Goals for 2020

My inspiration photo.

As we all know from my last goals post, 2019 didn't exactly go according to plan.  At all!  But 2019 is over now so I'm drawing a line under it and resetting for 2020.  There are some basic habits that I have developed over the years through goal setting and which I will continue to do in 2020, running along in the background.  These are making more sustainable choices in my purchases and lifestyle decisions, getting rid of things I do longer need / use, and keeping my diet as healthy as possible and low in things like processed sugar.  But there are four larger goals I want to work on this year.

British Sign Language.

This is the roll over goal from last year and I really want to do this language the justice it deserves in 2020.  As the subscription to my online course finishes at the end of the first quarter it seems like finishing the last three lessons in the next couple of months is a good place to start.  Once I have finished the course I want to spend the next three quarters finding people I can practise sign language with.  To begin with this may have to be in New Zealand and I'm hoping that the connection between New Zealand sign language and British sign language should make it easy enough to cross over between the two.  Learning a new language (or at least attempting to) always makes me nervous and a bit stressed, and I think I've been letting myself make excuses to not do the lessons because of that.  But it's time to stop doing that and look the scary new language in the proverbial face.

Financial Fitness.

This was my goal a couple of years ago and I did pretty well in getting myself sorted, but I've kind of let things slide a little over the last couple of months (okay a lot - not helped by needing to buy a second-hand car).  I let some emotional decisions take over the more sensible ones and now it's time to get back on track.  I have some credit card debit to pay off, an emergency fund to rebuild, and I really failed last year at putting the amount of money I should have been putting into my pension fund.  The pension fund is especially important as I'm in my late 30s now and have never really had much of a great track record when it comes to contributing in the first place.  The time is now ticking and I really need to make sure I have financial security in my old age.

This isn't really a goal that I can break into quarters but, roughly, I would like to have paid off the credit card debt (including my partners) by the end of the first half of the year.  I then want to build back up my emergency fund and have started paying good amounts into my pension fund in the last half of the year.  This is going to be a little bit more difficult than normal as I only really know what's going on in the first three months of this year.  After that jobs and income amounts are all a bit up in the air, but I'm going to keep the goal and do my best to work towards it.   

I actually want this goal to carry on for a few years until I have gotten myself into a real sound footing when it comes to finances.  I think that'll take 3 years to do, as long as I'm sensible, and a long term goal should stop me falling off the wagon again.

Being a Tourist.

This one probably doesn't seem like it really fits with the goal above, but when I talk about being a tourist I'm not necessarily talking about travelling to new countries.  I'm talking about being a tourist in your own area and country.  When I look back on last year in Scotland, when I had the van I'd sort of converted to live in, I really didn't see as much of the country as I had intended or wanted.  Now, when I think about it, I'm a little angry with myself for not taking the opportunity that I had and really going for it.  I don't want to make that mistake again.

So, here's the plan for 2020.  When I move to a place I'm going to work out what the local attractions are and actually go and see them.  I'm also going to travel a little further afield and make sure that I really get to know the area.  And here's why it won't really affect my financial fitness goals.  Pretty much everything I'm interested in are based within the three overlapping circles of nature, trekking, and local history, most of which don't really cost anything to do.  The main cost will probably be fuel and possibly accommodation (though I do really enjoy camping so that reduces that considerably), but these won't eat too much into my budgets and will probably save me a lot of money on the boredom spending I do when I'm stuck at home.

Paperless Productivity.

I've already written about this in a previous blog, but as it's one of my goals for  2020 I thought I should probably give it a quick mention here.  I'm going to see if I can take all the paper I use when planning out my time, to-dos, and even work for this blog and make it digital.  The plan here is to reduce my paper waste and have a system that is a little more compact and portable.  I'll be testing out different types of software over 2020 to see if I can find one that really suits me and will probably do separate updates on each one as the year goes on rather than waiting to do a quarterly update.

And that's it.  Those are my goals for this year.  Most of them are going to be pretty doable, but I know my financial goal is going to be a difficult one to do and I didn't want to overload on too many challenging goals in 2020 that would be competing for my time and energy.  Especially not after last year.  I'll do quarterly updates as before so that I can see how I'm progressing, but I definitely feel better and more optimistic about this year's goals.  I think I'm going to actually manage it this time.

There is one other little goal that I'll be doing this year that I thought I would quickly mention here.  It's a pretty simple one that doesn't require too much planning or work.  And that's giving up the fizzy, black stuff. Wish me luck!