When 2018 was about to start, I set a few goals for the year. I didn’t make any resolutions, because I don’t do that anymore; they seemed to absolute, and once broken, resolutions are easy to forget entirely. Goals allow me to work toward something. So…how’d I do? Let’s review 2018.
Reviewing my 2018 goals
As I said, I don’t make resolutions anymore. Things like “I will never…” always lead to me doing whatever I said I wouldn’t do by about January 10. After that, of course, I would’ve already broken the resolution, so, in my mind, there was no point in trying to keep any behaviors up for the next 355 days. So, instead of all that, I set goals for this year. Here’s what I said back in December 2017, and how I did:
- “I would like to post on this blog at least twice a week.” Well, I will continue to work toward that goal in 2019, then, as I obviously have not met that goal this year.
- “I want to diversify in cryptocurrency.” Thankfully, given the total bear market in which crypto has been mired for pretty much the entire year, I did nothing to work toward this goal. No cryptocurrency purchases for me this year (though I did receive some Bitcoin as payment for surveys completed).
- “I want to continue to improve at the day job.” For reasons I won’t go into on this site, the jury’s still out as to whether I have improved.
If one were to look only at these three goals for this year, an honest 2018 review for me would be to say that the year was almost a total loss. But let’s look a bit further into things.
This doesn’t necessarily sum up my year. But based on my stated goals, you might think it does.
Evergreen Goals
In addition to the stated goals above, I wrote about areas in which people might want to make changes in the coming year. Did I, perhaps, do better in some of these areas? Well, let’s see:
- Budgeting. We used to have a budget every month. That, however, was well before 2018. Hmmm, so far I’m not doing any better. Moving on…
- Saving. 2018 was, unfortunately, a year for using the emergency fund, not adding to it. This, however, illustrates the need to be setting money aside for an emergency fund in the first place. So far, we haven’t needed to take on debt for some of the emergencies this year*, so I’ll call that a winner.
- Time Management. I’m writing this portion of this post at 12:15 in the morning. That would seem like a fail, but that’s actually an improvement from years past. You know what? We’ll call that a victory. Of sorts.
It could be easy for me to get depressed by how I have done this year with regard to my stated goals…and I do, occasionally!
But…
It is important to celebrate the victories, however small they are. If I don’t remember to celebrate any progress – and maybe this is just me, though I doubt it – I get discouraged far too often, to the point where sometimes I feel like giving up. And I don’t want to give up on this.
So…yeah. There were some good things, financially speaking, for my family in 2018. They may not be big things, but they’re a start.
In the next post, let’s talk about how to build on these things in 2019.
* I haven’t written much about these issues, and I don’t intend to go into that topic right now.
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