Last year, I said New Year’s resolutions had the tendency to be depressing. They set absolute standards, which lead to disappointment when the standard is missed. I said I didn’t want to make resolutions anymore. So is the new year time to reflect and make changes, or not?
Of course it is. Only now I set goals. It gives me a chance to improve through the year by setting smaller goals as part of a the larger one.
So, let’s talk about this new year and my goals as we begin 2019…
In last year’s goal post*, I explained why I felt goals worked better for me than resolutions…so I won’t go into it again this year. It’s just easier not to set myself up for a big letdown.
In fact, I intend to set more goals this year. And also more diverse goals.
Personal Goals
Some of my 2019 goals are simply for personal development. Obviously, I’m not going to list all of my personal goals; some of them are, well, personal. But here are a few things I want to accomplish this year:
- Spend more quality time with my kids. I want to take each of the kids out for some alone time with their father at least once every couple of months. I’d love to do more, but…well, see the financial goals below.
- Write a will. I want to make sure my family will be taken care of if the worst happens. I’m in the early stages of looking into this, but it appears that I will use tomorrow.me to do it.
- Read 20 financial books. I get my books from my local library (of course), but thanks to not-so-great time management, I don’t read a lot of them all the way to the end.** At the moment, I’m reading a book by Robert Shemin entitled How Come That Idiot’s Rich And I’m Not? Watch this space, as I may have something to say about it when (not if) I am finished with it.
- Declutter the house. This would also have the benefit of, should I be able to sell some of the stuff I want to purge (and I should be able to do that), helping out with the financial goals.
A slightly exaggerated representation of some parts of my house…particularly the garage.
Blogging Goals
In case you haven’t noticed, I have a blog. You’re reading it. I actually have two, but the other is completely unrelated to this one. (If you really want to know, message me.) I have a few 2019 goals for my blogs as well:
- Post consistently. I want to post at least once a week on both my blogs. Twice would be better, but let’s work up to that, since I’m not to once a week quite yet. We’re getting there, though. Part of the problem is that I tend toward perfectionism, which is another way of saying “procrastination”. Someone, I forget who, said that “perfect” is the enemy of “good”. This year, I will have more “good” posts (and probably zero “perfect” posts, just like last year).
- Increase my traffic. Yes, some blogs get hundreds of thousands of hits per month. This blog isn’t one of them. My goal for this year is to average 1000 hits per month on both of them. (Any suggestions as to how to do that would be welcomed at this point…and of course I have most of this year to figure some of this out for myself as well.)
- Make $1000 from my blogs. Last year, my blogs made…less than that. Obviously, this goal goes hand-in-hand with the previous one.
Financial Goals
Obviously, the financial is a very important area of my 2019 goals. For too many years I was content to coast with regard to financial goals, and as a fortysomething, I now find myself rather behind and needing to catch up. (If you’re not a fortysomething, do yourself a favor and start this stuff earlier.) Here are some items I want to do this year:
- Save $20,000. This is a tall order for me, as, in the most recent past, I haven’t been tracking my spending, much less budgeting it. But I’m already making inroads on this goal:
- I was informed, very late, that my full-time employer offers a Simple IRA with up to a 3% match. While I wish I had known as soon as I was eligible, I’m not going to worry about it right now. Instead, I have signed up for it (as of yesterday) and elected to contribute 3% of my salary to the plan. If your company offers a match in your retirement plan, take it – it’s free money!
- I’ve started autosaving every week with Long Game – and I’ve also won some extra playing their games, so my effective savings rate is better than any savings account I’ve seen. The games are accessible using their coins, which you earn every day depending on how much you have saved. Click here to check out Long Game and get 1000 coins!
- Earn $5000 on side hustles. I have a number of side hustles, which I will write about very soon. Last year, I did fairly well with these, but I would like to build on that and do even better for myself. (This is aside from the $1000 I want to earn from blogging, as mentioned above.)
- Have a monthly budget and stick to it. As I said, I have not done well having my own budget, but I intend to do that every month this year. I use Quicken for tracking my spending (it’s worth it to me to be able to download my transactions), but I use my own spreadsheets for budgeting. My spreadsheets are based on some of the forms I received from Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace University. (You don’t have to use their forms and/or categories for spending if they don’t apply to you, you know.)
- Curtail my spending. That’s a fancy way of saying “don’t waste money”. We’re already planning to go out to eat far less than we used to do (like, almost never) because it’s more important to improve our financial situation. Instead, I/we are looking for things to do this year which will cost less/nothing. They’re out there.
So how about you?
These are just a fraction of the things I want to get accomplished in 2019. So what are your 2019 goals? Or do you prefer resolutions?
Either way, here’s hoping that our goals/resolutions work out for us this year!
* I realized as I wrote this that I never want to use that phrase in that context again.
** It would help if all these other people who want to read financial books would stop requesting the ones I have checked out, but of course that is not much of an excuse.
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