Lazy Man and Money

2020 Goals and Resolutions

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New Year's ResolutionsWe’re solidly into 2020 now, most people have their resolutions set and are working on them. Last year, I didn’t get them done until late February. This year I’m already ahead of the game as I have most of them outlined.

Outlined is the operative word. I don’t them fully organized. Hopefully by the end of the month, I can put them into a pretty spreadsheet like Joe from Retire By 40 does. For now, I’m just happy to have several areas to work on and have them broken into months.

Here we go (in no particular order):

Lazy Man and Money Goals

I have a lot of goals with this blog. I need to put more of a priority than I have on it over the last few years. I’m doing so much other stuff that it’s been difficult. I can be more efficient with my time. Here are some things I’m looking at:

Content Audit

With 14 years of blogging now, I’ve got a lot of old articles that frankly aren’t very good. Blogging in 2006 was about expressing an idea quickly. It wasn’t about having a fully polished article that you might read in a magazine. The idea was to get feedback and begin a discussion. Nowadays, this is happening on Twitter and Facebook. Blogging nowadays is about having a full polished article of more than 2000 words. Many of my articles in 2006-2007 were about 300-400 words.

A content audit is when a publisher goes back and looks at the old articles and says, “Is this still useful today? Is it polished? Can I make this better?” I need to do this with all my old articles. It would be very unusual if I didn’t learn anything over the last 14 years, so I should be able to make the articles better. One example of this is my article on investing in condo hotels.

For 2020, I’d like to pick one year each month and do a content audit on it. It’s a very aggressive goal to tackle a whole year of content in just one month, but anything is an improvement. Maybe in 2021, I do it all over again. With only 12 months to the year, I won’t get to the full 14 years of content, but the last year or two of content is modern enough.

Get Active in Social Media

I’m active on Twitter. I’d love to grow my 6,500 followers to 10,000, but I’m not actively researching how to do it. Maybe one month in 2020, I will look up ways to grow your Twitter account. That seems reasonable even if the research doesn’t lead to any action and nothing comes of it.

I’d prefer to learn more about Pinterest. I’ve outsourced my Pinterest account in the past, but it seems impossible to retain anyone. Also, it usually costs hundreds of dollars a month, and I’m not sure I’m able to get a return on that spending. I was hoping to hire someone who could guarantee me results or at least make it a significant part of the payment, but everyone rejected me. It seems that many Pinterest specialists don’t believe in themselves to drive traffic.

I’d also like to do more with Instagram and Facebook. I don’t do much with them now so this would be a low bar to reach.

Since there are about four services, I expect to spend a quarter of the year rotating through them month-to-month with my focus.

Other Lazy Man and Money Stuff

I need to do some design upgrades. I’m not sure how relevant my Feedburner number is considering it was shut down in 2012.

I also need to reach out to more bloggers to collaborate with them. I’ve already started on that with a few. My goal is to do something with 3-5 bloggers a month – hopefully a lot of new ones who I don’t necessarily talk to on social media.

Finally, I’d like to publish 100 articles here this year. That’s two a week, which will be difficult, especially if I’m guest posting on other sites. At Retireby40, Joe uses an academic system, where if he get 85 he’ll give himself a B. I think I’ll adopt the same here, because I don’t think I’ll get an A+ on this due to vacations and other life interruptions.

Health

It wouldn’t be a New Year’s Resolution without something related to health, right?

Diet

This year, I’ve created a spreadsheet of several different healthy activities that I can do or could do. There a diet side with things like intermittent fasting, eat one low/no-carb meal, have one of my super protein shakes, etc. It’s any one thing that’s in my extreme diet. For the last several years I wouldn’t do any of them in a typical day, so if I can get one of them for most days, I’ll be doing well.

Body/Exercise

On the other side of the spreadsheet, I have a list of body/exercise items. They include things like running, weights, push-ups, and even brushing/flossing/flouriding. I count the teeth and the push-ups as half points. That way, even if it’s raining and I can’t make it to the gym, I should still be able to do push-ups and take awesome care of my teeth. Like the diet items above, I hadn’t been the best of doing this in 2019, so tracking and scoring points should motivate to do more.

Overall, I’d like to end 2020 having ran a 5K with a stretch goal of running 5 miles. I’d also like to lose 20-25 pounds to get my BMI in a healthy range. I had ballooned up over the holidays, but so far I’m down 5 pounds. Losing weight is always a difficult one, but hopefully my spreadsheet of diet and exercise keeps me accountable. That will also make it easier to run a 5K.

Declutter

Last year, I aimed to declutter one area of the house each month. I was successful only half the time with this. Half is better than nothing and despite adding more stuff as we always seem to do, things are less cluttered than they were a year ago. That goal is the same this year.

In addition to that, I’m adding two more decluttering plans:

  1. Post 5+ items on Ebay/Craigslist/Facebook Marketplace/etc. a month – My wife has been doing this in the past, but I need to contribute. I don’t know if the things I post will sell, but that’s the goal over time.
  2. Do a browser tab declutter 3x a month – I have been known to keep hundreds of browser tabs open. That’s simply not useful. I need to take a few hours a month and just trim down all the old stuff that I thought would be interesting “one day.”

Productivity

I’m still working on what I want to do for this section. The only thing I do know is that the Pomodoro Technique works well for me, but I struggle to keep using it. I want to measure how many days I can do it each month. If I can do it 20 times a month, it would be almost perfect since I wouldn’t use it on the weekends.

Kids

Usually, I have a bunch of things that I want the kids to learn. This year they are getting old enough to tell me what they want to do… and that they don’t want to do some things. The six year old is usually open to anything, while the 7 year old is starting to become very picky.

One of my goals is to stress more coding toys. I think we must own every robot or kids computer course by now. I think some of it is starting to work, but it’s a little slow going at this age. I was happy to find this Artie 3000 which teaches Logo, perfect for kids this age.

We’ll have to see what else we can do.

Money Goals

Since this website is all about money, you’d think I would have a lot of money goals. Unfortunately, I do not. Our savings are largely tied to the stock and real estate markets. I don’t think it makes sense to create a goal around something you can’t control.

We’ll do the usual saving and investing like we do every year. That’s not much of a goal since it’s been on autopilot for so long.

This year, I’d like to get an estate plan and all the documents that go with it together. I’ve tried to do this in the past, but I ran into blockers that didn’t make it possible. (I’m not going to get into specifics of why.)

One money goal is to make $75,000 working from home. I came close to that in 2019, falling just 10-20% short. Maybe I can find one more freelancing gig or something else that I can monetize. That’s a reasonable goal, right?

Special Projects

Every year, I have a few long term projects of things that I’d like to do. I have quite a few things that I think are interesting, but none that excite me. That means it’s going to be difficult for me to prioritize them. However, here are a few and hopefully, I can put more thought into this by the first report in February.

  • Create a Long-term Bucket List – It seems like bucket lists come natural to other people. They want to swim with dolphins or hike in Australia. I don’t have too many of these things. Maybe it’s because I simply don’t enjoy travel. Maybe it’s because traveling with young kids isn’t easy. I should be able to come up with some things though, right? Maybe there’s a website of crowdsourced bucket lists where I can get ideas.
  • Improve my Japanese – In 2019, I completed around 250 consecutive days of Japanese with Duolingo. As impressive as that sounds, I can’t say much. I need to spend more than 5 minutes a night and it wouldn’t hurt to use other tools like those suggested by Adam at MinaFi. At the same time, I’m not passionate about learning Japanese. The 5 minutes a night may be a good way to make slow, gradual improvements over a long time, which suits me just fine.
  • Create a YouTube Channel – This is the one I’m most passionate about. I want to learn how to film and edit video. (If you have suggestions on how to best do this on Windows, please leave a comment). I have two child actors, age 6 and 7 who would love to put on productions. I like the idea of them getting more comfortable in front of a camera. I don’t think we’ll make a channel that brings in significant money, but learning the skills can only help us all in the future.
  • Self Publish a Book – I have 3 or 4 ideas of books that I think would do really well. I’m not sure if I’m ever going to have the time to put it all together especially with all the work I want to do for Lazy Man and Money. However, it would be good to have a product to sell on the site. It would help with my income goals.

Final Thoughts

There’s a lot here, more than enough to keep me busy for a year. I’m not sure how it’s going to go, but I’m banking on the monthly updates keeping me going.

So far, I’ve done well on most of the health goals this year, but I’ve fallen behind on everything else. I think it may be because I have that part of my spreadsheet set up and little else. The accountability is easy. We haven’t had a day yet this year where someone in the house wasn’t sick, so my schedule has been off.

2019 Year In Review

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New Year's Resolutions
It’s close enough to New Year’s for this, right?

We’ve got less than 12 hours left in the decade. I bet most of you will be reading this next decade. This is perhaps the last best chance to review the last 12 months, before looking forward to the 2020s.

2019 Goals and plans

Back in late February, I created my 2019 goals and plans. I’m terrible with creating goals and worse in following through with them. Hey, life gets busy and honestly, most of the time I was just treading water with a 5 and a 6 year old. If I can stay one step ahead of them, I’m winning the game.

I divided those goals and plans into a few separat areas:

Prioritize Productivity

I was going to plan my most productive day, execute the Pomodoro technique, make SMARTER goals, and review my old how to be successful guide from 2006.

In reality, I executed the Pomodoro technique on a handful of days… and when I did they went very well. The rest of the time, I was executing short-term errands and mini-emergencies. I didn’t get to any of the other stuff.

In 2020, I’ll need to do better by tracking and grading myself on these and perhaps putting up visual reminders in the house. I will not be making a dream board though. (Or maybe I should?)

Everything Kids

In 2019, I went from being the ultimate helicopter parent to the anti-helicopter parent. I still have an eye on the boys at all times, but now I let them make their own mistakes and learn from them. The 7 year old is probably more functional than anyone else I know (including myself), so it’s easy to just say, “You can do it. I believe in you.” We’re not there with the 6 year old, but he’s made great progress.

Readers who follows my alternative income streams updates, can see that we’ve been on a lot of adventures from Disney World, New York City (twice!), Hershey Park, and Aruba, to many local events that happen every week. We were everywhere, doing everything. Many times it was something as simple as going to weekly chess club or a 5-minute drive to the beach.

The oldest has joined the Cub Scouts and is doing well with that. We went on a couple of overnights and it’s a good way to learn and reinforce “life skills.” The youngest took a second season of soccer, but the mid-week practice started to get too much for him. They both tried piano, guitar, and ukulele, but it was a better fit for the oldest for now. Five years old might have been too early for the youngest to try music. We often experience a trickle-down effect where the oldest will teach his younger brother, so maybe that will happen with music.

Academically, the boys continue to grow. We continue to invest in private school and it seems to be paying off. If anything, the school is too easy and boring for them. That’s a good problem to have I suppose. They are still obsessed with Pokemon, so I have used that to teach them all kinds of math and science. Someday, I’ll have to write an epic article on the topic. (It may just be epic to me because I didn’t know what a Pokemon was 18 months ago.)

My biggest concern going into 2020 is that they kids are becoming too spoiled. We’ve done so much and I think they may take it for granted that it’s just “normal”. Newport, RI is not the real world. It’s a weird bubble that is unlike most of America. And their school is a weird bubble inside of that bubble. I’m not sure how to balance the realities of the world (as I see them) with the endless possibilities of a world where “everything is awesome.” Whoa, I got a little deep there, let’s reel this back.

Clean/Organize

We made very average progress with cleaning and organizing. The basement got a 50% cleaning and the garage about a 25% cleaning. We were able to sell some things through a church yard sale. We still have a lot more to sell. Most of the postings don’t get responses unless we put it on Freecycle, where things move quickly. Sometimes I think it would be a great challenge to just live off of Freecycle stuff for a year. This would be a great reality television show.

We recently bought an Ikea Kura loft bed for our youngest son’s room. That’s created a lot of space underneath for storage and play. It’s pushed us to redesign his room as well. This has helped with the cleaning and organizing, because now the kids use both their rooms instead of always the same room. We can now disperse throughout both rooms.

We also did an extensive residing and painting of the house. It didn’t reduce the clutter inside the house, of course, but it certainly improved the overall appearance. We have a few more smaller projects like these to tackle in 2020.

The most important thing is that we reduced the clutter enough to invite people over. Of course, whenever we did that we found that as we reduced the visible primary clutter the secondary clutter would become more visible. In short, the more we cleaned the more the unorganized places stood out like a sore thumb.

Vacations

I detailed the vacations in the “Everything Kids” section above. We did more than we thought we would. Someday I’d like to go on more educational vacations (especially Europe!), but for now roller coasters and water parks suit us well.

2019 Financials

Most of our net worth is in stocks and real estate. We naturally tend to invest in those two areas… and they have compounded extremely well over the years. At this point, the compound interest river might as well be white water rapids. We just want to make sure that we steer clear of a crash. At the same time, we might be on this river for another 40 years (or more!) so it doesn’t make sense to get conservative with our investments.

At the start of the year, the market had a quick collapse and was getting back up to speed. In many ways, we were starting at a dip. However, the stock market, rigged with corporate tax cuts and stock buy-backs, just took off. By most measures, it’s up anywhere from 25-30%.

Our real estate holdings have lagged the market “only” returning 20%. That “only” is a joke, because that’s obviously a great return on real estate in a year. Of course that also includes us paying off mortgages, so it’s not an exact mathematical return. That 20% represents just the growth in equity we’ve seen.

We won’t have our December numbers finalized for another week, but our net worth was up 31% through early December. It’s been a great December, so it may fall in at an even 1/3rd (well as “even” as an odd number with an infinitely repeating decimal can be).

After focusing on personal finance for decades now, it’s very unusual to see these kinds of gains at this stage. At the end of the year, I did a little portfolio rebalancing to increase our bond holdings.

Net worth

My 2019 goals hoped for a net worth return of 20%, so 33% was above and beyond what we reasonably could have hoped for. I wasn’t expecting much from the stock market, but I was very, very wrong.

Passivish Income

For me, “passivish” income is equity and real estate income. If I had some royalties that would qualify as well. In February, we were averaging around $39,000 based on the equity in our rental properties and what our dividends could be (if we invested with that goal). My goal was to get that up to $45,000 a year, which typically requires a lot of growth. We found a great investment opportunity and we earned an annualized $57,500 as of November. We couldn’t have asked for better. The only downside is that much of this is accounts we can’t touch (retirement) or equity in real estate.

Work on Energi Gal’s Retirement Plans

This past year my wife qualified for her 20-year military pension. That pension is worth a lot of money over a lot of years. If we had access to the passive income above, we’d be in a good position to retire without my own self-employment income (see below).

In the February update I explained that we have the kids at a tremendous private school with a huge active duty discount. If my wife retires we may lose that discount at the school (that we value greatly). That would make the cost rise tens of thousands of dollars at the same time that the main family income stream drops 60%. One goal was to talk to the school about what kind of deal we could work out, but it didn’t happen. My wife has gone back and forth on retirement so I’m letting her direct the action on this one.

I’d like to see her create a plan of what she’d be retiring to. From personal experience, I can say this is very important. I don’t think she has a plan at this time. I think it’s something we can work on in 2020, but it really has to come from her.

Make $75,000 in Self-Employment Income

One of my income streams largely dried up in 2019. I came about 10-20% short of this goal. Considering that was a stretch goal, I won’t beat myself up about it too much. Earning income isn’t my number one priority and I think many, many people would be very happy with this kind of income while trying to manage a household and kids.

I’ve spent some of my time shopping smart and being frugal. That leads me to save a lot of money on food costs. These kinds of Aldi chicken deals happen regularly. This is just one example of how measuring income is different than measuring value.

Health

I also set a few health goals:

Eat More Fruits and Vegetables

One of my goals was to eat more fruits and vegetables. I was able to keep that habit for about 3 months, but after a two-week vacation in Florida, I fell back into old habits. I’ve since gotten a little better, but it is still too inconsistent. On the plus side, even 3 months of eating fruits and vegetables is better than zero months.

Exercise With My Wife and Do a 5K

I’m combining these two. I didn’t end up going to the gym with my wife a single time. She really embraced running and went from doing a couple of 5Ks to doing a 10K earlier this month. Though I didn’t get to the gym with her, I did run with her a bit and I’ve been able to manage to do some combination of running/walking 2 miles in 22 minutes. I need to work more on distance, breathing, and pacing, but a 5K this year should be possible. My wife booked a 10-miler for May. I got my work cut out for me to keep up with her.

Overall, I didn’t well with my health goals. I’m sure many of you may feel the same way. That’s why so many New Year Resolutions are about losing weight and getting healthier.

Miscellaneous Goals

I didn’t learn to fly or sign up for a Masterclass. However, I did complete more than 200 consecutive days of Japanese on Duolingo. It’s not something that I’m excited about learning, but I’m excited about learning something. Somehow Duolingo keeps me on track and this has become a good habit.

Final Thoughts

It’s a good time to reiterate my final thoughts when creating my 2019 goals:

I feel that this post may be a microcosm of how 2019 is shaping up for me. I think I rushed through it. It’s almost as if I’m reacting to the hectic pace of life around me rather than planning and methodically moving towards the goal.

On the other hand, publishing imperfect content and feelings is what I have always loved about blogging. There should be an expectation that things are a little rough around the edges.

That sums up everything very well. I’m constantly rushed to get the next thing done and feel like I’m trying to just get to “good enough.” Some of that is poor time management. A lot of it just trying to squeeze every event possible in. In some ways they seem to go hand-in-hand. Since we’re rushing around so much to squeeze everything in, the rest of the time I want to relax. This doesn’t leave a lot of leftover focus for long-term yearly goals.

Creating My 2019 Goals and Plans

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February is almost over so it’s a good time to create my goals and plans for 2019. My first goal is stop procrastinating. I guess I already failed on that one ;-). I admire all the bloggers out there who have their act together and get these things out in late December or even the first week or two of January.

Before I jump into 2019, I have to very briefly review 2018. There’s a saying that you can’t get to where you want to go if you don’t know where you are. Like every year, I had a lot of grand plans in 2018 and like every year, I feel like I didn’t get them done. That feeling doesn’t always match up with reality. Part of the problem is that I planned for the year to go one way, but life doesn’t go as planned. You learn to pivot and adjust for a new course. So even though I didn’t stick to many of the plans, I can look back at 2018 and consider it a success.

Prioritizing Productivity

Last year, I created a brief productivity plan. I’ll try to remind myself to focus more on these in 2019:

  1. Plan my most productive day – I’m self-employed and work from home full-time. That works for a lot of people. It’s not ideal for me, but it’s necessary to support the kids and my wife’s military career.
  2. Work with Pomodoro Technique – I find that I’m most productive when I’m using the Pomodoro Technique, which is a method consisting of working hard for a while and taking short breaks. This goes hand-in-hand with the above item.
  3. Making SMARTER Goals – I’ve been writing about making SMARTER goals for more than a decade and I still have trouble doing it.
  4. Review my old Success Guide – I wrote an article How to be Successful around 2006. It’s a good time to review my thoughts from a dozen years ago and see what I can take away for 2019. With a wife and kids, I’m in a very different place in life.

Those are tools. They may help get something done, but they aren’t the goals that I want to accomplish.

Home and Family

Let’s start the list with the most important items… home and family.

Everything Kids

This is an overly broad item. Every parent has a focus on their kids (I hope). I helicopter more than most. Part of the reason I consider 2018 a success is that I feel very comfortable about the quality of time spent in this area.

In 2018, we tried a lot of new things like soccer, swimming, chess, cooking, and ice skating. Swimming, chess, and cooking were the only activities that seemed to stick. We’re looking karate, more team sports, piano, and maybe a beginning computer programming class (designed by myself). I want them to experience as much as possible.

I thought about not mentioning this because I don’t plan on quantifying it. However, it dominates almost every other goal or activity, so it was impossible to leave out.

Clean/Organize

I’ve had that KonMari book in my Amazon cart (saved for later) for probably 5 years now. Someday I’ll pull the trigger. Last year, we made major progress in cleaning and organizing by buying a few IKEA Kallaxs.

Unfortunately, we I haven’t had the time to organize them efficiently. We also have a whole garage and basement in desperate need of cleaning and organizing.

The goal for 2019 is to pick one area a month and clean and organize that. In January we did a lot of the office stuff. In February, we did much of the kitchen. The garage and basement are probably going to take a couple of months. They are bigger projects because disposing some of the stuff is very large and can only be thrown out at certain times of the year. Some other things are sold on Ebay/Craigslist and they take a long time to go.

We’ll try to have a yard sale too, but I often find that they are a lot of work for almost literally a dime or nickel here and there.

The very next step I need to take to is to match up areas with months. That will help with accountability.

Vacations

Once again, we have a lot of vacations planned for 2019. We’ll be going to Disney World for the third time. What’s unique about it is that we have never actually planned or wanted to go to Disney World. It’s happened through some outside source or circumstance combined with my wife’s military status allowing us to hack a relatively cheap Disney trip. This year, the kids’ grandpa wanted to use his timeshare to spend time with the kids.

We’ll also take our annual staycation to disappear to Block Island. It’s good to get away from technology for a bit.

We may go to our timeshare in Aruba, but we might also sell the week this year and use the money for a cruise. I usually like to break up the New England winter with a trip to someplace warm and tropical.

We’re trying to fit in one more small road trip. We’d like to drive to New York City to explore for a few days and then continue to Pennsylvania and Hershey’s Park. It’s been a couple of years since we’ve been there and that’s too long. It’s much, much cheaper than Disney and the kids enjoy it just as much, so it’s a shame to not do it more often.

Money

Since this is a personal finance website, I feel like I should make some money goals.

First, I have a confession. I have problems making money goals. That’s not a good thing for a personal finance blogger.

One of the problems is that I don’t track our savings and I don’t stick to a budget. I just believe in making frugal choices. I watch the big expenses and don’t have a lot of daily spending habits (i.e. latte factor). It seems to work well for us.

However, I’m not going to use that as a free pass. I’ve come up with some money goals.

Net Worth

When most of your money is in the stock market or real estate, it’s not a good idea to set net worth goals. I can’t control what those markets do over the next year.

However, I can’t resist setting a goal for net worth. I consider it the most important number in personal finance. In general, as long as this is going up, we are making good financial progress.

My goal this year is to grow our net worth 20%. That doesn’t mean much to you because I’m not saying what our net worth is to start. If we had $10 to our name, we could find two dollars on the street and reach that goal. However, we’re at the point where it’s getting tough to grow. Last year our net worth went up only about 7%.

How do we get to 20% in 2019? I made a website sale in early January and our net worth was up nearly 15%. That leaves us with another 5% to go. It may seem easy, but I don’t expect the stock market to do much this year.

“Passivish” income

I keep track of my “passivish” income every month. This is money in real estate or the stock market. I massage the numbers liberally as I explain in the link before. Once massaged, the result is a number of monthly income we could expect to earn from rentals and dividends.

At the start of February our “passivish” income was $39,223. My goal is to end 2019 with $45,000 or more.

Make More Progress on Energi Gal’s Retirement Plans

I started this blog 13 years ago, because my wife would be able to retire with 20 years of military service with a pension of 50% of her base pay. I didn’t want to continue doing traditional office work another 22 years after she was done. This year is year 20 for her. It’s very close to “Go time.”

Things have changed over the years. We moved to California and then back to New England. We got a dog. We got a house. We had two boys. We bought two new cars. We invested in retirement plans and rental properties.

The biggest thing that I couldn’t predict was that we’d have the very good problem of having the boys in a great private school at a great military discount. However, if my wife retires we may lose that military discount. That makes the expense go up tens of thousands of dollars at a time when income drops in half. No bueno!

An obvious solution is to send the kids to public school. However, we’re hoping we can find a way to work something out with the school. That’s a conversation that I hope we can have sometime this year.

Beyond the numbers, there’s a more psychological goal, but this one isn’t for me. My wife has to figure out what kind of work (if any) would make her happy. We made some good progress on that this week. Unfortunately, it’s far from a polished plan… or a plan of any kind.

It takes awhile to retire from the military. My wife says it is an 18-month process. So even after we get some of the answers to the questions, we got some time to implement all the plans.

Make $75,000 in self-employment income

Blogging income can be all over the place. I’ve picked up a couple of steady contract jobs to supplement that. I also do a lot of dog sitting. That’s four sources of income that I hope can add up to $75K. It’s a stretch goal.

Health

I’ve found that the “lose 10 pounds” goals typically don’t work for me. I’m not alone in that.

Eat More Fruits and Vegetables

I’ve always been a meat and potatoes kind of guy. Except that it’s usually meat and ramen. It tastes great to me, it’s cheap, and it’s quick and easy to prepare. It’s not the healthiest way to eat obviously.

I often buy fruits and vegetables, but they sit in the “drawer of death” in the fridge and never get eaten. However, over the last four weeks, I’ve been doing something different. I’ve been eating a lot of broccoli, carrots, tomatoes, and nuts. I went to the local Dollar Tree and got some stackable 1 cup containers. I fill them up with cut broccoli and baby carrots. Each day I take out two of them and put them on the counter to snack on throughout the day.

This tiny change of habit has worked wonders.

I’ve added tomatoes and nuts to the routine. I think I’ll do strawberries and blueberries as well.

Exercise with my Wife

I haven’t put in consistent time in the gym for several years now. I didn’t have easy gym access for awhile in CA and walking my dog felt like all the exercise time I had available. By the time we moved back to the east coast, there were babies to take care of. In short, I have a pile of excuses.

My wife has made time to get to the gym (it’s a military requirement for her), so I need to start doing the same. We’ll pay a small amount more ($15) to upgrade to the family membership at the local YMCA, vs. the previous plan that included her and the kids.

Run a 5K (stretch goal 5 miles?)

My wife has run a couple of 5Ks over the last two years. She’s looking to do a 10K this year. I’d like to get in shape enough to do it with her.

Miscellaneous

I need to look into some fun things for myself. My problem is that I’m not sure what I find fun anymore. I think I need to get into something completely new an random. I’m toying with the idea of learning to fly with a flight simulator or signing up for Masterclass.

If anyone has any suggestions, let me know in the comments.

Final 2019 Goal Thoughts

I feel that this post may be a microcosm of how 2019 is shaping up for me. I think I rushed through it. It’s almost as if I’m reacting to the hectic pace of life around me rather than planning and methodically moving towards the goal.

On the other hand, publishing imperfect content and feelings is what I have always loved about blogging. There should be an expectation that things are a little rough around the edges.

Reviewing my 2018 Goals and Plans

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It’s January 3rd and I already feel behind on 2019. Most of the bloggers somehow managed to write their year-end recaps at the end of year.

On the positive side, I created my 2018 Goals and Plans in February. In comparison, I’m doing quite well.

In last year’s article, I listed a bunch of quick excuses why I didn’t accomplish as much as I wanted in 2017. I was the main care-giver for a 3 and 4 year old. I spent a lot of time reading politics. I was being sued for defamation, which can be a multi-millionaire affair… not like a 30 minute Judge Judy thing that you might expect.

In recapping 2018, much of the same was true, except that the boys are a year older. Oh and I won that lawsuit! For the first time in about 6 years, I have no pending defamation lawsuits… and I didn’t lose a single one. One thing that I’ve learned in the process is that, for independent publishers, there’s no such thing as freedom of speech against large corporations. The legal system hasn’t evolved from antiquated state laws that were better designed to protect big news media such as HBO or the New York Times.

Sorry about the rant, but one New York woman was sued for a million dollars due to a negative Yelp review. It’s cost her more than $20,000 to defend initially and spiraled out of control for just talking about the case.

Let’s move on…

Last year I shared the Four Burners theory:

Essentially you imagine your life is a stove with different burners. They represent family, friends, health, and work. The theory is that to “be successful you have to cut off one of your burners. To be really successful you have to cut off two.”

I don’t really believe it’s healthy to cut off any of those burners (especially the “health” one, because that would be the definition of unhealthy). I believe in trying to find a balance among them all. I know that I won’t be Julian Michaels (health) or Jeff Bezos (money), but I don’t need to be. I like to think you define successful yourself.

To make this analogy more difficult, none of these burners include any time for yourself. It is very important to read a book, watch a favorite show/movie, meditate, journal, or enjoy your favorite hobby…

… So, I’ve got to manage five burners, which is now two more than I should have to be successful.

For the past few years, the gas in my five burners has been about 45% family, 35% work, and 10% myself, 5% health, and 5% friends.

I’m not sure that’s a good mix. I’m curious what your mix is. (Let me know in the comments.)

I decided to break down my goals and plans into different areas.

Productivity

I’m going to give myself a grade of C in Productivity. That might be overly generous too.

My plan was to do the following 4 things:

  1. I will be more organized and reduce clutter. I’ve let too much pile up over the last year or two. It’s time to reduce and simplify.
  2. I will plan my most productive day. Again, having a plan is a good thing. Executing on it is better. That’s going to be the hard part.
  3. I will stop fighting poor technology. In an effort to save money, I fought my old computer that had too little memory. It often meant waiting up to 30 seconds for a new Firefox tab to load. (I have a Firefox tab hoarding problem.) I have already solved this by buying a new computer. Now things are fast. I’ve found that I’m am more productive, but the real time spent is often in that browser tab, not just waiting for it to load.
  4. I’m going to try to use the Pomodoro Technique. I think that structure will help me get more done.

I got a little more organized at the beginning of the year and during the last couple of months of the year. We got some Ikea Kallax shelving units and it has made a huge difference.

We need to do a better job of getting rid of stuff though. By “we”, I mean “me.” My wife has continued to sell outdated kids toys on Ebay and at church yard sales. I need to be more active in these areas. Perhaps more importantly, I just need to let stuff go. It hurts me to see good functional stuff go into a landfill. It hurts me less if it goes on Freecycle, but then I think, “Shouldn’t I have been able to get a few dollars for that?”

I don’t remember planning my most productive day and I only did the Pomodoro technique about a dozen times.

The new computer did help with the fight against old technology. Unfortunately, now that it has the memory to handle hundreds of Firefox tabs, I now have hundreds of Firefox tabs. My computer is a victim of Parkinson’s Law.

Essentially, I need to consistently use the systems that I think will work for me.

Motivation

I felt like I didn’t have competitive fire going into 2018.

Throughout the year I felt like I had gathered a little more motivation, but it still isn’t where it needs to be. I’ll give myself a grade of B-. This isn’t a great goal because it is so subjective, so maybe I’ll do better in making my 2019 goals.

If you have any suggestions, please reach out in the comments.

Money

Last year, I made a note that because this is a blog about money, I should have quantifiable money goals. Unfortunately, I do not.

With much of our money in real estate and the stock market, I’m piggybacking on whatever the market does. That’s been a great thing for quite a few years. Alas, 2018 wasn’t a good year for stocks. However, our real estate did better. I’m saving the full financial analysis of 2018 for a future blog post, but I think we did quite well considering.

Since it’s foolish to make a money goal about things you don’t control, I put my focus in another area:

Charting Energy Gal’s Retirement

Few people realize that this blog was created in 2006 as an answer to my wife’s ability to retire early due to her military service. I didn’t want to work another 20 years. I wanted to spend that time with her traveling or whatever it was we found interesting.

The difficulty is that my wife’s military status gives us a great discount at a great school for the kids. Retirement likely means that income in cut substantially while those expenses double. It’s a big decision, bigger than the typical, “Can I Retire?” question that people have.

One of my goals of 2018 was to help navigate that nearly impossible task. While there are still plenty of questions to be answered, I’m giving myself my an A- on this. Financially, a few things fell into place for me and it looks like they’ll stick for some time. It could close the gap. We’ll have to run some numbers and see where things stand.

Blog, Health, and Personal Growth Goals

I lumped these all together when I made them in 2018. It’s appropriate that I give myself a failing grade at all three together in 2019. I didn’t grow my blog traffic 20% like I had hoped. In fact, it might have shrunk. I didn’t lose those 10 pounds. Our December vacation to Aruba torpedos that. (Not that I would have achieved it anyway.) I didn’t join Toastmasters as it meets at night on a day when my wife works late.

Travel/Fun

We went to Orlando twice. One we had already planned before the start of 2018. The other was for the annual FinCon conference.

We also did our annual Block Island trip. I love getting away from deadlines and even technology for a bit.

Finally, there was the aforementioned Aruba trip at the timeshare my wife bought a long, long time ago.

We’ll probably have around the same amount of vacations this year. For the most part they’ll probably be to the same places for a variety of logistical reasons. I think in 2020 we’ll start to change things up.

I’ll give myself an A on this part, simply because it’s the one area that seems to have went exactly according to plan.

Final Thoughts

2018 was the first year that I tried this kind of format in setting goals. I should have planned some goals better. I definitely could have executed better. For 2019, I want to add goals for what I hope to teach the kids and what kind of activities we’ll do.

I want to get some of these goals to be more specific and more quantifiable. I want to be able to break them down so that each quarter or even each month, I’m moving forward on some kind of plan.

And hopefully, I’ll be able to get those goals together by next week. That would put me far ahead of the February pace of last year.

Creating My 2018 Goals and Plans

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I was going to wait until April to post this, but I’m a little ahead of schedule. Seriously though, we’re in February which speaks volumes about my productivity. That’s why this might be the most important article that I write this year.

One thing I learned from 2017 is that I need structure.

I can point to a whole host of excuses reasons for why I didn’t get as much done as I wanted in 2017. I was forced to waste a lot of time on a frivolous lawsuit. I was the general care-giver to a 3 and 4 year old (more on that later). I spent a lot of time reading about politics, which seems to have taken over the general news cycle. Yada, yada, yada.

I’m not sure how much of those will change in 2018, but maybe with a list of steady goals, I can work more efficiently. Or at least I can focus on the things that are really important.

As my 7th grade math teacher had posted in one of those old dot-matrix printer banners, “Failure to plan is planning to fail.” So here’s an attempt at a plan. It might be ambitious, but why not “Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you’ll land among the stars.” (Don’t worry, I think I got all the cliche quotes out of my system.)

Four Burners Theory

I once read something brilliant called the Four Burners Theory. Essentially you imagine your life is a stove with different burners. They represent family, friends, health, and work. The theory is that to “be successful you have to cut off one of your burners. To be really successful you have to cut off two.”

I don’t really believe it’s healthy to cut off any of those burners (especially the “health” one, because that would be the definition of unhealthy). I believe in trying to find a balance among them all. I know that I won’t be Julian Michaels (health) or Jeff Bezos (money), but I don’t need to be. I like to think you define successful yourself.

To make this analogy more difficult, none of these burners include any time for yourself. It is very important to read a book, watch a favorite show/movie, meditate, journal, or enjoy your favorite hobby.

So, I’ve got to manage five burners, which is now two more than I should have to be successful.

Or in the words of Jack Johnson’s Subplots:

Well, how many subplots you got runnin’ around your mind?
The Gordian Knot must be cut through
Give me a red pen, I will simplify your story
Which part of yourself can you afford to lose?
And if you show me your list, then I will show you mine
Let’s kill off a character or two

Here’s my list. Anyone got a red pen? (Err, maybe just leave me comment at the end of this article.)

Productivity

Everyone says that they want to be more productive. It’s great to say it, but it’s hard to do it. It’s also difficult to measure.

This means that I’m going to have to revisit my old BeBetterNow Productivity Guide for some specific action items. While I would like to be more efficient with email, that’s far too broad for an action item. Instead here are a couple of specific items that I can focus on. Indirectly they’ll help with the email goal, but they aren’t about email at all.

  1. I will be more organized and reduce clutter. I’ve let too much pile up over the last year or two. It’s time to reduce and simplify.
  2. I will plan my most productive day. Again, having a plan is a good thing. Executing on it is better. That’s going to be the hard part.
  3. I will stop fighting poor technology. In an effort to save money, I fought my old computer that had too little memory. It often meant waiting up to 30 seconds for a new Firefox tab to load. (I have a Firefox tab hoarding problem.) I have already solved this by buying a new computer. Now things are fast. I’ve found that I’m am more productive, but the real time spent is often in that browser tab, not just waiting for it to load.
  4. I’m going to try to use the Pomodoro Technique. I think that structure will help me get more done.

Motivation

I need to revisit motivation. I don’t have a lot of competitive fire. After the Patriots’ impossible win in the AFC Championship game, Tom Brady said, “You need sparks. You need something to ignite you. When you’re losing, it’s which play are you going to make that’s going to kind incite everything?”

(The Patriots defense didn’t have those sparks in the Super Bowl, but let’s move on.)

I don’t have 66,000 screaming fans. I need to explore where I’m going to get those sparks from. Perhaps I’m too comfortable. I don’t have a burn the ships situation. I don’t know the exact historic root of that saying, but I guess some conquerors would burn the ships so they had nothing else to go back to. The result was that they had no choice but to win the fight.

That’s motivation, right? While I admire the dedication, as a father of a couple of boys, I won’t burn the ships. In fact, I’ll spend extra time extensively baby-proofing them.

Money

This is a blog about money, so I should probably have some firm money goals, right? Wrong.

I’ve learned that the Mr. Market does his thing. That is true for the stock and real estate markets. I’m a leaf on the wind. When I started writing this article (see the AFC reference above) the market was soaring high. In the last couple of days, it’s taken a nosedive.

It’s not wise to create a goal around something that I have zero control over. Instead, I’ll focus on the long-term, high-level goals. I may not have full control of these either, but at least I can steer my leaf in the wind in the right direction, right?

I’m putting my focus in 2018 into one thing:

Chart a Path for Energy Girl’s Retirement

I started this blog in 2006 in part because the love of my life could retire at 42 with her government pension. Would you want to work 23 more years than your spouse? Of course not!

Life takes its twists and turns and I’m fortunate to have started a family with her. Many of those 2006 thoughts are obsolete today.

She’s eligible to retire in 2019. I have about 15 months to put together a 13 year master plan. No pressure, right?

Does Facebook still allow you to have a status of “It’s complicated”? If so, that’s where this money goal is. It’s a long article on its own, but a lot of it boils down to balancing golden handcuffs and the value of your children’s education.

Aside from that, we have a bunch of short-term money things to think about. I need to flesh this out a bit, but fortunately, I can (and do) write about it publicly here.

Blog, Health, and Personal Growth Goals

I looked at these three things in the spreadsheet I’m making and I got overwhelmed with all the things I wanted to write on each of them. Here are some quick thoughts:

Blog – I’d like to grow blog traffic by 20% from the average of last year.

Health – I’d like to lose 10 pounds (ha ha, such a typical goal), but also get under 20% body fat. I don’t know if anyone really cares about my body type and goals related to it.

Personal Growth – I’d like to finally join Toastmasters and learn how to speak publicly. This is very difficult because the meetings don’t match up well with my wife’s work and taking care of the kids.

You may notice that everything starts with “I’d like.” This is an obvious problem with goal planning. I have a fear of committing to anything.

Travel/Fun

It looks like we’ll be going to Orlando twice this year. We had planned a Disney trip in March more than 6 months ago. Then FinCon threw us a curve by also being in Orlando on my son’s birthday. The only way to go is to bring the whole family with me. So that’s the plan.

We are also planning to go to Block Island as we do every year. It’s the town with the fewest people (~1000) in the smallest state. Christopher Walken and James Taylor have been known to hide out there.

If you ever want to get away from the hustle and bustle and connect with nature, Block Island is the place to be.

Finally, we’re also looking to do our annual Aruba trip at the timeshare my wife bought long, long ago.

Final Thoughts

It’s clear to me that I need to “zoom in” and make these definitive goals and break them into smaller pieces. I need to start somewhere and just typing this article helps me focus in on where and how.

I understand how ridiculous it is to write about goals for 2018 this late in the year. However, we’ve actually been working on an important one with cleaning and decluttering the office. By “we”, I mean mostly my wife. I’d like to say that we got a lot more accomplished in January, but we put a lot aside due to everyone in our house passing the flu around.

Do you have goals in 2018? Let me know in the comments!

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