Hi Friendos,
Happy almost New Year! This week I am leaning hard into some winter cozy by making herbal tea and doing a jigsaw puzzle, a year-end tradition in my house. I am also thinking about what my goals should be for 2025.
I don’t like “resolutions” because I have never once actually accomplished something I “resolved” to do or do better and inevitably I feel like I failed. Goals are different though. Goals feel positive to me and even if I only partially reach my goal, I still feel pretty good about having an accomplishment.
I usually have goals in a few different categories, like “money,” “family,” and “personal.”
A personal goal is a something like self-improvement or career development goal, like if there’s a difficult book I want to read (looking at you Moby Dick) or a particular number of clients I want to serve at work.
This year one of my personal goals is to start serving clients with traditional tax preparation. If you or someone you know are looking for a tax preparer or would like to have someone teach you how to DIY your taxes, I hope you’ll consider working with me! I welcome and want to work with diverse clients of every type and have a strict “no judgment” policy regarding personal finance.
Family goals are all about spending more time with family and sometimes doing that in ways that they like, even if it’s not my personal favorite. Setting specific goals (“go to at least 2 live jazz shows with So-and-So who loves jazz” or “call So-and-So at least every other month”) helps me prioritize this.
Money goals are about improving my financial position, like saving into retirement accounts or paying down my mortgage. They could also be things like streamlining financial accounts, automating bill payments, executing on a savings plan, getting life insurance, having a will drawn up, or donating a certain % of your income to charity.
Naturally my money goals have varied a lot over the years as my circumstances and needs have changed over time.
Some money goals are easiest to accomplish by breaking them down into little chunks that you do with every paycheck, like paying down debt or saving into retirement. For others, it is easier to save up money and then do the actual thing all at once or in a few chunks, like if you are contributing to an IRA. Others are one-time things by nature, like having a will prepared or buying a new life insurance policy. One-time things, money-related or otherwise, I like to pencil in a certain month of the year when I’ll do them. That helps me spread things out and not pretend I’ll do everything back-to-back. I know I need my downtime and get stressed if I’m too overbooked.
I have found that personally, it is realistic to think I can accomplish something like 4-7 goals in a year. Sometimes I set a few more than that and know that I won’t hit all of them, which is totally ok. Moby Dick was on my goal lists for 2023 and 2024…maybe making it public is just the commitment device I need!
Resolutions (“I resolve to be good with money this year”) are vague and you don’t know if you actually did the thing or not. Goals are specific; therefore, you know if you accomplished them or not. You can make a plan for how you will accomplish the goal and you can adjust the plan over time as needed.
I’ll leave you with an exquisitely boring sentiment for this last Boring Newsletter of the year. From one of my favorite podcasts, “A goal is just a dream without magic.” -Andrew Walsh, TBTL episode #3885 (Feb 21, 2023).
-Stephanie
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