Hello 2021! I am so ready for a new year. Not that the start will be any different to the past few weeks but hopefully there will be a light at the end of the tunnel. My 2021 goals are for the next twelve months and it seems strange to think about where we might be by the end of 2021. Hopefully back to normal! We can but hope. 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 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 👍🏻