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Last week, I wrote about what I accomplished in 2019. It is always really helpful for me to look back and really write out all of the great things that happened the year before. I tend to focus on what I didn’t do or what didn’t go well, so I often forget what was actually truly great. So the celebration exercise always makes me feel better. Something I don’t always do is set specific goals for the coming year. But as I always tell my clients, setting specific goals is really the only way you can make sure you’re going to achieve them. And those goals need to mean something to you. They shouldn’t just be random goals that you can check off a list, or goals that you choose because other people are doing them. They have to be meaningful and life-giving for you.

I tend to focus on what I didn’t do or what didn’t go well, so I often forget what was actually truly great.

Here are my goals for 2020:

Get My Health Back On Track

If you know me, you know I have a nearly uncontrollable sweet tooth. If you give me a bag of Hershey’s Kisses or Hugs, I can finish it pretty quickly and with ease. You also might know that I’ve been struggling with my hormones and my weight for the past several years. I have both PCOS and hypothyroidism, which can both make it easy to gain weight and difficult to lose weight. PCOS also makes me more predisposed to get diabetes at some point. So these things do not mesh well with my sweet tooth or my desire to be a generally healthy person. Working from home over the past two years has also made it so that I’m not moving my body as much as I used to. All that said, I’ve lost touch with prioritizing my health and I really want to get back to that again. For me, this will look like exercising more often (whether that is going to the gym or just walking more in general), eating better (more whole foods, less candy), and

Start A Family

I’ve been talking about this to all of my friends and some of my family, but I haven’t talked about it very publicly on my business platforms. But this year, I really want to start a family with my husband. I’ve gone through a journey when it comes to wanting to have kids. When I was very young, all I wanted to do was get married and immediately have five children. Five! But then I grew up a little bit and was convinced by age 20 that I didn’t want kids at all. And who would get married, anyway?? However, once Dan and I got married, my thought and desires changed quite a bit. Long story short, I got baby fever pretty fast. We wanted to allow ourselves to be married for a little while before we made the decision to start a family, and now that it’s been over a year, I’m ready! I don’t know what our exact timeline is yet (and life and my body might have their own plans), but this is a big goal on my list this year.

Max Out All Retirement Funds

Dan got laid off at the end of December. It was very sad and very stressful. But luckily, Dan is fantastic at what he does and has a new job lined up for early February. Not only that, but it’s coming with a healthy raise. As I’ve written about before, a great way to avoid lifestyle creep is to save and/or invest as much as you can before the money hits your checking account. So the plan is for Dan to max out his 401k contribution, plus get the match from his new employer. We both opened a Roth IRA last year (which I maxed out in 2019!) and we are going to max them out this year too. I also have a SEP IRA, which I’m able to contribute up to 25 percent of my profit in a calendar year. I maxed it out in 2019, and I plan to max it out again in 2020.

Save Up For and Travel More

Dan and I are heading to Japan in less than two weeks! This is a big trip that has been a lifelong dream for Dan. And if you’ve been following along, you know we were just in Peru last November. Travel has always been something that we both value and we love to do together. And especially with our plans to start a family sometime soon, we want to prioritize our bucket list destinations. In order to do that, we need to set enough money aside to take advantage of good deals. Our tentative goal is to save $5,000 for travel throughout the year. Some of the other trips we hope to take are Mexico City, Oaxaca, Yosemite National Park, and Redwoods National Park.

Replenish Our Emergency Fund

At the end of 2018, Dan and I met with our financial advisor, Jessie Hill, and she told us that we had too much liquid cash in savings! That’s something I never thought I’d hear, but Dan and I had both saved up separate hefty emergency funds and it was much more money than six months worth of expenses. So Jessie recommended that we either invest some of that money or do something with it that we wanted to do. We decided in the spring to buy a car in cash. That cost just over half of what we had saved in our emergency fund, which left us with enough to feel good for a while. However, when Dan found out he was going to be laid off, I realized that I didn’t feel secure enough with what we had saved for these situations. It could carry us for a couple months but not much longer than that. Plus, we want to start a family, so we’ll need even more money set aside for emergencies. So I plan to put the majority of my business income into our emergency funds (we each have one) until we hit our goal.

Create At Least One Online Course

A goal I’ve had for a while now is to create online courses for my business. I really want to reach more people at a more affordable price point while still increasing my business income. Courses are said to be a great way to do that! I’ve allowed myself to keep kicking this goal down the road because I didn’t really know where to start. But I’m determined to to launch a course by the end of the first quarter of 2020! Relatedly, what kind of course would you want to see from me? Share in the comments or email me at [email protected]!

Increase My Business Revenue By 40 Percent

In 2019, I earned 40 percent more money with my business than I did in 2018. It didn’t seem like much in actual income, but percentage-wise, it was pretty impressive! Mapping it out made me feel proud of myself and what I accomplished last year. And if I can replicate that same progress this year, I would be pretty happy with that number.

That’s what I have on my list for now, though I’m sure more goals will pop up during the year. What are your goals for 2020? Share in the comments!

Make sure that you celebrate 2019 and plan for 2020 this year! Download and print this worksheet to get you started.