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 2021 are:
– Put £6,000 into savings
– Overpay our mortgage by £1,200
– Have 220 NSDs throughout the year
– Earn £7,000 in side income
– Receive £2,000 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 set as an aim of £500 a month. This is lower than previous years but I am having to adjust our budget. I talk more about this in this video but essentially, our expenses are going up and our budget has been stretched for a long time. Things like childcare are getting more expensive so our budget needs to reflect that.
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. So, this goal equals an overpayment of £100 per month. Again, less than previous years but needs must.
I love tracking No Spend Days and truly believe they’re one of the things that have transformed my spending habits. I am keeping the same target for 2021.
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 2020 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. £7,000 over the year equates to £583.33 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. 2021 will be my sixth 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 this seems like a lot, to be on track with our early retirement dream this is the target number for 2021. I have my final dividend income post for 2020 up next week – it’s a good one. Watch out for that!
My Personal goals for 2021 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 both 2019 and 2020. 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 – 60k page views a month
– Grow my Twitter followers to 4,000
– Grow my Facebook likes to 4,000
– Grow my Instagram followers to 10,000
– Grow my Pinterest followers to 3,000
– Grow my Youtube subscribers to 10,000
– grow my Etsy store and add new products
– create my profile on Fiverr and bring in another income stream
Although my page views are steadily rising, I want to grow my page views into something more substantial. 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 want to continue to build my social media accounts; the more followers I can get then the more people I can potentially help. Instagram and YouTube are the main priorities this year but I need to grow the others as well.
I want to continue to grow my Etsy store and the products offered – both printable and physical. I have some designs in the pipeline but I need to sit and think about just what I want to have on there and what I can afford to focus on.
Finally, I want to create a profile on Fiverr and start doing online writing for others. This has been on my to do list for forever so putting it on here to keep my accountable. I will do this!
Anyway, here’s to 2021 – 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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Sounds great 👍🏻