My Goals For 2013

2012 was a mixed bag in terms of goal-meeting. On the one hand, I easily met all my personal financial goals. On the other hand, I didn’t meet any of my major business goals. Part of that was due to laziness and part was due to shifting priorities. I’m going to try to do a better job of setting reasonable, thoughtful goals this year.

Personal Finance Goals

Invest at least $60,000

I’m eliminating the “increase net worth” goal this year and focusing solely on what I can personally control: my savings rate. My goal this year is to invest in excess of $60,000, which includes money I put into 401ks, IRAs, taxable savings, etc but does not include things like saving for a new car, vacation, or beefing up my emergency savings in case something expensive pops up. This is an achievable goal so long as my business has a decent year but another Panda/Penguin/whatever penalty would be a huge setback.

That’s it. I just have the one finance goal this year because it encompasses pretty much all aspects of my financial life. If I can achieve it, it means I’ve done a lot of other things right.

Personal Goals

Spend at least 2 weeks on another continent

I’d like to make this an annual thing. Most likely destination this year is South America, although I’m never against a nice European trip. I’m also really interested in Southeast Asia – I really enjoyed China – but we’ll see. No solid plans yet.

Exercise 5 days per week

This was a goal last year and I failed miserably. In theory, this should be easy because I’m counting any form of exercise including basketball/soccer after work, 10 minute full-body dumbbell sessions in the morning, etc. I should be able to at least lift weights or sprint up a hill 15 minutes per day, right? Nonetheless, I was extremely inconsistent with this last year. I just need to make it a priority.

Eat better

Again, I eat relatively well in general, but I gave in to the desire to order a pizza and watch football on a Saturday/Sunday afternoon a few times too many. One concrete step I’m going to take to fix this is to start bringing my lunch to work at least 3 days per week. That will cut out a lot of greasy calories because I tend to eat extremely healthy when I do bring my lunch.

Get back into Spanish

I used to speak Spanish pretty well, but it’s been years. I need a refresher, especially if I plan on visiting South America later this year. I want to get close to the level of verbal competency I had when studying in Spain. I estimate perhaps 30 minutes per day of study for 3-4 months should get me there as long as I’m also seeking out opportunities to engage in real conversation with others.

Study German

I like the German language. It’s fun to speak. I’ve studied it a bit in the past and already have a working vocabulary of perhaps 100 or so German words. I don’t think it’s realistic to expect to learn to speak German at a high level this year if I’m also focusing on Spanish, but I’d at least like to reach some level of basic competency. I have access to Rosetta Stone for free through my employer, so I really have no excuse.

Business Goals

Grow net income by 20%

Okay, last year’s goal to grow net income by 50% was pretty ridiculous. This year, I’m shooting for 20%. So long as I’m not hit by another Google penalty, I should be able to reach this goal.

Get to 1,000 Twitter followers

Social media metrics are becoming far more important than RSS subscribers. If I end 2013 with over 1,000 followers on Twitter, I’ll be happy.

Use Facebook

This blog has a Facebook page (please go Like my page!) but I don’t promote it at all, and it shows. My Facebook stats are miserable but seeing as how there’s really nothing on it, I’m not surprised. I’m going to start at least doing the basics this year.

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