2018 is here! I love what the new year brings. A fresh start and the excitement of newness that comes with the new year is something that I love. I am also a huge fan of setting goals and working toward completing them. I am always wanting to work at being better than I was before, and goal-setting allows me really focus in on it. And I also love to dream. And goals are like officially working toward your dreams.
If you haven’t made your 2018 goals yet, there’s still time! Make big goals, small goals and everything else in between. Goals for your finances, career, family and health. And write them down! This is how you will be able to hold yourself accountable for months to come this year!
Just remember to make SMART goals. Goals that are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Timely. To learn more on goal setting, check out Setting Financial Goals.
Today I am excited to share my 2018 goals with you! From finances, career and blogging, here are my goals for 2018.
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Save For An Emergency Fund
Now that we’re debt-free, our next financial goal is to save for an emergency fund! For those of your who are Dave Ramsey followers, this is baby step 3. Dave says to save a 3-6 month emergency fund. We’re aiming for right around there with $12,000 to have in the bank. We hopefully should be done with this by May.
Save For And Purchase A House
In November 2017, Jacob and I moved into an apartment that we love! But our long term goal for the last few years is to buy a house of our own. We have a 12 month lease and are hoping to buy a house in the fall once our lease is up. After we save for our emergency fund, we will start saving for a house.
I’m holding the house buying goal more loosely. I won’t be disappointed in myself if we don’t get to buy until 2019. We want to make sure that we are really truly ready to make the biggest purchase of our lives! So if that means waiting a few more months, that’s okay too.
Increase Retirement Contributions to 10%
Right now, we are contributing 8% of our household income into retirement. We were able to increase from 5% to 8% once we became debt-free. But after we finish out emergency fund, we want to increase our contribution to 10%. We are 23 and 26 years old and now is the best time to save for retirement because we have time on our side!
Put At Least $200 A Month To Travel
When we were getting out of debt, we didn’t have the opportunity to travel since we were putting every extra dime to loans. But now that we’re debt-free we’re excited to travel more! We’re already planning to go to Hawaii in May, and I want to continue to fund a travel fund so that we can go more places down the road!
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Make $10,000 On My Blog in 2018
I want to continue to grow my blog and have it become a serious income-generating site. You have seen my income reports. And I’m close to making $1,000 a month with my blog. I think that $10,000 can be totally doable, but will push me this year. My long-term goal with blogging is that I can do it full-time down the road when I have kids. But for now, some extra serious income would be awesome. 🙂
Hit 100,000 Blog Views
This year I also want to hit 100,000 blog views. I’m not really close to that right now, so this is definitely a big goal! But I think that in months to come, I can increase my views through my marketing plans.
Networking In The Personal Finance Realm
Something I’m super excited about this year is attending FinCon, which is a convention of personal finance bloggers, YouTubers and influencers. Nerdy, I know, but so exciting! I am officially going the 2018 event in Orlando (a long journey from Portland but I have enough airline miles!!).
I am so excited to attend, learn, and interact with more people in my field! It will be an awesome week. I want to continue to interact with, and engage with more content creators in the personal finance field. It’s so fun to meet other people who are in the same boat as you.
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Grow My YouTube Channel
I do have a YouTube channel! But I haven’t been very good about keeping up on it… I really love watching other YouTube channels, and think that it could be a really cool outlet of reaching more people with personal finance content. So I want to continue to film more videos and put time into my channel. I know this isn’t a super specific and measurable goal, but it is something that I want to be better at this year!
Journal Every Day
I’ve never been good about journaling, but I want that to change in 2018. I’ve been writing every day in my 2018 Erin Condren planner. I bought the horizontal version, which is awesome for giving me a few lines a day to share a little bit about what the day was like.
That’s about it for my 2018 goals! I know that it will be a great year and I’me excited about where it will go.
Let me know in the comments below!
What are your specific goals for 2018? How are you going to reach them?
