Welcome to 2019!

I hope you had a wonderful time saying goodbye to 2018 and hello to 2019. I know I did. As always, I’m ready for the new and fresh start that January 1 brings and cannot wait to tell you all the goals I plan to achieve in 2019.

Did you set a goal or a New Year’s Resolution? If not, why not check out my 5-Day Achieve Your Goals Email Series that will get you on the right track to achieving those goals this year!

2019: Successful Goals Start With a Plan

As far as my goals go, as I always recommend you do, I’ve split them up into the following categories.

Personal and Family Goals

For me, it’s often hard to separate my personal and family goals, because the things I love to do normally involve my family as well. This year, I think I’ve found a healthy mix.

Goal #1: Remain Active

My first personal goal is simple, really, I want to make sure that I continue to work out six to seven days per week for a minimum of 20 minutes. I started this goal back at the beginning of October 2018 and haven’t missed a day yet. In fact, by setting such a low minute goal, I’m more likely to get started exercising and keep it up for much longer (sometimes over an hour!).

Goal #2: Take a Vacation

One of the goals I have for my family this year is that we will actually take a vacation together. It might be hard (especially given our financial goals below), but even a weekend away to enjoy some time together would be valuable for each of us.

Goal #3: Daughter to Grade Level

I’ve recently started homeschooling my daughter, mostly due to how far she’s fallen behind in school. My goal for this year is to remain focused on her education as much as possible so that we can (hopefully) get her up to grade level by the end of the calendar year.

Financial Goals

Justin and I took the time to sit down and decide what our financial goal for 2019 would be. We didn’t want it to be an easy-to-attain goal, because we both want to be purposeful in achieving something greater than we have in the past. In the end, we came up with two goals and I’m happy (and nervous) to tell you about them here.

Goal #1: Pay off $23,000 in Debt

This is a goal I was really nervous about setting, especially since we let go of a full-time income last year. Reasonably, $15,000 would probably be attainable, but we aren’t willing to settle and plan on working harder than ever to meet this goal. So, we are going to pay off $23,000 in debt in 2019.

We will start by paying off our very last credit card and then will focus mostly on a small car payment we have and student loans. It’s not glamorous, but it’ll be nice to see a chunk of it go away.

Goal #2: Save $10,000 for a Large Purchase

We’ve been working for a while to purchase a travel trailer or motorhome for vacation purposes and we are still quite a bit off from our goal, so this year we’ve decided to ramp up the savings to the best of our ability and see if we can’t just reach that $10,000 goal.

Bonus

A bonus for you in 2019 is that you will get the opportunity to track my debt payoff and savings goals yourself. On the last Friday of each month, I will post a recap from that month letting you in on how much we’ve saved and paid off over the course of that month and year-to-date. I’m hopeful it might encourage you to be transparent with your big picture goals so that you can make progress with them as well!

Career Goals

Of course, 2019 brings with it a lot of opportunity for career (i.e. blogging) growth.

Goal #1: Personal Coaching

I just recently launched Personal and Group Goals Accountability sessions (find more HERE) and am incredibly excited to get started. Ultimately, I want to partner with individuals that want to make a difference in their lives but aren’t quite sure how to make it all happen over the long-term. I understand that sometimes all that’s needed is someone to listen, help with any troubleshooting, and keep up a little accountability.

Goal #2: Blog Two Times Per Week

My second goal for 2019 involves continuing to provide you with new and useful content twice per week. That’s not going to change in 2019 and you should continue to see new blog posts launched each Monday and Thursday (excluding all major holidays).

Goal #3: Encouragement Challenge

In addition to a typical blog post twice per week, starting today, I’m launching a new Encouragement Challenge Series. It will be a once per week series (similar to that of our Real-Life Family Finance Series) and will come out each and every Tuesday throughout the year.

Topics will be varied; however, the idea of this challenge is simply to encourage you to think outside of your own busy life to some solutions for simplification in your own home, addressing areas of relationship throughout the year (let’s keep that feeling of joy going), and taking a break throughout to reflect on your long-term plans. Check out the first challenge HERE.

Goal #4: A Savings Challenge

Each month, in an attempt not only to increase our savings and debt payoff but to encourage you to do the same, I’ll be embracing a different type of challenge. The challenge will change each month, will be directly related to saving money, and I’d love to have you join me in this, so check back the first Friday of each month for that month’s challenge.

Goal #5: A Book and a Planner

I’ve still got a book for busy moms in the works and am hoping to have that in your hands by mid- to end-2019. Additionally, I’m working on a goals-based planner. If you know me at all, you know I love having a plan in place and goals are huge for me, so stay tuned for more details on that coming Summer 2019.

Update: It’s HERE – grab yours today!

Word of the Year: Impact

I’m jumping on the bandwagon with the word of the year craze. Sure, I had a word last year, but I didn’t stick with it as much as I thought I should have. This year…this year that changes.

I heard a quote (and for the life of me cannot remember who said it), but it stuck with me.

“The impact is more important than the insecurity.” – Unknown

I tend to overthink things. Most of it is due to insecurity, I mean, why would anyone listen to me? Why would anyone want my input? What if I don’t really have anything to contribute?

Do you ever have those feelings?

I’ve determined, that I’m not going to let insecurity rule my life this year. I’ve been convicted that I’ve waited far too long to choose confidence so, if you read through my goals and found them to be a little over the top in places, just know that my new goal is to dream bigger than I ever have before.

Here’s the truth: even if I don’t make it all the way to my goals – I’ll have made great progress in the right direction. Any impact is better than none, right?

What about you? What progress will you make this year?