I can’t believe we are already almost 1/2 way through the month…and I’m just now getting my goals up. It took me a while to decide if I just wanted to focus on my word for the year or if I wanted to go ahead and post some goals. I chose both!

Here are ten goals for the year:

Spiritual:

1)  Do three Bible studies this year (in addition to regular daily quiet times).

I am planning to go through the Knowing Him: 50 Day Study (free ebook from Sonlife), Switch on Your Brain curriculum by Dr. Caroline Leaf, and 1st Peter: A Living Hope in Christ by Jen Wilkins.

Financial:

2) Continue socking away as much as we can in retirement accounts.

This is the same as last year. Here’s what I said, “I’ve started reading some financial independence/early retirement blogs, and it has really opened my eyes to investing and continuing to be as frugal as we can. I’ve started tracking our net worth (and using the retirement planner) at Personal Capital and it’s very motivating for me to see that number go up.

I always feel pulled in several directions, because I view all money as God’s money…and I’m just the steward of it, and I don’t want to be like the man building bigger and bigger barns only to die without the money being used for kingdom purposes. At the same time, we are to be wise…and having financial resources to take care of our families (and others) in our old age seems to be prudent. It’s probably mostly a mindset and heart issue more than anything, so I plan to re-read the Bible and Money, Possessions, and Eternity to remind myself of what truly matters when it comes to money!

Anyway, we have several IRAs and a 403b account, so my goal is to fully fund them. I have automatic withdrawals set up to make this easier.”

3)  Continue to donate all proceeds from God’s Little Explorers to the orphanage we are supporting. 

In the past five-and-a-half years, we’ve been able to raise over $90,000 with your help!  The project is still lacking funds to finish, so we will continue to donate 100% of the proceeds. I’d love for this to be the year the project is completely done!

4) Rebuild our emergency fund.

This has gotten low again due to a few health expenses, so we need to get this back up. Ideally, I’d like to see this at 6 months worth of expenses, but I’ll be happy if we can get it back up to 3 months worth by the end of the year. Here’s more about how to build an emergency fund here.

Health and Fitness

5)  Complete Metabolic Prime and run at least four 5ks and a half-marathon (I’m aiming for the Bill Snyder Highway Half in May)

I’ve completed several rounds of Metabolic Prime, but things kind of fell apart for me after my brother-in-law died. I was focused more on taking care of other people than myself, so I feel way out of shape (even though I’ve done some running, it is definitely nothing like a metabolic work-out).  I started the Metabolic Prime transformation this week through the FB group that you get access to when you order the program, so I plan to do that the next 12 weeks and through in some easy running until I finish. Then, I’ll get a little more focused on 1/2 marathon training after that.

6)  Average 8,000 steps per day.

I keep setting this goal for myself…but I’m moving the step goal down from 10,000 since I haven’t even been close to meeting it. I’ll be tracking my daily step count with my Fitbit, and I plan to increase my yearly average from 2018.

Marriage

7)  Go on a special anniversary celebration.

It will be 19 years of marriage in June, and I’d like to do something special for that. I plan to sell all kinds of things in my quest to simplify and plan to set that money aside for a cruise or something!

Parenting

8)  Be more intentional about teaching life skills

I haven’t done as much personal finance, cooking, or auto/home maintenance teaching with my girls as I would like, so I plan to work on that this summer. I haven’t quite decided if I’m going to purchase curriculum or just make up my own!

Personal:

9)  Read 52 books.

I just started with Goodreads, and I plan to read at least one book per week. I think I should also set myself a goal of reading at least 5 fiction books since I tend to mostly read non-fiction.

Blogging:

10)  Grow my blog.

Blogging has been on the backburner for several years, and I’m just doing enough to get by. My goal is to add more quality content (2 pieces per month), revamp an eCourse that I have, and write four ebooks.