A few of my 2021 goals
Happy 2021!
I think we’re all pretty excited to be out of 2020 and into a fresh new year.
Sitting down over the holidays and thinking through the upcoming year and setting new goals is one of my favorite things.
Here are ten of my 2021 goals.
A FEW OF MY 2021 GOALS
- Get LASIK. This is one of my biggest goals for the year. I’ve been wearing glasses since I was 7 years old and I’m hardly functional without my contacts. I’d love to just be done with those forever. I mentioned this on Instagram a few weeks ago and was flooded with people saying it was the best decision they’d ever made.
- Read 150 books. Last year, my goal was 120 books, which was more than I read in nearly a decade. And I was delighted that I hit and then passed that goal. This year, I’m aiming for 150 (I count read-aloud books and audiobooks – basically everything except picture books). And of COURSE, this free printable reading log is the most fun way to track them.
- Monthly lunches with my girls at school. This was one of my goals for 2020, but then schools closed down and when they opened back up in the fall, lunch visits were – as you can imagine – not allowed. I’m hopeful that by this coming fall, things will be mostly back to normal and that I’ll be able to go have lunch with them at school in August, September, October, and November.
- Phone away by 9:45 p.m. One of the things that I was really pleased about in 2020 is that I really stuck to my 10:30 bedtime well. I felt for so many years that it was just this impossible hard task to get to bed on time, but it’s truly become part of our routine and it’s very rare that I’m not in bed with the lights off by at least 10:45. My new focus is on having my phone off for the night by 9:45 p.m. (I plug it in to my PhoneSoap in my office to charge and sanitize over night) and then I have 45 minutes to wind down and read before I go to sleep. This has really helped my reading too!
- Finish the dining room. We don’t have an eat-in kitchen, so our dining room is used all day every day. It’s not HORRIBLE, but it’s definitely not great and I want to get it finished this year.
- Try 10 new restaurants. Bart and I love going out to eat and I love trying new, local places. This feels like a really fun goal for me this year.
- Run 2 miles 50 times. I’m a garbage-y runner mostly because I’m lazy, but I’m ready to be more serious about it this year. I know I CAN run 2 miles because I’ve done it multiple times. I’m using the tracker in the front of my Rad & Happy planner to mark every time I run 2 straight miles and my goal is to do it 50 times (basically once a week).
- Visit 3 National Parks. We had SUCH a great time in Zion National Park this fall and since Ella’s free pass got extended into this year, due to COVID, it’s the perfect year to take advantage. Plus, Utah alone has 5 National Parks and we’ve only been to one of them so this shouldn’t be too hard. Just requires a little bit of planning.
- Pay off our house. This has been a goal for me for my entire adult life and I’m so excited to finally be so close to being able to do this. I know some people feel paying off a house is a poor use of money and you should invest the money instead, but our interest rate on our mortgage is lousy, plus Bart and I both highly value financial freedom and flexibility instead of being committed to required monthly payments. We paid off his MBA student loans as fast as we could after he graduated and that gave us the freedom to let Bart take a job with no salary for two years because we didn’t need very much money to cover our monthly expenses.
- And. . . a new front door. This was on my list last year AND the year before and didn’t happen. 2021 is my door year! (Please, let this be my door year).
I’d love to hear what YOUR personal goals are this year – what are you hoping to do in 2022? (And if you’re curious about my goals from previous years, you can see them here!)
If you liked this post about my 2021 goals, you might like these posts too:
- The 2021 Everyday Reading Book Club list
- How to find more time to read
- 5 tips for being more productive
Photos by Heather Mildenstein
Wow, paying off your house already?! GO, YOU! I totally have that dream (we just moved into our second home at the end of November), but I’ve decided to shelve it for the time being and focus on fleshing out our retirement funds a bit better. But I seriously dream basically every day of just going for the whole paying-off-the-mortgage thing! I’ll just have to live vicariously through you for now 🙂
Have you ever tried tracking your mileage and time (+ best mile, avg. time per mile, etc.)? When I was needing motivation for my running life, keeping a running diary was actually really motivating for me. Anyway, just a thought!
So we discovered a few years ago, the best time to hit up Arches National Park, is in January over a long weekend. We went down Friday right after school got out. We stopped at Dead Horse Point right before they closed, and then hit up our hotel in Moab for the night. And since it was off season, we got a huge suite for cheaper. Think a queen/king/double twins. It was awesome. We grabbed snacks at the local market and headed to Arches bright and early. We were able to stop everywhere we wanted, except Delicate Arch, and enjoyed having no one in our pictures. Beautiful views, perfect day. And we drove home that evening. It was so perfect!
Also, Bryce Canyon is close and can be done in a long weekend. I recommend staying at Ruby’s Inn, they are super close to the entrance. It is another National Park that can be done in a day. Unless you decide to hike down in. Fairyland Gardens is a great place to go and star gaze.
I hope to hear your experiences from National Parks!
I love your goals. I did lasik 6 years ago and it was the best thing! I also would love to pay off our mortgage and am working towards it. I read 167 books last year, so I’m not worried about that number 😉 I actually would love to hear…. do you buy/receive a lot of print books? Or is it mostly digital/audiobooks? How do you store them, and do you ever get rid of your books?
We paid off our mortgage 2 years ago and I’m so thankful we did. We owe nothing to anyone and it’s one of the best feelings ever. We got the itch after starting to listen to Dave Ramsey’s podcast. I’ll be cheering you on as you work on l of your goals, but especially this one!
Yes, paying off your house is a great idea. My husband and I did it early in our marriage as soon as we could – we made double payments all along and it really paid off. We then had money to invest and to not feel like we need to worry as much about the rate of return.
We started buying rentals as soon as we paid our house off – just one at a time but you will be amazed at how quickly you can accumulate rentals when you figure that you can make one of the payments and the money from your renter can double the amount.
You might not want to do rentals and you might have other goals but for us rentals have been an awesome investments.
We have a goal to pay off our mortgage this year too! We’ve been in our house 5 years and got serious about paying it off about 2 years ago. If you reach your goal, I’d love to see a blog post about how you did it — how you stayed motivated, your approach, etc. Great list!
Totally with you on the paying off the mortgage! We paid ours off nearly 10 years ago (our house was under $90k and we were both working full time for 8 years before we had kids, both those really helped!) and it was such a sense of accomplishment (even though, see: $90k). It was so exciting and it’s so nice to see others pursuing the same!
I love how specific and varied your goals are! I hope 2021 is a fruitful year for you and gets you moving (running!) to exciting new places (like those National Parks!)