Hello 2020! Gosh, that seems like such a futuristic year, if that makes sense. A new decade! So lots of goals to be considered and set. But first, happy new year! 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. I am sure there will be trials during 2020, but I am looking forward to it. I will set myself a word of the year too – I will post about this separately.
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 2020 are:
– Put £8,400 into savings
– Overpay our mortgage by £2,200
– Have 220 NSDs throughout the year
– Earn £5,000 in side income
– Receive £1,600 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 set as an aim of £700 a month. With some careful planning and mindful spending, this should be possible to do.
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 kept my target the same for 2020. 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!
Side income is something that has been hit and miss but something I definitely want to build on. I did better than I thought during 2019 so I have set my aim slightly higher this year. This would be an amazing target to hit! I think I am going to split my extra earnings evenly between investing and overpaying our mortgage. £5,000 over the year equates to £416.66 a month which seems quite a daunting task at the moment, but I have lots of plans in the pipeline. 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 fifth 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. However, our plan seems to be working and it makes me so excited to see where the next twelve months takes me in terms of investing and dividend income. I have my final dividend income post for 2019 up next week – it’s a good one. Watch out for that!
My Personal goals for 2020 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.
These are actually the same goals as I set myself in 2019. For the simple reason – I didn’t really achieve them in the way I wanted. So, I have set the same goals for 2020. 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 don’t even have an excuse any longer! My weight is directly linked to my mental health so I need to prioritise the two this year.
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 2020 are:
– Aim for 40k – 50k page views a month
– Grow my Twitter followers to 4,000
– Grow my Facebook likes to 4,000
– Grow my Instagram followers to 6,000
– Grow my Pinterest followers to 3,000
– Grow my Youtube subscribers to 2,000
– expand my VA work and take on 4 new clients.
Although my page views are steadily rising, I want to grow my page views into something more substantial. They have consistently been rising throughout 2019 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. Consistency seems to be a word that keeps popping up when I talk about aims. I have bought a new planner to help me be organised in 2020!
I really want to build on my social media presence in 2020, 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 YouTube this year, as these are my favourite social media channels at the moment. In fact, I have a YouTube video going up later which is me talking to the camera. Bit nervous about it, to be honest!
Finally, I want to expand on my VA work and take on four new clients by the end of 2020. I love this side of work. It can be a variety of things, from writing newsletter, blog posts, managing social media accounts and different groups. It’s really interesting to see how other people’s businesses work and to help in that area. If you need any help, let me know!
Anyway, here’s to 2020 – 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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such wonderful goals…
Thanks!