It’s time to close out the 2022 goals. I have to get started on creating new goals while I have New Year energy and enthusiasm.

Overall, I enjoyed 2022. It was certainly better than 2020 and 2021. It’s a nice streak of things getting better for us for three straight years. I’m looking forward to keeping it going for 2023.

Each year is more than a spreadsheet of goals, but it’s always helpful to quantify goals and resolutions.

Here’s my updated spreadsheet:

Money Goals

(Click for Larger Image)

Make $70K of income

I finished the year with $98,633.82 in income. Dog boarding nearly doubled from 2021, which itself had doubled from the pre-pandemic years. So that’s 4x as much money as I made a few years ago. It’s come a long way since I decided it would be nice to earn a few extra hundred dollars a month.

Blogging and my part-time customer service gig were almost exactly what I had expected. Maybe in 2023, I’ll try to raise my blogging income, but I’m happy with how the customer service gig is working out.

Final Grade: A+

Save Money for Wife’s Retirement

I’m estimating this at $20,000. My wife and I sync up every month for a brief financial talk, but it hasn’t happened yet. We’ve had a good last few months, and I know she’s been socking away some cash. She’s super excited about the interest rates at banks. She’s got this crazy idea that we can live off the interest. In related news, I’m wondering who I married and spent the last 20 years with.

I probably won’t renew this goal for 2023. We sold a condo and invested most of it in conservative high-dividend ETFs and bonds. We keep leaving some in cash, which fulfills the purpose of this goal.

As for my wife’s retirement in general, she seems to waver each month on whether she wants to retire. Her regular work is going well, and she enjoys it. However, the chase for a promotion is like The Hunger Games. It’s not fun and stressful. I encourage her to slow down and just do the work she loves, but she’s super close to the promotion. I can’t explain it all here, but the military promotion may also be worth a million dollars when you factor in the increased pension.

The important thing is that she can retire when she wants. I think if the promotion comes through in June, she can coast doing work she enjoys. If not, I hope she finds something to retire to. It doesn’t have to earn a dime as long as she’s happy doing it.

Final Grade: B-

By traditional measures, this is a failure, only saving 20K of the 30k goal. However, she might be at 30k with her I-bonds. This goal became somewhat irrelevant in the middle of the year due to the condo sale.

Business Goals

Kid Wealth

I only got 9.5% of my goal to get 50,000 page views on my website on Kid Wealth. I had hoped for some media attention to find it and give it a boost. It didn’t happen. It’s not enough to just write good (well, decent) content and hope that the media promotes you. Nowadays, you need to go out and promote yourself to get that media attention. I’m too busy for that.

The good news is that more and more people are finding it. As long as it helps one person, it’s working. Traffic is growing about 12% a month, which is close to 4x traffic per year. That 5,000 page views could reasonably be 20,000 next year.

I had hoped to get 75 articles published, but I only got 64. At least I accomplished 85% of this goal.

Final Grade: B-

I’m being generous with my grades. I did a lot of other stuff with Kid Wealth that doesn’t show up on the spreadsheet. I redesigned the site, got the logo done, and hired a social media person. I need to hire a Pinterest person in 2023, but hopefully, I won’t have to do as much.

I think I would have had over 75 articles if the dog business wasn’t so busy.

Content Audit/Article Refresh

I’ve made no progress in refreshing articles for Lazy Man and Money. Writing articles for two blogs is a lot of work. It is hard to carve out the time to go back and refresh old articles. I thought I could do this as part of my regular writing, but it isn’t working.

This is a failure. I’m going to keep it around for next year. I think there are a lot of benefits if I can do this. I also have found a few articles that need refreshing, which will get me started. Sometimes momentum is everything.

Final Grade: F

Look into Dog Training

Earlier in the year, I looked very briefly into dog training. There are a hodge-podge group of certifications. It’s hard to find out which ones are useful.

I don’t think dog training makes sense. I think I would need one-on-one time with a dog, and I usually have a few dogs at the house. Maybe when my wife retires, she can be with the other dogs while I work to train one.

In the meantime, I found that there’s a dog and cat CPR class online through the Red Cross. That’s low-lying fruit. I think I could do it in a couple of hours. I should have gotten that done.

Final Grade: Incomplete

I’m giving myself an incomplete because I technically looked into dog training, but nothing has come from it.

Personal Goals

Lose Weight

I lost weight and got to 177 pounds and 23.8% body fat in May. However, I gained it back. No bueno.

I can get to 175 pounds again, but it’s WORK. When I was younger, I could just think about being a weight and get there. Getting older is tough. It’s not going to get easier. I need to be tougher.

Next year, I’ll add a goal where I spend a week doing 15 things from my extreme Lazy Man diet article each week.

Final Grade: D+

I came very close to touching the goal but didn’t keep it. I’m not giving myself a failing grade because I did get there for half a year.

Drink Less

I had several months where I barely drank. It went well. I like relaxing with some light beer, though. I’ve almost completely cut out mixed drinks. I only have wine on rare occasions like holidays or events when there isn’t another option.

Final Grade: C+

Make a Bucket List

I didn’t make any progress on this.

Final Grade: F

Programming with Python

Even though I bought Python Programming for Beginners: A Kid’s Guide to Coding Fundamentals (affiliate link) several months ago, I haven’t opened it. I purposely bought a book aimed at kids to share with them.

I wanted to program something easy with the kids, such as something that calculates random dice rolls. I’ll have to renew this one.

I got the kids using our Artie 3000 over the winter break. It’s a modern version of Seymour Papert’s Logo turtle – a robot from the 1960s that could draw based on simple commands. They worked with it a bit but lost interest in a couple of hours. The interface for coding with Artie is a little difficult.

Final Grade: D-

I at least did something, I guess.

Family Goals

Get Organized

For us, getting organized isn’t just getting the house in some kind of order but getting everything in good shape. At the beginning of the year, our ceiling had a leak, and we had to tear much of it up. It seems like something is always falling apart.

We made a lot of progress over the last year, but we still have a long way to go. We’re spending around $20,000 for new paint (the whole interior of the house) and carpet for the upstairs. The carpet we have is from the previous owners, so it’s at least ten years old. It isn’t designed well for dog boarding. Our new carpet is better. The painter is going to make a lot of the nicks from all the dogs, and the two kids look a lot better.

My wife also wants to hire a professional organizer. She found one, but this organizer charges $95 an hour. It’s $170 to even have her come out and look at the house. That’s paying someone a salary of nearly $200,000 a year, which seems like a lot for someone to organize stuff. I think I could organize a lot, but I don’t have the time and/or energy.

Nonetheless, I asked my wife if she could stay within a $2000 budget. This seems very reasonable from what I found online. I was worried that we’d spend the $170 only to find that the recommendation is another 100 hours of work or nearly $10,000. With the painting and carpeting, I want to limit how much more we spend on the house this year.

Final Grade: C+

Travel Four Times

We went to Puerto Rico in March. My wife and I had only been for one day on a layover before we had kids. With COVID, we weren’t sure about travel rules internationally, so this was a great way to get some international culture while staying in the United States.

We did our annual staycation in Block Island in June. It’s about a half-hour drive and another half-hour ferry.

Also, in June, we spent several days in New Hampshire. I wanted to go to a Jack Johnson concert. It’s a place my wife’s family often went on vacation, and we’ve been a couple of times. We finally got to take the kids to Santa’s Village, which is New England draw. We also spent some time at FunSpot.

In August, we went on a Disney cruise – our most extensive travel ever. We spent 17 days in Denmark, Scotland, Iceland, Norway, and England. I wrote two articles about it. Here’s the first. And here’s the second. I hadn’t traveled internationally much (outside of our Aruba timeshare) in my life, so this was huge for me. It was a great experience for the kids too.

Final Grade: A+

This is a good mix of travel for us. Disney was very expensive, though. At least we got a great price because we booked when they appeared to have cut prices due to COVID. The same trip now seems like it would be 40% more! Next time, we may go with Royal Caribbean to save some money.

Parenting Goals

Every year has its challenges, and 2022 was no different. It’s a tale as old as time, What’s the matter with kids these days?

I joke, but in general, they are good kids. Now at ages 9 and 10, they are just starting their spring semester. We’ll get their report cards in about a month and see how they did last year. They usually get top grades.

Kids’ YouTube Channel

We used the tripod I bought during Amazon Prime Day (affiliate link)! My 10-year-old created a Pokemon Scarlet and Violet walk-through. He did it all himself, and it is terrible. It’s only terrible because it was a first attempt, and he was winging it. We talked about a couple of things we could do next time, such as turning the phone sideways and zooming into the television instead of getting our whole living room in.

I then suggested that he look for a YouTube video on how to make good gaming YouTube videos. He loved the idea and learned a few more tricks. Future videos are going to be much better. The phase of learning something new when you get tremendous improvement is always fun.

Final Grade: C-

My plan with the YouTube Channel isn’t to make them YouTube stars. I think it’s useful for them to learn skills like acting and video editing. They always play around and make fantastic stories. They spent a morning writing a script. It’s like an unstructured drama class.

Drone Flying

We never got to fly any drones. Much like the YouTube Channel, flying drones isn’t all about flying drones themselves. It’s getting outside. We got outside a lot, though, so that’s a win even if we didn’t fly drones.

Final Grade: F

Computer Programming

My 10-year-old has soured on Lego Robotics. The other kids are REALLY into Legos; my son doesn’t match their enthusiasm. He mostly sits around and watches them.

We signed up for Lego robotics for my 9-year-old, and his age group doesn’t start until later in the month. He is really into Legos, so I think he’ll love it.

They each played with the Artie 3000 a little bit.

Final Grade: B-

I’m going to count this as both kids having done 20 hours of coding. It’s not great. I bet my kids would look at me funny if I asked them about an assignment operator, data types, or even how to do binary math. Some of that stuff can get complicated, so I’m joking, but only a bit.

Specialty Camps

We had great success with the camps this year. The 10-year-old loved theater camp, and we’ll do that again. He also loves cooking camp and the pet camp at the local animal shelter.

The 9-year-old loved sailing camp and discovered a love for surfing. He even got a surfboard for Christmas. He also enjoyed the pet camp.

I don’t know if we’ll try too many new things for 2023. While I would prefer that they do new stuff, I’m happy if they stick with some things they love.

Final Grade: A+

Final Thoughts

It seems like goals are either hit or miss. That’s okay. I intentionally planned a lot this past year.

One thing that I’ve learned over the years is that each year new things come up. You can make some plans in January, but even if you intend to follow them month after month, things change. Everyone had that happen with COVID. Individually, we each have various things that come up. I take whatever wins I can and adjust for next year.

We’re at the home stretch for the end of the year. At this point, there’s not much time to complete the remaining tasks. December always goes quickly with the holiday season in the second half of the month.

Since the last update in October, I’ve been busy with a lot of dog boarding. It’s my top job now. Often, when I have a meet and greet with a new dog owner, they say that I have their dream job. It’s got a lot of advantages, but it does have negatives too. There’s a lot of wear and tear on the house, and I’m effectively “on call” 24 hours a day.

Setting goals is useless if you don’t review them and check your progress.

So let’s check in on where I am now. As I write this, it is November 23rd. (I’m publishing it later than I’d like, but the data is from November 23rd.) About 90% of the year is over. So, I should be at about 90% of all the goals below.

Here’s my updated spreadsheet:

Money Goals

Make $70K of income

I’ve made $86,414 this year with about a month to go. The gains are all on the dog boarding side. Blogging and my part-time customer service gig have been almost exactly what I had expected.

Save Money for Wife’s Retirement

We took a step back in the Wife’s Retirement account. We’ve hired a painter to paint the house’s interior and fix all the nicks from the dogs. We are also getting new carpeting upstairs. So we dipped into reserves to write checks for deposits for that.

We did take a few steps forward with this, though:

1. We bought I-Bonds

   My wife bought $5,000, and I bought $10,000. We got the 9.62% interest rate for a bit. My wife probably could have purchased another $5,000, but her busy pharmacy life doesn’t always allow optimizing every financial move. TreasuryDirect.gov’s website is terrible and doesn’t make it very easy.

   This is a $15,000 that I didn’t count because it isn’t cash. However, it effectively serves much of the same purpose.

2. Moved money to high interest Savings

   My wife had a lot of cash from previous years’ savings earning only 0.1% interest in a local bank – over $50,000. We like to have money at a local bank. However, we don’t need that much hanging around. We opened a couple of accounts at Ally, now paying 3% interest. There was a bank bonus too. Essentially, we’ll make $1500 more in interest than we would at our local bank.

3. Condo Sale and Cash Cushion

   We sold a condo and have invested that money. A lot of it is in conservative high-dividend ETFs and bonds. We left some in cash and put that in an Ally account too. When I made this goal, we didn’t know we would sell the condo, but now we’ve got more cash and investments that pay us cash.

As this goal is written up, it looks like a failure. However, in spirit, I think we are doing much, much better in preparing for my wife’s retirement.

Business Goals

KidWealth.com

I’m at only 8% of my goal to get to 50,000 page views on KidWealth.com. That’s not good enough. It’s hard to predict when something may go viral, which usually brings an initial rush and then a trickle of repeat visitors. So far, nothing has gone the slightest bit viral, so it’s slow going.

However, traffic has been growing an average of 11.6% a month. If I continue that growth for the next year, I’d be “on pace” to have only 20,000 page views – less than half of this goal. I’m just pleased to see growth.

My other goal was to have 75 articles published by the end of the year. That’s roughly 1.5 a week. I’ve published 61 articles, or 81% of the goal. I won’t reach this goal, but I may get 90% there. I had to make many adjustments because the dog business was going so well.

Content Audit/Article Refresh

I’ve made no progress in refreshing articles for Lazy Man and Money. Writing articles for two blogs is a lot of work. It hard to carve out the time to go back and refresh old articles. I thought I could do this as part of my regular writing, but it isn’t working so far. If the dog boarding business slows down, I can revisit this.

This is a failure. I may keep it around for next year. I think there are a lot of benefits if I can do this.

Look into Dog Training

Earlier in the year, I looked very briefly into dog training. There are a hodge-podge group of certifications. It’s hard to find out which ones are useful. On further review, there’s not a lot of dog training I could do with the other stuff I have going on.

I found that there’s a dog and cat CPR class online through the Red Cross. That’s low-lying fruit. I think I could do it in a couple of hours. I just don’t have the time for it now.

Personal Goals

Lose Weight

I went in the wrong direction and have gained a few pounds. At least my body fat % is much better than it was in the last report. I’m running out of time to put it all together. Thanksgiving wasn’t helpful, and Christmas won’t be helpful, either. We’re currently cleaning out the pantry, and I’m finding that I’m trying to eat down a lot of food.

Next year, I’ll add a goal where I spend a week doing 15 things from my extreme Lazy Man diet article each week.

Drink Less

I’m over the number of drinks I was aiming for, but I’ve almost completely cut our wine and mixed drinks, except for rare occasions where there is nothing else. Light beer is a lot better.

Make a Bucket List

I didn’t make any progress on this.

Programming with Python

Even though I bought Python Programming for Beginners: A Kid’s Guide to Coding Fundamentals (affiliate link) several months ago, I haven’t opened it. I purposely bought a book aimed at kids to share with them.

I hoped my son’s Lego robotics would use Python, but they chose Scratch instead.

Family Goals

Get Organized

My wife is making great progress on this. We had a mouse in the basement that ate through some stuff and pooped on other stuff. It’s much easier to throw out the stuff you thought you liked when they are chewed and pooped on.

I’m not helping nearly enough. I need to sell some stuff, but I never seem to have the time to do it. I did try to sell a few large items on Nextdoor, such as some wooden pallets. So far, no luck. I may have to give them away. It’s a shame because many people would pay $100+ for them from the vendor (and I’m selling much less than that.)

Next year, I’ll make it a more concrete goal by trying to list 30-50 items and selling half.

Travel Four Times

In March, we completed our Puerto Rico trip. My kids and wife loved it, but I thought it was only okay. After we returned, we learned that our kids’ school was switching languages from French to Spanish. Maybe we’ll go back again.

We made our annual staycation-ish trip to Block Island for a few days in June. Soon after, we spent several days in New Hampshire. I wanted to go to a Jack Johnson concert. It’s a place we often vacation, so we did other stuff there, like Santa’s Village and Funspot. (If you are from MA or NH, you know.)

In August, we went on a Disney cruise – our most extensive travel ever. We were gone for 17 days to Denmark, Scotland, Iceland, Norway, and England. I had wanted to go to our Aruba timeshare in November, but it made sense to stick around a bit. We sold the week off and will use the money to pay the maintenance and have a little money left over.

We are looking to plan for 2023, but our dog is almost 14 now. It’s hard to know what his health might be like in four or eight months away.

Parenting Goals

The kids are close to finishing the fall semester. They got excellent reports at the parents’/teachers’ conference in November. We had one kid who had a lot of fall activities and one kid who had only a few. It’s going to switch a bit in the winter. It would be nice if it were consistent, but we don’t control the scheduling of the activities.

Kids’ YouTube Channel

The tripod I bought on Amazon’s second Prime Day is great, but it’s not getting used. We’re getting the room painted in January and can set up a better background for videos.

Drone Flying

I brought my DJI Mavic Mini to Block Island but never got it in the air. So far, I’ve only got it to hover in my living room for a few seconds. That took about an hour of learning how to set it up and about regulations and things like that.

I haven’t done anything with it since then. I thought about bringing it to Europe, but I’m glad I didn’t. I wouldn’t have gotten to use it much.

Now the weather is getting too cold, so I guess I’ll have to look into it in the spring.

Computer Programming

My recently 10-year-old is in the local Lego robotics group, and he flip-flops on whether he likes it. The other kids travel 30 miles or more to be a part of it, so he’s not going to make any lasting friendships. They are also REALLY into Legos; my son doesn’t match their enthusiasm. They qualified for the state finals, and the competition was fun. We’ll see where it goes.

The 8-year-old loved his week of robotics camp. We signed up for Lego robotics for him too, but his age group isn’t starting until January. He loves Legos and building, so I don’t have many concerns about whether he’ll like it.

I will count this as both kids having done 20 hours of coding. When I was ten, I would have done that in a weekend. Nonetheless, this completes the year’s goal.

Specialty Camps

We had great success with the camps this year. The 10-year-old loved theater camp, and we’ll do that again. The 8-year-old loved sailing camp and discovered surfing. Surfing camps are challenging because they spring up months after you need to commit to the other camps.

We failed at getting the younger kid into cooking camp. We had to cancel it for the Disney cruise. Those are two sentences I never thought I’d type back to back. We’re in a good place with camp ideas for 2023.

Final Thoughts

I certainly dropped the ball on many items, but I knew it was an aggressive list. To do so well on income, keep Kid Wealth close to the goal, and travel so much, it has to be a win.

I see myself doing one more update with the final numbers after the end of the year. I’m not sure I’ll check off any new boxes, though. December will go by fast with holiday festivities.