2014 Goals: Consistency

I am really excited, and nervous, about my goals this year! Last year, I let a couple things slide in my life and this year is about taking control of them again.

Faith Focus:
1) Finish Bible
I'm going to finish the Bible this year. I've been working on my reading plan for 2 years and I have a little under a year left. The trick is to consistently read a little bit every day.

Health Focus:
2) Weigh 155 pounds
You may not have noticed, but I noticed the 20-25 pounds I put on last year. That's a 16% increase! This happened because of a few reasons: 1) I worked out less. 2) We started going to a couple group meetings that always provided sweets, and I didn't restrain myself. 3) I turned 30, and my metabolism slowed down just a little bit. Those combined together equaled weight gain.

I'm going to accomplish this goal by running at least 1 time per week. I'm also going to count my calories, and weight myself daily. As the saying goes, "What gets measured, gets managed." This is something that will require consistency on a daily basis.

3) Do 70 push-ups in a row
For me, push-ups represent my strength, and that's another thing I let slide. Weighing less will be nice, and feeling strong/fit will feel even better. It'll also have practical benefits when doing construction projects.

Today, I can do 20 push-ups in a row. So my plan is to do push-ups each day and add 1 each week. This follows the Slight Edge principle of slowly, and consistently, adding on to generate something significant over time.

Financial Focus:
4) No expenses above $2,000
Looking back at our finances, every year we have at least 1 large expense.
2002 - 2007: School Tuition
2008: Got Married
2009: Bought a property
2010: Switched over to Mac
2011: Bought a Jeep... and then another one...
2012: Bought a Prius and another property
2013: Bought a home

So, if every single year of your adult life has involved at least 1 large expense, how do you stop that trend? My hypothesis is that if you don't have the money, you can't spend it. So we're putting everything we can towards student loans. What started out as a 5-year plan, is looking like a 3.5-year plan (1.5 years left). And there's an outside (really outside!) chance we pay them off this year. I'm starting to smell the barn and that excitement will help us consistently avoid any large expense. Side note: I have a separate fund for maintenance on our properties, so I'm not including money spent from there.

Business Focus:
5) HP salary increase
I've got the promotion, now it's time to earn the pay increase. I've got a plan for this too. Last year my focus was split between two jobs. This year I'm back to one. So I'm going to work consistently on creating new tools and enhancing existing ones. You know, kick butt and take names. The other thing I'm going to do is have regular conversations with my boss about it. I want him to know this is important to me and keep it near the front of his mind. All of this is kind of up to the HR gods, but I believe that if I'm consistent, it'll be rewarded.

6) Increase side business income
I am NOT going to go out and buy another investment property this year. See Goal #4. But I would like to continue to diversify our income. Now, as the goal implies, this is a side thing, so it might have to take a back seat if something else requires my attention.

For now, I'm going to do one, maybe two things. First, my goal is to find another paying client. If you know anyone looking to create monthly/quarterly reports for their business, let me know. The other thing I would like to do is finish the finance class and offer it for sale. Again, depending on what other things take my time, I may not get as far on this as I want, and that's OK. Still, I'm putting it out there as something I want to accomplish.

Social Focus:
7) Host a meal 6+ times at our house
We bought a house and so far only had only one couple over for a meal. Now, I get that since we don't have kids it's easier for us to go to someone else's home, but we would like people to visit us too. So this year we're going to be more proactive about inviting people over. I was telling a friend about this goal and he invited himself, and his family, over. So this should be a fun one to accomplish.