Lazy Man and Money

Lazy Man Goal Update (April 2021)

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I usually don’t do two personal updates in a row, but that’s the way the editorial calendar bounces, crumbles, flows, I guess. On Friday, I published my March Passive Income report. I really like how that update keeps me focused on passive (or passive-ish) income and gives me a chance to share with you a slice of life (This is usually a bunch of pictures of kids and things that we did).

That update doesn’t cover mid or long-term goals. I made some goals to start the year like I do every year. However, year after year, I fail to make any consistent progress on my goals. I know I always plan to do too much. I also know that I forget to put the time and effort into the goals given the short-term life errands.

My hope is that doing this every month and a half will have me moving in the right direction. If nothing else, these goals get on my radar around 8 years a year.

April 2021 Goal Update

Before we get started here’s my spreadsheet. It’ll be helpful to follow along. If you have ideas on how this system could be better I’d love to hear them in the comments.

Lazy Man Goals

Is it possible to make “making good goals” a goal? If so, that is one of the things I’m hoping to get out of 2021. My goals are all over the place. Some of them are boolean (you either went to Europe or you didn’t). Some of them based on numbers. Some of those numbers are very strange because we already had some progress. My hope is that the act of working through this will help me improve and making the goals themselves and making them make sense.

Money Goals

Make $60,000 – I have $13,534.59 so far and I’m on pace for a little under $50,000. This is an aggressive goal and I wasn’t sure that I could do it with no dog sitting income (due to no travel due to COVID). However, people are starting to travel more, so I might be able to get closer to this. Realistically, the best way for me to get there is to come up with an additional source of income. I’m stretched thin in some places already, so it could be tough.

Wife Retirement Savings – My wife’s retirement fund is $5,000 bigger this year, but we are still behind the pace on this one. We might be able to get a little closer, but while my wife is deployed, we aren’t shifting money around too much. In March we spent a lot more money than we usually do. I’ll have more to write about that in the Family Goals section below.

Business Goals

Content Audit/Article Refresh – I’ve completed 8 of the 40 articles that I hope for this year. I have a lot of articles from around 2006 and 2007 that are very short, filled with a dozen of spelling/grammatical errors, and not very well put together. One of my goals this year is to take 40 of them, a little less than one a week, and update/refresh them as something new and useful for readers.

7,000 Twitter Followers – I lost 11 Twitter followers and now have 6634. It doesn’t seem like being more active on Twitter gets me more followers. It feels like this number only moves a fraction of a percent in either direction.

Minor Website Design – I made no progress on this one. I think the only way to move forward on this one is to put on a short-term to-do list, rather than this mid-long term one. Unfortunately, that short-term list is full right now.

Article for New Website – Zero. I didn’t write anything for the new website. I have been pushing back the launch of this for months and months now. My best hope in moving forward with this is that I schedule a solid hour or two every day without interruptions. I think we need vaccines to allow the library to open full-time for that to happen.

Personal

Lose Weight – I’ve lost about a pound of the 15 that is part of my goal. It seems like losing weight is always the toughest goal for everyone. I’m eating better and getting out more with the better weather. However, a weekend at a Bed and Breakfast with the wife meant eating out all the time. I skipped lunch and still gained weight. A March trip to Hawaii meant many plate lunches and that set me back. I’m optimistic that I can make gains in the next month and a half.

Bucket List/Dream Board – I’d say I’m 65% done with this one. I have a list of around 20 items that I gathered from searching around other people’s bucket lists. I was even able to cross one-off. My 7-year-old wanted to swim with sea turtles and I added that to mine. Well, the weather didn’t cooperate when we got out to sea and the captain didn’t feel it was safe enough to swim with them, but we saw a few close-up from the boat. He’s counting it, so I’m counting. As for the 35% that I have left with this, I want to create a dream board to make it more visual. When these things sit in a spreadsheet on a hard drive, they just don’t get done.

Professional Skills – Zero. I had a list of things that I’d like to learn for blogging, but also included a couple of non-blogging things. I don’t think I made any progress on any of them. I think I’m going to have to make this more specific for 2022.

Family

Travel to Europe – Nope. My wife had big plans to do a Greek cruise this summer. That wasn’t realistic, so she pivoted and came up with the idea of our Hawaii trip. We were able to get tested and fly over many states that would have forced us to quarantine. We had a great time. Remember above when I explained that we didn’t make much progress on our money goals, this was one of the main reasons why. We have no regrets.

Finish the Basement – We made a little more progress by removing an old water heater and a boiler. I saw someone with random Dollar Store sticker numbers on the side of a truck of someone who hauls it all away and sells it for scrap metal. I guess scrap metal prices are good these days and these were heavy items. The guy was a unique character, perhaps one of the most “unique” I’ve met. I won’t share them on this blog, but ask me in person some time and we can talk about it over a beer.

Parenting

YouTube Channel – I’m not sure if we made any progress on this. I got a book from the library about making movies. It was very high level and the 8-year-old read it but said it was boring. I don’t think he enjoys planning, creating a script, etc. We may just point the camera and shoot and see what happens. Any practice is good practice, right?

Drone Flying – We’re just getting around to drone flying weather, so maybe we’ll start this over the next month or two. Since my kids are very young, we have a very cheap (~$25), basic drone. If they get good with that, I have a more advanced one (~$75) that features a camera. We’ll just work our way up and see if it’s something they enjoying doing.

Outdoor stuff (hours) – I originally had 40 hours outside as a very minimum goal because the kids rarely do much outside. However, when we were in Hawaii we were outside almost all the time. (It’s one of the best ways to stay COVID-19 free, right?)

Computer Programming – I didn’t make any progress in teaching the kids this, but the 8-year-old has picked up Scratch at school and played with it at home a couple of times. This is another area where I got a book from the library, but for now, Captain Underpants and Dog Man have the kids’ extra-reading interests. I’m not going to push it, but just leave it around and see if they pick it up.

Specialty Camps – We’re half-done picking camps. There aren’t a lot of options because of COVID and space filled up quickly. I think we lost out on some as we were in Hawaii (and preparing for Hawaii) when all the camps opened. My wife caught up with her work only to get deployed soon after.

Final Thoughts

Overall, I’m not feeling like I’ve made much progress, but there are pockets of progress. Unfortunately, the next update probably won’t have more progress. My wife is deployed getting vaccine in peoples’ arms, so I’m trying to make this time extra fun for the kids. I won’t be doing much to finish the basement or explaining how recursion works (programming). Our travel is planned for most of the year (annual trips to Block Island and Hershey Park). That leaves personal and business goals left to focus on. Hopefully, I can make some headway there.

Making SMART 2021 Goals

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New Year's Resolutions

At the start of the year, I made some Goals and Resolutions for 2021. It was hastily thrown together. The kids were getting back into their school routine and one caught a cold. Because cold symptoms and COVID symptoms are the same, we had to pause life and get him a COVID test. Thankfully, it came back negative. (That’s what I had expected since he always gets a winter cold and we didn’t have any real COVID risk factors.)

Sometimes you simply have to move forward with something. Trying to be perfect is the enemy of being good enough.

However, with 1/8th of the year done, it is as good a time as any to go back and put some more detail into those goals. This time, I’m hoping to make them SMART goals, by applying the SMART metrics. I understand that it will take more than these metrics to make them realities. I need to make them habits and stay properly motivated on them. Finally, I’ll need a little luck. In 2020 few people saw COVID derailing their year’s goals, but stuff like that happens. Usually, it happens more at the individual level than the global level.

Before I get to all the goals here’s what my goal spreadsheet looks like. I created the spreadsheet while I was writing this post. I was going to include it at the end, but it is more useful to have the visual at the beginning.

2021 Goals Spreadsheet

If I do all that and I fail to meet my goals, I can take solace in this Michael Jordan quote:

I can accept failure. Everyone fails at something. But I can’t accept not trying.

Money Goals

Make $60K of income

Last year I wanted to make $75,000 in income. COVID had other plans. I came in at around $50,000, but each month is trending worse and worse. I will need to turn things around just to make the $50,000 again, so $60K is a stretch.

I need to focus more on providing valuable services to people and working within the windows of childcare that I have. This is going to be a challenge, but that’s precisely the point.

Specific: $60,000 income. Check.
Measurable: I have a spreadsheet where I keep track of income and review it a few times a month. Check.
Attainable: Maybe. Currently, it relies on too many external forces that I don’t control.
Relevant: Maybe. My drive to earn $60K vs. $50K just isn’t great. I’ve always been more about quality of life.
Time-bound: Deadline is December 31, 2021. Check.

Save Money for Wife’s Retirement

This is complicated and worth a separate article all by itself.

We’re trying to save $100K for my wife to feel comfortable with retiring. The hope is to do this in just a couple of years.

She will get a nice pension and I can usually make the aforementioned income. However, some of my income has been lost since COVID and I’m not sure it’s coming back. We also have a lot of short-term expenses with some 15-year mortgages in their final trimester and private school. The 100K would give us at least a two-year cushion where she wouldn’t have to think about working.

We are starting the year with it about 25% completed. If we combine other emergency funds and accounts we might be further along.

Specific: Nope. It’s vague on where we should be by the end of 2021. I’ll revise this to be $60,000, which is saving another $35,000 this year, leaving the final $40,000 for next year.
Measurable: Now, it’s measurable. In fact, we’ve set up an account for this and measuring monthly as part of our net worth review.
Attainable: Maybe. It’s a lot of money to save given our current income and expenses.
Relevant: It was very relevant until last week. We recently got some news that may change that, but we won’t know for some months. The 100K goal will need to happen at some point, the timeline may change though.
Time-bound: Deadline is December 31, 2021. Check.

Business

Content Audit

This task was to review my old articles and refresh them to make them relevant and useful. I have a lot of articles that I wrote from 2006-2010 that you probably haven’t read. Even if you have, I can add 10 more years of wisdom and some much-needed proofreading to them. Search engines also like articles being updated and relevant.

I’ve been trying to refresh a new article once a week, usually on a Friday. The idea is that you’ll usually get a new article on Monday and Wednesday with the refreshed article on Friday. Sometimes, if I only publish Monday and Thursday, I won’t be able to get this refresh article in. On a busy week, maybe Wednesday and Friday are both refreshed articles. We’ll have to see how this goes, but I’m trying to keep the refreshed articles as “bonus” content that I haven’t been doing for years. I’m putting down a goal of 40 articles. That’s a lot since it would be every week.

Specific: 40 articles. Check.
Measurable: I’ll include this on my goal spreadsheet. Check
Attainable: Reasonably. It’s not all-or-nothing, so partial credit applies.
Relevant: This should help other business goals as well as be more useful for readers, right?
Time-bound: Deadline is December 31, 2021. Check.

Social Media

I want to be a lot better on social media. I still spend most of my time on Twitter, but haven’t grown much from my 6,500 followers. I’d like to grow this number, but I’m realizing that I don’t know how to get more Twitter followers. I’ll put down 7,000 followers for lack of anything better. I think most people are comfortable with the people they follow now. I should have put more time into learning Pinterest.

Specific: Nope I fail this one. It’s not specific and I don’t know how to make it specific. Please help me with some comments at the bottom of this post.
Measurable: Nope.
Attainable: Perhaps not. You’d think going from 6600 to 7000 isn’t much, but it is very difficult.
Relevant: Social Media seems to be extremely relevant when your business is a blog. Check.
Time-bound: I don’t have a goal, but everything here is 12/31/2021. Check

Website Design

I have a few things that I need to add to Lazy Man and Money. There are some minor theme errors and my RSS feed is still managed by Feedburner which Google acquired in May 2007 and basically shut down in 2011. It’s probably not the best idea to rely on technology that’s been obsolete for 10 years.

Specific: I have a website to-do list. I have to define that a little more, but this becomes a goal list inside of a goal list.
Measurable: I can measure it once I finalize the to-do list.
Attainable: Yep, I control all the code on the website, so the point of failure is simply me.
Relevant: The website is the business. Check.
Time-bound: Deadline is December 31, 2021. Check.

Launch New Website

I had an idea for another blog, which is a passion of mine. It’s related to personal finance, so I’ll share it here when it’s ready. I want to do more than just another personal finance blog though. I want it to be a website where you do stuff not just read the latest post and move on. Unfortunately, creating the infrastructure for that stuff is not easy. I’ve been trying to feel out to other personal finance bloggers to see if they’d be interested in sharing it in some way, but that hasn’t gained traction. For now, it will just have to be a blog.

One problem is that managing two blogs is a lot of work. I can barely manage this one as well as I should. However, the other ideas is just too good to give up.

Specific: Launch a new blog. That’s vague, so let’s make it better. Launch with 25 articles already written.
Measurable: This feels like it is all or nothing, but there are a lot of steps. I’ve done a lot of it already.
Attainable: At this point, I could probably flip the switch tomorrow, but I want to do a bigger launch than that. Whether it’s manageable long-term is a tough question.
Relevant: I love the idea (which I’m purposely being vague about), so I’d say yes.
Time-bound: May 1, 2021.

Personal Goals

Lose Weight

I gained a “Pandemic 15” and got very close to a big number on the scale that I don’t want to reach. We’ve been doing a lot of cooking and comfort eating. My wife and I are challenging each other (her idea) to lose weight. We have a chart on the fridge where post our daily weigh-ins.

This worked for the first month, but we’ve both stopped updating it. I’m replacing it with a quick spreadsheet that I made for each week of the year. We’re going to put our average weekly weight from our Fitbit Aria into the chart. I’m hoping this will work better – and be more accurate since it is an average.

I’m going to try to lose those 15 pounds by following my extreme Lazy Man Diet. The diet is too extreme to stick to long-term, but I should be able to manage a majority of it four or five days a week a couple of times a month.

I’ll need to add more exercise than walking my dog… especially weight training and cardio.

Specific: Lose 15 pounds. Check.
Measurable: With my Fitbit scale and a spreadsheet, this is measurable.
Attainable: It certainly won’t be easy, but it’s possible.
Relevant: This is a little debatable. I usually have so many other things pulling me in different directions that I can’t put a full effort into this.
Time-bound: Deadline is December 31, 2021. Check.

Make a Bucket List

I need to come up with some things that I want to do and experience.

Many personal finance bloggers with money travel the world. I know that I don’t like the act of traveling. Being in a new place is good. Getting to the new place is bad. Everything about an airplane is designed to make you uncomfortable. That’s literally the plan with coach seating. Some may say that we splurge for the good seating, but the spending necessary for that creates great internal conflict for me. It doesn’t get any better when you are at the destination, because then I have to deal with things like limited internet access… or paying outrageous prices for convenience.

Recently, I’ve settled on the idea of having a fancy house. I don’t know where it would be or how we’d get it, but I like the idea of a hot tub, indoor pool, and at least 3 monkey butlers.

As part of this, I’ll explore making a dream board. That will get me to the dangerously close place of scrapbooking. Now I’m starting to understand why I always put this off.

Back in January, I added this item. It was the easiest item to make progress on. With a little Googling around, I came up with a list of 20 items. I’d still like to do more and make the dream board, but I’m going to say this is half done for now. A lot of the items are hard or impossible to complete during COVID, so working through the bucket list itself is going to be a task for another time.

Specific: Create Bucket list… done (for now). Dream board… on the to-do list.
Measurable: This isn’t very measurable, so I’ll estimate that it is 50% done.
Attainable: It doesn’t get more attainable than creating a list.
Relevant: This is very relevant. I’m getting near a point in my life where I need to start living life a little.
Time-bound: Deadline is December 31, 2021. Check.

Professional Training

I need to work on real skills this year. I have a problem with this since I don’t have a big block of time for deep learning. I’m basically putting out small fires all day, except for when I’m wasting time on social media or news sites. In short, I need to manage my time better and be more disciplined.

As for some of the skills I’d like to learn, I’ll go with Canva (for blogging), Pinterest, film making/editing, and AI. My degree in computational linguistics is over 20 years old now. I feel like I should be able to refresh those skills and see if there are good jobs involving computers and language processing nowadays. (Yes, this is sarcasm.)

Specific: This is one of those items that needs its own list or plan. This item, as it stands, isn’t specific.
Measurable: It’s not specific, so I can’t measure it.
Attainable: I can do a few of these items like learn Canva well and take a Pinterest course. Putting together the time is a whole other ballgame.
Relevant: As much as I want to do all these things, current commitments make these very difficult.
Time-bound: Deadline is December 31, 2021. Check.

Family Goals

Travel to Eurpoe

Remember back in the bucket list where I mentioned that I don’t like traveling? Well, my wife likes being in a new place more than the pain of traveling. Back in January, she was mapping out a 3-week trip to Greece, Germany, and Venice, Italy. The timing of this is very specific for this summer too because the Greek leg is a pharmacy cruise. It seems we might be able to manage it for around $10,000 through a combination of military discounts and points.

I didn’t think it was likely to happen back then and she’s come to terms that the pipe dream won’t happen in 2021. We’ll push this one to 2022.

Finish the Basement

Since last summer, I’ve had a goal of finishing our basement to create more room for the family. Having a buffer of the main floor between our kids would be extremely helpful even without a pandemic. There’s a lot of decluttering work to do before we can hire a work crew – we’ve been storing baby and kid stuff for 8 years now… and had a lot of stuff before that. I think we are about 60% through the clutter.

We had a company come do an estimate and it seems like we’ll be able to move forward with this. It’s still a couple of months away, but I’m optimistic about finishing this in 2021.

Specific: Complete finished basement.
Measurable: This is all-or-nothing, but there are some steps in between.
Attainable: We should be able to do this.
Relevant: It’s very relevant as we’ve found that COVID creates the need for a little more space.
Time-bound: Deadline is December 31, 2021. Check.

Parenting Goals

It’s hard to come up with plans for the kids. Their interests are always changing. The things we can do during COVID keep changing as well. We’ll have to play it by ear. That said, I think we can try a few things:

YouTube Channel

I’m not sure if a YouTube channel is right for a 7 and 8-year-old. I think it is worth a try… as long as we manage expectations. There are some useful skills that we can explore with this. The kids (and their dad) can learn filmmaking. I can help them learn how to organize and outline their thoughts.

The boys fight each other quite a bit (as you might imagine given their age). I hope (perhaps naively) that they’ll be able to connect on their shared interest of Pokemon.

Specific: There are a lot of small steps to this one. There is also a wide range of doing this “just to get the checkmark in the box” and doing it really well. I prefer the latter, but we may have to settle for the former.
Measurable: I’m going to strive for 10 hours of work/play on this over the year.
Attainable: We’ll make little or no progress during the school year. The kids just have too much to do. This will depend on how much time during the summer they have, which depends on whether there is summer camp or not.
Relevant: It’s hard to say how relevant this is. The kids’ interests change quickly and I try to adapt to the next thing if something doesn’t stick.
Time-bound: December 31, 2021

Drone Flying

I got the kids a small drone for around $25. It’s enough to keep them interested and teach them the basics. I have a more advanced $70 one that I got on Black Friday last year, that we can move on to.

I don’t know where it will go, but maybe we can work our way to a side-hustle in drone videography?

(This may be a not-so-elaborate plan to justify buying myself a fancy, expensive drone.)

Specific: We’ll try to get 10 hours of flight time in. Drone batteries don’t last long, so it may be 45 minutes here and there. Five hours might be more practical.
Measurable: I’m not sure if hours is the correct measurement. Maybe I should aim for 10 days that have drone flight in them?
Attainable: We should be able to achieve any goal in this area if they stay interested.
Relevant: I’m not sure that drone-flying is relevant to much, but it’s some good entertainment and a welcome break from video screens.
Time-bound: December 31, 2021

Riding Bikes and Outdoor Stuff

I’m terrible with getting the kids outside in physical activity. I need to do better whether it is riding bikes or playing catch with a baseball.

Specific: I’m going to try to get 40 hours of this in. I’m not sure if that’s the right number or not. The kids did snowboarding so far this year and that was good for 5 hours. I’m not going to count the whole days that we spend at the beach as more than 1 or 2 hours. I want to be more consistent rather than fulfilling this in a handful of days.
Measurable: I don’t want to feel like I’ve got a stopwatch timing things outside. However, I need to keep this more at the forefront of my mind.
Attainable: This can be a tough one with COVID, the weather, and available time outside of school and summer camp (if camp happens).
Relevant: The kids definitely need their outside time.
Time-bound: December 31, 2021

Computer Programming

I really need to get these kids started in computer programming. I wish it was like when I was a kid, where the computer was an endless source of amazement. With YouTube and Alexa, it’s hard to get kids excited in making a computer print “Hello World” infinite times.

Specific: I think the goal for this should be 5 hours. I’ve got some ideas on how to make this more fun and interesting.
Measurable: Putting a specfic goal in terms of hours makes this more measurable. I was going to tie this to accomplishments (ooh maybe a progress test), but I’m not prepared enough at this time to make that leap.
Attainable: Like all of these goals in the parenting section, it’s a matter of carving out the time in an already busy schedule.
Relevant: I believe computer programming is very relevant. I was learning it in 1985 in school and at home. I was literally writing code on music tapes. The kids have their own iPads and laptops at school this year and they don’t much in this area. Sometimes, they drag some blocks of code in Scratch. It’s odd to me that there hasn’t been more progress in education of this area in a generation. I’m officially Grumpy Old man in the old SNL skits… back when SNL skits were awesome :).
Time-bound: December 31, 2021

Specialty Camps

We had to cancel many specialty camps for the kids last year – the first year they were old enough to do them. Hopefully, they can do Lego, cooking, animal shelter, theater, sailing camps. If that’s not possible, we can at least do Lego and cooking at home. We were able to save a lot of money last year, so that’s a silver lining.

Specific: Sign up for 3-4 specialty camps.
Measurable: Check.
Attainable: With COVID, who knows? We have the money if they off them.
Relevant: These enrichment activities help the kids grow in different ways over the summer school break. If they don’t have these camps, we’ll have to invent our own by doing them at home like last summer.
Time-bound: December 31, 2021

Final Thoughts

Wow, this was a lot of work to write all this out. I thought it would take only an hour, but I think I spent 6-7 hours over a couple of days. I feel like I’m hastily putting up this blog post just like before. That’s what happens to me when I get to 3,500 words.

Fortunately, it was much easier to put in this spreadsheet.

2021 Goals Spreadsheet

That didn’t take too much time. I learned a lot along the way about how I want to craft my goals. Before I had just an idea, but now I feel like I have a plan, especially in the goals that are more nebulous like “spend more time outside with kids.”

Make a New Year’s Resolution for SMARTER Goals This Year

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Wait, New Year’s Resolutions now? It’s a month and a half into the new year. That’s an eighth of the year already in the books. If I still wrote paper checks, I’d still be putting 2020 as the date. Stick with me on this one.

New Year’s Resolutions are always optional, but if it’s possible, they’re more optional in 2021. Many people have legitimate goals of “keep breathing.” There’s nothing wrong with that.

However, if you made New Year’s Resolutions, this may be a good time to renew them and give them a second look. I did well focusing on losing weight for the first two or three weeks, but then I got busy and started to lose focus. Since there’s nothing magical about New Year’s, I can use this checkpoint in the year to start again.

Without those check-ins, the whole year would slip away and I wouldn’t make much progress on my goals. Last year, I didn’t get very far. Doing distance learning tripped me up and I never recovered – even after the kids went to summer camp and school.

I’ve been thinking about how to stop that from happening this year, and I’ve got three ideas:

  1. Make my goals visual – My goals usually live as digital bits in my computer – often in a spreadsheet. I have a lot of these spreadsheet bits. I also have email bits, document bits, well, you know all the digital bits – you have them too. However, by printing them out and putting them in a prominent place, I’ll see them. I have a goal to make a vision or dream board of goals. (My spreadsheet digital bits would be upset at me for that circular reference.)
  2. Making goal progress a habit – I need to put time aside every day to move forward with something. Otherwise, I’ll just continue to stuck in the loop of laundry, dishes, cooking, cleaning, social media scrolling, and news reading.
  3. Making SMART goals – (This is what I’m writing about today.)

[This article was originally written in 2009 and last updated in 2014 – days after my 7-year-old was born. Now that I’m not spending time wiping baby butts, I’m able to refresh it for 2021. I’m leaving all the Office Space references in here.]

SMART Goals

SMART goals

Many of you have heard about SMART goals in the past. It’s common in the realm of project management. SMART is simply a mnemonic device to help you remember the steps necessary to achieve your goals. Though some of the specific terms are debated (more on that later), one popular interpretation is that stands for:

  • Specific – What is the goal that I want to accomplish? Do I want to get my TPS reports submitted with cover sheets? Do I want to get that T.G.I. Friday’s Chotchkie’s waitress to go out with me? Or do you want to just want to get your red stapler back? (Note: Those goals won’t make sense unless you’ve seen Office Space)
  • Measurable – How do I measure the goal? Am I successful if I submit my TPS reports with cover sheets 80% of the time? Sounds like a good start. Having I gotten to know what the Chotchkie’s waitress likes? Am I successful if I find that she likes kung-fu? Yep.
  • Attainable – Is my goal reasonable? If my goal is to learn to fly by flapping my arms, I need to go back to the drawing board. In this case, it is possible to achieve the TPS report/coversheet goal. It may not be possible to find Jennifer Aniston working at Chotchkie’s… and I’m not sure how acceptable it is to try to pick-up a waiter or waitress just trying to do their job. And with COVID, restaurants, and dating have been pushed down the “attainable” list. (So many things have changed since Office Space came out.)
  • Relevant – Does the goal matter to you and your life? Do you really care about achieving the 80% TPS report/coversheet goal? No, you don’t. Does getting a date with Chotchkie’s waitress matter? I think most of the men I know would say that it’s something worth caring about. (Well, most of the men I know now are married, so that would be a big problem.)
  • Time-bound – When do expect to reach this goal? Maybe you want to start out with getting your TPS Reports up to par for just a month… then raise it to a fiscal quarter… then go for the full year… Maybe you want to find out three things that the Chotchkie’s waitress likes in the next week. Maybe you set a firm plan that you’ll ask her out in two weeks.

I mentioned earlier that there are some variations to SMART goals. Some use Appropriate and Realistic instead of Attainable and Relevant. If you think about it, “appropriate” is similar enough to “relevant”, and “realistic” is similar enough to “attainable” that it doesn’t really matter. As long as you cover the main five concepts you are ready to tackle any goal… or are you?

SMARTER Goals

I’ve noticed some people are getting a little clever with SMART Goals and trying to make them even SMARTER Goals. They do this by adding a couple more steps such as

  • Exciting – Your goals should exciting you. I think this is captured in “Relevant” step mentioned above. This could be debated, but in the example above, I think it’s safe to say that Peter should be excited about the idea of taking Jennifer Aniston’s character on a date.
  • Recorded – You should record your progress at set intervals. I like this one. It’s a little like Measurable, but reminds you to go back and look at how you are doing.

Another variation is:

  • Evaluate – Same concept as the recorded above – evaluate your goal progress on an on-going basis.
  • Re-do – After evaluating your goal’s progress, go back and adjust your goal accordingly. Now that you know some things that the waitress likes, ask her to come over and watch the Kung-Fu marathon on channel 39.

SMARTEST Goals

I’m not going to revise the acronym again. Instead, I’d like to add a few more important tips for achieving your goals that I believe get lost in all the steps above:

  • Assess Where You Start – Before you create a goal, you should assess where you stand currently. It will help you with various steps in the process. Maya Angelou once said, “If you don’t know where you’ve come from, you don’t know where you’re going.”
  • Break them Down – You may need to break big goals into smaller ones. Some goals may seem to break the “Attainable” guideline, but in smaller chunks, it becomes easier. Paying off $100,000 of debt in a year may not be attainable for most people, but for some people paying off $20,000 may be possible.
  • Get Some Motivating Help – How do I keep up with my goals? Here are some things that I’ve found helpful:
    • StickK to Your Goals – This website can help make you accountable for not achieving your goals.
    • Buddy System – If your goal is to go to the gym, get a buddy to hold yourself accountable. On days when you don’t feel like going, you will be less likely to give up because you don’t want to let your buddy down. I’ve personally been struggling to find an accountability group for my blogging goals. There are a lot of bloggers who decided to sell entrance into their group, but that doesn’t sit well with me.
    • Reminders – It can be easy to forget your goals. Hopefully my dream board will help. I may also set up regular reminders on Google Calendar.

When I put together my goals article for 2021, I was too busy to make my goals SMART, SMARTER, or SMARTEST. One kid had a cold, so we had to get tested and miss school while we waited for the results. My plan (dare I say goal?) for the next week is to revisit those goals and make them SMART.

Finally, if you take just one thing away from this article, I hope it’s this: “Lazy Man has seen Office Space far too many times.”

2021 Goals and Resolutions

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New Year's Resolutions

Yes, I’m a glutton for punishment. I realize that making goals for 2021 is some weird, perverse exercise after 2020. Nonetheless, I feel motivated with the new year, so I might as well take advantage of it. Also, unlike at the start of 2020, I know a little of what to expect in 2021. There will always be surprises, but hopefully, we’ll be able to navigate them well.

The other reason why it’s good to make goals for 2021 is that you already have a built-in excuse. That might not help you accomplish your goals, but I know I won’t feel bad when 2022 comes around if I don’t accomplish all these.

Money Goals

Make $60K of income

Last year I wanted to make $75,000 in income. COVID had other plans. I came in at around $50,000, but each month is trending worse and worse. I will need to turn things around just to make the $50,000 again, so $60K is a stretch.

I need to focus more on providing valuable services to people and working within the windows of childcare that I have. This is going to be a challenge, but that’s precisely the point.

Save Money for Wife’s Retirement

This is complicated and worth a separate article all by itself.

We’re trying to save $100K for my wife to feel comfortable with retiring. The hope is to do this in just a couple of years.

She will get a nice pension and I can usually make the aforementioned income. However, some of my income has been lost since COVID and I’m not sure it’s coming back. We also have a lot of short-term expenses with some 15-year mortgages in their final trimester and private school. The 100K would give us at least a two-year cushion where she wouldn’t have to think about working.

We are starting the year with it about 25% completed. If we combine other emergency funds and accounts we might be further along.

Business Goals

I have many things that I would to like to do with this website. Essentially, I need to roll over many of my 2020 goals to 2021.

However, I have one other thing to add. You have to promise not to tell anyone now, but I’m working on a new personal finance website. Lazy Man and Money isn’t going away. My personal finance interests have evolved beyond passive income, so a spin-off makes sense.

Personal Goals

Lose Weight

I gained a “Pandemic 15” and got very close to a big number on the scale that I don’t want to reach. We’ve been doing a lot of cooking and comfort eating. My wife and I are challenging each other (her idea) to lose weight. We have a post on the fridge where post our daily weigh-ins.

I’m going to try to lose those 15 pounds by following my extreme Lazy Man Diet. The diet is too extreme to stick to long-term, but I should be able to manage a majority of it four or five days a week.

I’ll need to add more exercise than walking my dog… especially weight training and cardio.

Make a Bucket List

I need to come up with some things that I want to do and experience.

Many personal finance bloggers with money travel the world. I know that I don’t like the act of traveling. Being in a new place is good. Getting to the new place is bad. Everything about an airplane is designed to make you uncomfortable. That’s literally the plan with coach seating. Some may say that we splurge for the good seating, but the spending necessary for that creates great internal conflict for me. It doesn’t get any better when you are at the destination, because then I have to deal with things like limited internet access… or paying outrageous prices for convenience.

Recently, I’ve settled on the idea of having a fancy house. I don’t know where it would be or how we’d get it, but I like the idea of a hot tub, indoor pool, and at least 3 monkey butlers.

As part of this, I’ll explore making a dream board. That will get me to the dangerously close place of scrapbooking. Now I’m starting to understand why I always put this off.

Family Goals

Travel to Eurpoe

Remember back in the bucket list where I mentioned that I don’t like traveling? Well, my wife likes being in a new place more than the pain of traveling.

She’s mapping out a 3-week trip to Greece, Germany, and Venice, Italy. The timing of this is very specific for this summer too because the Greek leg is a pharmacy cruise. It seems we might be able to manage it for around $10,000 through a combination of military discounts and points.

We have numerous hurdles on this one. I don’t want to leave our dog with just anyone for that long. There’s also this thing called COVID which seems to like it could be a barrier to traveling through 3 countries, especially including a cruise ship. Coming back, I wouldn’t want to have to quarantine, because that may be up to 2 weeks of figuring out how to get food delivered (we go to the grocery store now) and stuff like that. My wife would go back to working from home, but I wouldn’t be able to send the kids to camp. The dynamic of my wife needed uninterrupted time for military work at home and me having to keep the kids in activities so they don’t kill each other simply doesn’t work.

Finish the Basement

Since last summer, I’ve had a goal of finishing our basement to create more room for the family. Having a buffer of the main floor between our kids would be extremely helpful even without a pandemic. There’s a lot of decluttering work to do before we can hire a work crew – we’ve been storing baby and kid stuff for 8 years now… and had a lot of stuff before that. I think we are about 60% through the clutter. There’s a lot of extra stuff like food overflow.

Professional Training

I need to work on real skills this year. I have a problem with this since I don’t have a big block of time for deep learning. I’m basically putting out small fires all day, except for when I’m wasting time on social media or news sites. In short, I need to manage my time better and be more disciplined.

As for some of the skills I’d like to learn, I’ll go with Canva (for blogging), Pinterest, film making/editing, and AI. My degree in computational linguistics is over 20 years old now. I feel like I should be able to refresh those skills and see if there are good jobs involving computers and language processing nowadays. (Yes, this is sarcasm.)

Parenting Goals

It’s hard to come up with plans for the kids. Their interests are always changing. The things we can do during COVID keep changing as well. We’ll have to play it by ear. That said, I think we can try a few things:

YouTube Channel

I’m not sure if a YouTube channel is right for a 7 and 8-year-old. I think it is worth a try… as long as we manage expectations. There are some useful skills that we can explore with this. The kids (and their dad) can learn filmmaking. I can help them learn how to organize and outline their thoughts.

The boys fight each other quite a bit (as you might imagine given their age). I hope (perhaps naively) that they’ll be able to connect on their shared interest of Pokemon.

Drone Flying

I got the kids a small drone for around $25. It’s enough to keep them interested and teach them the basics. I have a more advanced $70 one that I got on Black Friday last year, that we can move on to.

I don’t know where it will go, but maybe we can work our way to a side-hustle in drone videography?

(This may be a not-so-elaborate plan to justify buying myself a fancy, expensive drone.)

Riding Bikes and Outdoor Stuff

I’m terrible with getting the kids outside in physical activity. I need to do better whether it is riding bikes or playing catch with a baseball.

Computer Programming

I really need to get these kids started in computer programming. I wish it was like when I was a kid, where the computer was an endless source of amazement. With YouTube and Alexa, it’s hard to get kids excited in making a computer print “Hello World” infinite times.

Specialty Camps

We had to cancel many specialty camps for the kids last year – the first year they were old enough to do them. Hopefully, they can do Lego, cooking, animal shelter, theater, sailing camps. If that’s not possible, we can at least do Lego and cooking at home. We were able to save a lot of money last year, so that’s a silver lining.

Final Thoughts

Some of these goals conflict with others. It’s hard to do specialty summer camps when you are on a cruise ship in Greece. It’s hard to save money when you are doing extensive travel and home improvements. The kids have only so many hours in the day and I like some of them to be free to do whatever silliness they want. Yet, I have so many things here that I want to do with them.

We’ll have to figure out how to prioritize things in this ever-changing world. But that’s what life is all about, right? With the goals that conflict, we’ll simply have to accept that there are no right or wrong decisions. Each has its own merits and as long as we are moving forward with something, we’re doing well.

Reviewing my 2020 Goals

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New Year's Resolutions

At the start of 2020, I wrote a post about the goals I’d like to accomplish for 2020. We can all probably agree that goals set in January 2020 are a little ridiculous to look at now. However, I think there’s some value to it. It will help me analyze how to structure 2021 goals going forward.

Due to COVID I’m going to be grading myself very leniently. A lot of people had things more difficult than I did. That said, I couldn’t move forward on some of these while teaching kindergarten and first grade at the same time. It’s also been harder to settle down and write. I sometimes went off to the library and could focus on work exclusively. My wife is home in Zoom meetings most of the day now, and I just can’t maintain the same focus.

Website Goals

I had a pile of website goals. Let’s see how they went:

Content Audit

This task was to review my old articles and refresh them, make them relevant and useful. Search engines like that. They aren’t big fans of the historical context of how I felt in 2008 when the economy was collapsing. I did a little of this, but not nearly as much as I had hoped. I still have about 95% of the website to go. This is an ongoing project that will probably take years. It only makes sense that updating nearly 15 years of articles while writing new articles is going to take years.

Grade: D

Social Media

I did a little bit more on Facebook, but not much else. I still spend most of my time on Twitter, but haven’t grown much from my 6,500 followers. I’m realizing that I don’t know how to get more Twitter followers. I think most people are comfortable with the people they follow now. I should have put more time into learning Pinterest.

Grade: D-

Other Website Stuff

I didn’t improve the design like I had hoped. I did reach out to collaborate with a few bloggers, but I needed to follow through more. I had hoped to publish 100 articles, which I thought was going to be impossible. I managed to publish 86 – many more than I thought.

Grade: B-

Diet/Exercise

This was a failure on the grandest scale. I put on what I call the “Pandemic 15.” We’re staying at home and cooking more comfort food – lots of cheese and pastries. We’re also not getting the same exercise in.

My BMI had gotten up to 29 and that’s just too high. Anticipating this article, I’ve been following my extreme diet for a few days and my BMI is down to an even 28. This is the easiest weight at the beginning to lose, so a core goal of 2021 will be to lose 20 pounds. It’s going to be tough.

Grade: F

Declutter

I didn’t post the 5+ items a month on Ebay/Craigslist/Facebook Marketplace like I had hoped. In fact, I don’t think I sold anything. However, I threw out many, many things and organized a bunch more. In the last 6 months, I’ve made tremendous progress on the basement and the garage. My wife is the queen of Facebook Marketplace and it’s working out well for us.

We’re almost at the point where we can finish the basement and put a car in the garage.

Grade: B

Kids

I had a goal to work on coding with the kids, but I haven’t put together a curriculum yet. We have a bunch of coding toys, but I’d like something more structured that explains what a loop is and why it is important. We’ve got some time before we get started on this.

Overall, we did tremendous amounts of learning in 2020. During homeschool we did almost everything. We were able to do extra during breaks because we didn’t have the option of going on vacation. This fall the kids’ school opened up with extreme precautions in place. We had as many good adventures as you can have during COVID-19. If anything, the kids are too spoiled and have an unhealthy expectation that the world revolves around them. In any other year, I’d give myself a lower grade for this. In 2020, I don’t mind the extra spoiling – hopefully it makes up for not being able to play with their friends.

Grade: A

Money Goals

I didn’t make the $75,000 like I had hoped. Dog sitting income disappeared and I couldn’t blog much while teaching the kids. I was able to make over $50,000 which is good considering the circumstances.

We didn’t get the estate planning done. It’ll be easier when we can actually meet people and talk in person.

Grade: B-

Special Projects

I didn’t create bucket list. I don’t know why I have problems with this. I should have been able to knock this out in a few hours.

I improved my Japanese quite a bit as my Duolingo streak has now reached nearly 600 days. Recently, I started to review Spanish because I was rusty there.

I didn’t create the YouTube Channel, but I’ve been researching it a lot over the last week. I wanted to start a channel with the kids about Pokemon, but it’s hard to find a name that isn’t trademarked and still conveys the idea of the channel. I think I have an idea though. One big breakthrough this year was that the kids had to learn to use a lot of technology for distance learning. They are getting good with their hand-me-down phones (with only wifi access), so they can film each other.

I didn’t self-publish a book – or even begin any kind of work on that one.

Grade: C+

Final Goal Thoughts of 2020

When I created my goal post, I had the intention of following it, but that simply didn’t happen. I don’t think I can blame COVID.

I need to come up with more of a system or a set of habits where I “check-in” during the work day and move forward with an item on the list. Instead almost every day is about getting the kids ready for school, laundry, lunches and dinners cooked, grocery shopping, etc. In between, I spend time on deal sites, reading news, watching my stocks – not things that move the productivity needle. In 2021, I’ll need to work on the good habits more.