Yearly Goals
I have been thinking about recapping my 2011 goals and setting some 2012 goals. Except, I never actually finished setting my 2011 goals. We started out the year with a lot of unknowns. Would T finish that year? If so, would we move? Neither of those things happened, but here are some largely unplanned things that affected us financial this year:
- We bought a new car with cash
- T took a high paying summer job
- We decided to turn a conference into a northern European vacation
- T got a fellowship for this year and decided not to graduate yet
- We bought a new laptop
Yet I feel like NOT having goals really hurt us. We didn’t pay as much attention to tracking spending or being conservative with our purchases. So even though we have a lot of similar questions for 2012, I need to figure out some sort of new system. I’m not sure what it is yet. It’s much easier to plan when you have a steady bi-weekly income coming in (which I do, but T’s is variable).
We did max out our retirement accounts (Roth + 401k for me, Roth for T) and we had a really good year as far as everything goes… but we could have done more financially I think.
Do you have trouble with yearly goals? Or do you knock yours out of the park?
Stacking Pennies 
I have to set annual goals or I find that I don’t accomplish what I would have otherwise. I will revise my annual goals midyear if things have changed. I did that this year. I revisit my goals monthly to see where I’m at with them. I also number them in priority so I don’t lose sight of the most important financial goals that I have. However, this year I got a new job which trumps all financial goals.
Merry Christmas!