely cost of living.  Last year I think I got 2.7% so I would expect around the same for this year.  The annual incentive bonus is a different story.  My company's philosophy is to pay less and provide bigger bonuses dependent upon company performance and your individual performance.  We are almost 4 years out from a merger and last year was the first year my side of the business operated under the acquiring company's performance appraisal policy.  Last year my net bonus was about $13,000, compared to around $5,000 - $6,000 premerger.  Definitely nothing to sneeze at.  You can always tell when the pay-out happens as suddenly there are new luxury cars in the office parking lot.  Meanwhile I sock it away and continue to drive my 2007 CR-V.  LOL!  Just another example of differing priorities.

A Cleanse: So for the last 10 days I've been doing a cleanse.  My favorite Director at work told me about this diet he and his wife did where he lost 15 lbs and his wife lost 30 lbs in a month.  He said you have to eat every 2-3 hours no matter what and he was full all the time, but the weight just fell off.  Sounded like a dream to me so I asked him to send me the info.  He emailed the link and I researched it and went through the entire website.  It looked pretty legit so I went ahead and signed up for the 10 day cleanse and then ordered the book.  I just finished the book and today is the last day of the cleanse.  Since starting the cleanse last Friday I've lost 7 lbs. Not too shabby.  Tomorrow I start the actual diet which is 28 days long.  This is the book and The D.I.E.T.:

She prefers to call it a D.I.E.T - "Did I Eat Today", because this is the opposite of traditional diets which restricts types and amounts of foods.  This diet is about eating whole, real, healthy foods in a way that is supposed to ignite and increase metabolism so you burn fat.  You do have to give up coffee, alcohol, dairy, wheat, soy, corn & sugar, among other things.  Which I find easy enough to do, particularly since I'm doing Dry January and I like herbal teas.  I'm not sure I believe 100% of what she say the science of it is, but her results speak for themselves, the foods are healthy, many are plant based and she wants you to eat organic and natural which we believe in anyway.  Screw Monsanto and ConAgra!  It is more protein than we like to eat but I can do it for 28 days.  It will just blow my grocery budget for sure.  Luckily the take-out and alcohol budget will go down.  LoML is not doing this with me but he will eat the dinners so this shouldn't be too disruptive.

That's it for now.  Have a relaxing and restful Sunday!