Hello 2019! And a happy new year to you all. I always like the start of a new year; full of optimism for the year ahead. The unknown of what’s in store for everyone in the next twelve months, plus lots of new experiences to enjoy and memories to treasure forever. I am loving being a family of four and seeing our boys grow. Although they are starting to struggle with sharing the same toys, it is lovely most of the time! 🙂
Each year I like to set myself goals that I hope to achieve by the end of the year; to keep me on track and to challenge myself throughout the year. I also feel like it makes me more accountable over the year; 12 months is a long time and focus can drift at times, so knowing I have yearly goals to reach as well as monthly ones make me more focused. Again, like with the monthly ones, I do a financial section and a personal section. I also have some business goals, as I want to grow this little space of mine 🙂
My Financial Goals for 2019 are:
– Put £8,000 into savings
– Overpay our mortgage by £2,200
– Have 220 NSDs throughout the year
– Earn £3,000 in side income
– Receive £1,000 in dividend payments.
The savings goal is self-explanatory; to continue our journey towards early retirement, I need to save as much as possible. Ideally it would be more than this, but I would be very pleased if I manage this by the end of the year. This is lower than previous years as we have having some work done on the house this year and so I think that will have an impact.
Although being mortgage free ties in with our early retirement goals, it has taken a backseat until now. Our focus has been more on saving and investing, and getting the ball rolling on that aspect of our long term plans a lot more. However, as interest rates have risen slightly, we made the decision in the latter part of 2018 to over pay more. So, this goal equals an overpayment of £185 per month. I’m hoping to do more, but again, finances may be stretched at certain points.
As I have somehow managed to lose the ability to gain multiple NSDs during the week, I have actually increased my target for 2019. I am such a fan of No Spend Days to make you budget properly, so I’m slightly frustrated at myself for not managing them lately. Watch this space, I will get my groove back! I’m running a No Spend Month challenge over on Facebook so I’m hoping that will help me.
Side income is something that has been hit and miss but something I definitely want to build on. £3,000 over the year equates to £250 a month which seems quite a daunting task at the moment, but I have lots of plans in the pipeline. To bring in an additional £3,000 before taxes would be amazing and helpful to our plans. I need to work on consistency too, as it can be so easy to fall behind. I see so many wonderful bloggers making a consistent income online, and it frustrates me that I can’t seem to manage to do that. It makes me feel like I’m doing something wrong!
Finally, something that I am so excited about, is building my dividend income. 2019 will be my fourth full year of investing and I’m looking forward to seeing how much I receive throughout the year. If I achieve this, I will be amazed 
it does show that slow and steady over time works. Although it will be interesting to see what Brexit does to the markets.
My Personal goals for 2019 are:
– Establish a better night time routine
– Spend some time just for myself, to relax.
– Get back to my pre-pregnancy weight
– Be more kind to myself
– Stop worrying about things I can’t change and focus on the ones I can.
I am really bad at getting to bed at a reasonable time. I have two children who don’t often sleep through the night, so I am tired all of the time. Yet, I am often awake way past 10PM which isn’t helpful. I need to get into a better routine of going upstairs earlier, getting ready for bed and then reading before going to sleep. I need to make this a priority this year, as lack of sleep has such an impact on every area of my life.
Again, something I am really bad at prioritising is time for myself. I have so many things I feel I need to get done each day that I am waaay down the list of priorities. Maybe that needs to change slightly. Even if I take 5 minutes to do a face mask and sit doing nothing, would be better than the current situation.
New year, new start – I want to start losing the rest of my pregnancy weight. I cannot use the excuse forever; Frugal Baby is now 1 so he’s not really a baby any longer! I still go to Slimming World; I just need to stick to the plan as when I do that, it works. I would love to be back down to my pre-pregnancy weight by the end of the year. I know I can do it, if I focus!
The last two are the same as last year, as I am still working on not being so self critical and more accepting of myself. This was working well last year, and I want to continue.
My business goals for 2018 are:
– Aim for 40k – 50k page views a month
– Grow my Twitter followers to 4,000
– Grow my Facebook likes to 3,000
– Grow my Instagram followers to 3,000
– Grow my Pinterest followers to 3,000
– sort out email subscribers
– start a newsletter
Although my page views are steadily rising, I want to grow my page views into something more substantial. They have consistently been rising throughout 2018 so this is just a continuation of this trend. With good content and sharing, I am confident I can reach this. I hope so, anyway! I need to ensure that my content is good and to share it across my social media channels consistently.
I really want to build on my social media presence in 2019, as some of the people I follow have huge amounts of followers on their various accounts. I need to come up with a concrete social media strategy that allows me to connect with more people with a similar mindset, and to help people with their financial journey. If you have any of these accounts and don’t follow me on there, I’d be extremely grateful if you could! I think I’m going to focus on Instagram and Pinterest this year, as my main focus. Facebook is really slow for me, and Twitter seems to be growing slowly but surely.
Finally, I want to sort out a better email system and start a newsletter. I’m not sure how to go about this, so it’ll need some research. I do have an opt in at the top of the page to get onto my mailing list, so I’ve made a good start.
Anyway, here’s to 2019 – I have a feeling it’s going to be great! Thank you for sticking around, reading my posts, commenting and generally making me feel like I’m doing the right thing. I am so grateful for each and every one of my lovely readers. I’m excited to see what the following twelve month brings!
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I do so enjoy reading your posts. I think you are doing amazing well. Hubby and I have had a massive change this year. I retired from the teaching part of my life with a very small pension. Husband left teaching as it was making him I’ll and has gone back to a previous job, part time (Dispensing Optician) . Over the holidays I have decided to cut back on my soft furnishings work. It’s beginning to take its toll on my back. Hopefully I am going to develop my spinning, weaving, knitting and sewing to run a few small group workshops from home. At 60, it is time for a new adventure. Mortgage is paid off. We have saved enough for emergencies and simple holidays for the next 5 years when the state and private pensions kick in. Exciting times.
I am about to set my monthly target with NSD s and various other tho us. I don’t think I will be saving much but that is ok. I hope that the New Year brings both peace and happiness to you and your family.
Kind regards.
Linda x
Ooh, what an exciting time for you! I hope your new adventure goes well, please keep me updated 🙂 you are living the life we are hoping to live eventually! Good luck with the NSDs too 🙂
Love reading your posts. They have inspired me to be better with money this year. My goals are to pay off both my car insurance and home insurance in one go (I’m actually not sure if this will make us financially better off but i’m hoping to save those monthly amounts in the hope that next Christmas won’t be as much of a strain!)
I am currently on Maternity Leave, going back in May this year when Children will have a mix of grandparents & nursery.
I’m also trying to not spend so much, I don’t need to, its just habit and with two small children I find staying at home with them day in day out quite boring. I’m hoping to find lots of free things to do with them both.
Happy New Year, thank you for inspiring me to better off my family (fingers crossed!)
What a lovely comment – thank you Lauren! I find when I’m at home with our two, I want to go out and do something, which leads to spending. It’s tough, isn’t it? Let me know how you get on during January – if you’re on Facebook join my No Spend Month challenge group for lots of people trying to reduce their spending!
Happy New Year! Love reading your posts! Hope you can reach your goals 🙂
Happy New Year to you too! And thank you 🙂
Some solid goals and it sounds like you are well on your way to achieving them. Although, you might want to reconsider telling people your goals. There’s research that shows that when people tell others their goals, they’re less likely to achieve them. But either way, keep up the good work and best of luck.
A lovely read and look forward to reading more of your blogs. It’s inspired me to start dividend investing. So fingers crossed to a successful year. Thank you.
Thank you! And that’s exciting – let me know how you get on 🙂