So, I’ve been away for a while. Anything happen in 2020?
Obviously, this past year has been…different. Once again, I’m glad I didn’t try to set resolutions for 2020, seeing as virtually nothing went anywhere close to the way I had hoped. But, I do like to look back at the goals I set and figure out where to make changes and/or improvements for the next year. So, let’s rip this bandage off and look at how 2020 turned out for me, and then we can move on to my 2021 goals.
Did I Meet My 2020 Goals?
For a lot of people, 2020 was a dumpster fire. Perhaps, I thought when I started this entry, my goals wouldn’t have turned out so bad; after all, last January I only set two for the year. Well, whether I met those two goals was a mixed bag, which is markedly better than 2019’s flat no.
The first goal I set for this past year was to get out of debt. I am pleased to say that YES, we did get back out of debt! Granted, we didn’t have too much, as we only slipped into debt in 2019 thanks to medical bills, but as of now, we are back to paying off the credit card every month. (We use the card for the rewards, of course.) This was also assisted by our refinancing the mortgage yet again – why not, when interest rates fell to historic lows?
Last Year’s Big Goal
The goal I called “The Big Goal” last year was to be setting goals throughout the year. This was supposed to help me follow through on them, as well as to help my fight against my greatest nemesis, time management.* I suppose that in some aspects, I am doing so. For example, at work, I typically have a couple of to-do lists going to help prioritize the projects on which I am working.
I won’t say, though, that I have applied the same sort of goal-setting effectively to other aspects of my life. Oh, sure, I have tried to make to-do lists for things needing to be done around the house, but inevitably, other things end up taking priority, or else simply distracting me from getting everything finished. (This is why I’m still writing this post more than halfway through January.)
So…obviously, there is some definite room for improvement on that front in 2021.
Hopefully my 2021 goals are better than this list, but we’ll see how the year turns out. Photo by freestocks.org from Pexels.
2021 goals
As I did last year, I won’t repost the same goals for this year, though, as stated, I will be working on setting smaller goals throughout the year yet again. Instead, here are a few areas in which I want to improve myself this year:
- Organization. There are so many areas in which I want to be better organized. I could probably write a whole entry about it…and given my tendency toward writer’s block, I should definitely set this topic aside for later.
- Contentment. I’ve written about this before (here, for example), but I want to be more deliberate in 2021 about blooming where I’m planted. Practically what that means is this: even though I don’t have a passion for my day job anymore**, I can still strive to do a better job than I did in 2020. Of course, there are further areas other than my job in which I could do a much better job of being content.
- Saving/Investing. In my 2019 goals, I mentioned autosaving using a program called Long Game. It was a fun little game, but I’ve moved on for a couple of reasons, the largest being that Long Game retooled late last year and is no longer set up to work with my bank as of this writing. Instead, I’ve started putting some money each week into an index fund with Fidelity. (This is my current index fund of choice.) There’s definitely more of a risk, but there’s also way more of an upside.
This Year’s Big Goal
- Follow-through. I’ve had as a goal before to read a certain number of financial books in a year. I typically end up starting a whole bunch and finishing very few…which makes it hard to do what I have wanted to do, which has been to write about some of these books. This year, I’d like to try something new and finish the majority of them. 2020 has actually made this goal a little easier. The libraries are mostly closed, after all, and they’ve also extended the amount of renewals allowed, so I have these books for an extended period of time.
Of course, the idea of following through extends to all sorts of things besides just reading. Last year, as I said, I used it for meeting goals through the year. Even that, though, doesn’t cover everything I want to accomplish. In case the name of this blog escapes you, I am a father, and I have in mind to be better about meeting commitments to my family. My youngest is getting older, but he still wants to spend time with his dad.
(Now that January is winding down, I can say that yes, so far I am spending more time with my kids. Of course, I’m certainly not following through so far on writing timely posts!)
A Request for 2021
As I said last year, I would love encouragement toward these goals. (Purple is pretty good about providing this, but I’ll take all the encouragement I can get.) Comments (here or Facebook) or tweets are welcome.
And let’s make 2021 a better year for us all!
* That this particular paragraph was written after 11:30pm shows how well that’s going.
** It would take too long to explain what happened and why I feel this way, but I don’t think I ever did.
Note: this post may contain affiliate links. And honestly, it probably does. View my affiliate link disclaimer here.