2022 Business and Personal Goals
Happy New Year! To kick off every new year, I like to set goals for all aspects of my life, both personal and professional. By publicizing my goals, it helps me stay accountable for the things I set out to accomplish for the year. I also hope that some of my goals inspire you to set some for yourselves, too! Let’s get started.
Personal Goals
Exercise 3x per week. 3 main ways I plan to exercise are by going to the gym, nature walks/hikes, and playing Pickleball. Luckily, there’s a gym in the apartment complex we’re temporarily living in, and we will have a home gym in our custom home once it’s built. Nature walks & hikes will be a great way to get some fresh air, experience the seasons in Texas, and explore new local areas. Lastly, Pickleball was a weekly thing for me back in California, so I plan to do the same thing in Dallas.
Improve flexibility. I haven’t been able to touch my toes with my legs straight in decades. So my plan is to do stretches to improve my flexibility throughout my body, but my primary goal is to be able to touch my toes again with my legs straight!
Cooking. WFH (work from home) presented me with the opportunity to learn how to cook. I’ve never been independent in the kitchen up until about 1-1.5 years ago, when I spent a lot more time in the kitchen and followed recipes. This year, now that I’m retired, my goal is to add 3 dishes to my family’s staple meals. 3 might not sound like a lot, but these dishes need to be easily repeatable, vegetarian (for my partner), and obviously tasty!
Food. Back in California, we always had our go-to restaurants. I see no reason why that should change now that we’re in Texas. So this year, we’re going to have fun trying new restaurants and finding our local favorites. Yum!
Travel. Texas is pretty centrally located, so it should be easier for us to explore more states, especially the east coast. We’d like to travel internationally, but COVID remains a constant barrier for us. At a minimum, we plan to explore more of Texas and potentially drive to some of the other major cities like Houston and Austin.
Business Goals
Buck by Buck blog. If I’m being honest, social media isn’t my favorite place to spend my time. So I would love to reach a state where the blog receives a substantial amount of viewership so I no longer rely on Instagram posts to improve engagement on this blog. I’d much rather prefer traffic driven by returning users, organic search, and plain word of mouth!
My flipping business. In 2021, I had a goal of flipping 1 home per quarter, 4 for the year. Technically, I bought 4 flips but sold only 2. One of them turned into an Airbnb, and another one is not going well logistically and is still barely getting started.
For this year, my goal is to complete the last flip from 2021 and flip just 1 more. I decided to take this year slower since we still have a custom home to complete and much to learn & explore in the new area. Also, 1 flip is plenty. I’m in retirement after all!
Buy another buy-and-hold rental property. Whether this property is a short-term or long-term rental is up in the air. I’m open to either, and my current Airbnb seems to be doing decently well so far.
Reach 20K followers on Instagram by the end of the year. At the time of writing, I have between 13.5-14K followers. So I think growing to 20K followers is very achievable.
Personal Finance Goals
Sell our primary residence in California. Right now, our primary residence in California is vacant and prepped for sale! I’ll be sad to see it go, but it’s a fantastic home for another family. I’ll keep my fingers crossed on this sale, as the sale price can really change our finances substantially, given that we’re talking about a multi-million dollar home.
Coupled with selling the home, I also plan to invest all the proceeds into stocks and real estate. Most of it will go straight into index funds. A smaller portion of the proceeds, likely a couple hundred thousand, will be used to purchase a rental property. I’ll share more on this goal once I have an update!
Living Trust. My partner and I formed our living trust a couple years ago in California. Now that we’ve relocated to Texas, we need to reform it with a new attorney. This will be a costly (probably several thousand) and tedious process since there are lots of accounts and real estate titles that need to be moved under the new trust. Nevertheless, it is an absolute must to always keep a living trust updated as best as possible to avoid issues in the future.
Max out my partner’s 401(k)s. I don’t have a goal to max out my 401(k) anymore because I no longer have an employer to sponsor my plan. That means only my partner will continue maxing out their 401(k) at $61,000 in 2022.
My partner maxes out their traditional 401(k) with pre-tax dollars and post-tax dollars, up to the combined employee/employer limit of $61,000 per year. The post-tax dollars are rolled over to a Roth 401(k) through a process called a Mega Backdoor Roth conversion. We will do the same again this year.
Backdoor Roth IRA conversions. In 2021, my partner and I both did Backdoor Roth IRA conversions since our combined income limit exceeded the 2021 income limit of $208K. In 2022, the income limit rose to $214K, but we’ll still be above that. If you’re interested in doing this yourself, you can read through my step-by-step guide on how to do this via Fidelity.
529 account. My partner and I intend to pay for our child’s entire college education. We used to automatically invest $500/month ($6,000/year) into our child’s 529 account. However, the account has reached a dollar amount that we feel is enough to pay for the majority of a 4-year college education already! That means, we have officially stopped contributing to the 529 and can now redirect that $500/month into our taxable brokerage accounts instead.
Conclusion
As always, I hope that this year will be better than the previous one! I usually do pretty well sticking to my goals. By publicizing them, I always have easy access to them, too, which is a nice perk of being a blogger.
My goals may change over the months, but that’s okay. It’s better to revise my goals into achievable ones than to be a stubborn stickler for the original ones that are unrealistic.
Once again, Happy New Year! I hope you all have a fantastic year!
