2011 Goals: How did I do?
You guys, 2011 was an AMAZING year for me in so many areas of life. The years just keep getting better and better. That being said, I didn’t do well at setting and acheiving goals, particularly financial ones. I didn’t track my spending well. I wasn’t diligent about spending and saving. I regret that, and I think 2012 will be much better. Here is how I did last year.
Financial Savings:
You can see what I proposed here. Essentially, my goals were to max out our retirement accounts and to increase our savings to a “TBD” amount, and the TBD was never actually determined. On one hand, not properly setting goals was kind of a fail and I think we are worse off for that. I’ll do better in 2012. On the other hand, since I set such crappy goals, I think I can call this a win! Ha.
Financial Spending/Minimalism: These go hand in hand with the savings goals, but I’d like to break out a few specific challenges
- Don’t eat out in January, except socially (which we have been doing so often that it shouldn’t even be that hard) – Pretty sure we failed this.
- Buy no new clothes in February. Failed this one (dumb, because how hard is that?)
- Keep total clothing spending under $400 January – June. DONE
- Sell one bike (we have 3 in our home right now!) DONE
The moral of the story in this category is: “Don’t set goals you don’t really care that much about.” Alternatively, it could be “If you set a goal, make it a point to care about the outcome!” Either way, I have some thinking to do on this category for next year.
Fitness:
- Run 1000 miles in 2011! Despite my fail at tracking in the sidebar, I am at about 920 miles. Fail, but still a great effort!
- Complete first marathon, injury-free DONE
- Improve 10k race time by 5 minutes – Wow, that was ambitious of me. No, I only improved by about 2.5 minutes.
- Take yoga class 2 times a month – no, running was my priority
- Run 6 races, including a trail run –Yes! Two trail races, two half marathons, a 10k, a 5k, and a marathon.
- Try a new sport/activity – Yes! We went caving for the first time! And glacier hiking. And rock climbing, once.
Travel/Hiking:
- Visit Yosemite front country.
Done! - Go on 8 day hikes – Yes! Nine!
- Sycamore Canyon in May
- Mt. Baldy attempt in May
- Hike near eagle rock
- Mist trail in yosemite (to nevada falls)
- Hike to the top of upper yosemite falls
- Hike to Mt Floyen in Norway
- Hike from Urkein to Floyen in Norway
- Half Dome
- Linoes Trail
- Climb Mt. Whitney as a backpacking trip – OMG, YES! Amazing!
- Go on 2+ other shorter backpacking trips – No, just one other this year.
- Catalina Island! Nope, it just wasn’t a priority.
By the way, we went to Russia, Norway and Sweden, which were not in my original goals. I killed the travel goals – you can see where my true priorities are!
General
- Read 20 books. Yes! I read 30!
- Blog about 6 new recipes. Hmm, forgot about this. I shared a few, but not 6.
- Consolidate finances more (close extraneous accounts). We did move in this direction, though there are a few accounts that could still be closed.
- Be open to new adventures. I’ll go with yes. It turned out T wasn’t ready to graduate yet, so this wasn’t as applicable, but I was open to whatever life threw at me in 2011.
https://stackingpennies.wordpress.com/2011/12/29/dual-career-some-news/
Looks like you are in good shape to greet 2012!
Sounds like you had an amazing 2011! I am super jealous of all the hiking you did. I completely agree that you have to really care about the goal itself or the expected outcome to be successful in reaching that goal.
Looks like you did pretty well overall in 2011! Congrats on maxing out your 401(k)! 😀