What goes into planning 3 months in advance

In one of the most popular posts on the blog, I shared how we plan for 3 months at a time – in one sitting. It sounds like a lot, but in reality in a world full of chaos it’s something that calms the storm. When life starts getting crazy and you’re not sure how you can fit in one more thing, that’s when having your biggest events all ready pre-scheduled.

Here’s the original post, but it caused a flurry of questions… how do you do this? what about planning out for this…? Do you really schedule family dinners that far in advance?

So I wanted to go into more detail about exactly how we plan for three months out and how you can start incorporating this system in your life. Because, trust me, this system is gold! Here’s what you need – your calendar (either Google calendar, paper planner or one of those giant desk calendars), a pen or a pencil, a blank piece of paper, and laptop.

Look At Birthdays

This is always the first stop in planning. Mark down any birthdays that you will need to know about – kids and spouse (duh!), parents, siblings, nephews, nieces, etc. I like to mark down everyone, but I always make a special note of any birthday that will probably have a party and need a gift for. Now of course, most people don’t plan out kids birthday parties and send out invitations three months in advanced (unless you work in a tax office and have a son born on April 15th, then at that point you plan their birthday party 2 months in advance).

However, you do know within reason when the party will probably be – either the weekend before or after the child’s actual birthday. This isn’t a full-proof plan, but it does work for the majority of birthday parties I’ve been to. Once you make a mark of when everyone’s birthday is or when there party will most likely be, now it’s time to update your budget.

Make a note on a separate piece of paper any gifts you’re going to need to get or upcoming (but not confirmed) travel.

Look At Out Of Town Trips

With J’s family living a few hours away we like to visit at least once a month. If we can plan out a few weekends to visit in the next few months then we can make sure it lines up with everyone’s schedule. Plus, it helps on the budget and finding someone to watch our pups.

You can also mark down any vacations, girls trips, guys weekends or anything else that you know is coming up.

Plan Date Nights and Family Dinners

I’m going to be honest, date nights are few and far between (is that how that saying goes?). But we try to do something at least a few times a month just the two of us. It’s a lot harder to plan those nights out, so here’s what we do. My parents typically keep our son one night a week, so we plan those nights first. Then it makes date night a lot easier. We don’t have a weekly date night, unless you count being childless and crashing at 8pm as a date.

One family event we do plan in advance is family dinners. We have those just about every week. We try to stick to every Thursday to make it easy on everyone’s schedule, too. Family dinner can mean meeting my parents at a restaurant or heading back to one of our houses for dinner (usually my parent’s house because, let’s face it, it’s cleaner than ours).

Mark Down Any Work Events

Are you involved in any civic organizations, Chambers or other networking groups? If so, then you probably know when your meetings are and other special events that come up. For me, I’m in Kiwanis that meets once a week, BNI that meets once a week and a woman’s organization that meets once a month. Those meetings are at the same time, same day of the week and usually at the same place. So I can easily go ahead and mark those down.

Schedule Doctor Appointments

After all the birthdays, out of town trips and work events are marked down then that gives me room to make doctor appointments. Now this isn’t for when your child gets sick, because you can’t plan for those. However, these are for the check-ups – the dentist, pediatrician, physicals, and eye doctor. By calling a few months in advance, you’ll more than likely get the pick of your appointment time.

Lessons For Your Kiddos

Do you do any learning activities or schedules with your kids? For us, we searched out a program to help us. Our son goes to an amazing sitter, but there isn’t any structured learning time. So we know that we have to provide that at home and on the weekends. However, I was overwhelmed. Each Pinterest pin was telling me to start with something different and all had different milestones for the same age our son was. As someone who thinkis in numbers, it was hard to wrap my mind around it all. I need a clear cut guide, something that I knew would be entertaining to our son, but also teach him something.

I started searching and I came across the Busy Toddler’s website and was immediately in love. It had some great ideas that actually seemed doable. She even put together We started following the Busy Toddler’s lesson plan, Playing Preschool, awhile back. Life got in the way, so it took a sideline during tax season. But I am in ready to get back into the full swing of things.

She lays out each week perfectly, so I can go into our calendar and mark down what lesson we’re going to be working of and for what week. She uses a lot of tools and produce items to help learn, which is great so by marking down what week we’re on then I know what I need to be making sure we have from the grocery store.

Check In On Our Financial Goals and Set New Ones

Once a quarter you should be checking your financial progress – seeing how you’re doing with your budget, your spending and your savings. What better time to update your goals and create new ones then when you’re planning the next few months out. We try to have a money date as our planning session, so we can also take a good look at our budget.

If we hit a new financial goal then we cross it off the list and move on to the next one. It helps us stay accountable to what we want our financial future to look like!