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

1. 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.
2. Buy no new clothes in February. Failed this one (dumb, because how hard is that?)
3. Keep total clothing spending under $400 January – June.  DONE
4. 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:

1. 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!
2. Complete first marathon, injury-free DONE
   
3. Improve 10k race time by 5 minutes – Wow, that was ambitious of me.  No, I only improved by about 2.5 minutes.
4. Take yoga class 2 times  a month – no, running was my priority
5. Run 6 races, including a trail run –Yes!  Two trail races, two half marathons, a 10k, a 5k, and a marathon.
6. Try a new sport/activity – Yes!  We went caving for the first time!  And glacier hiking.  And rock climbing, once.

Travel/Hiking: 

1. Visit Yosemite front country. Done!
2. 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
3. Climb Mt. Whitney as a backpacking trip – OMG, YES!  Amazing!
4. Go on 2+ other shorter backpacking trips – No, just one other this year.
5. 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

1. Read 20 books. Yes!  I read 30!
2. Blog about 6 new recipes. Hmm, forgot about this.  I shared a few, but not 6.
3. Consolidate finances more (close extraneous accounts).  We did move in this direction, though there are a few accounts that could still be closed.
4. 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/