Personal

1. Have a baby.  We’ve got a pretty good jump-start on this one.
2. Give more.  Tasha and I aim to give 5% of our income to charity this year.
3. Save 3-6 months of expenses in our big emergency fund.

Recreation

1. Train at the dojo as often as possible.  I’m going to shoot for more workouts than last year (53).
2. Build a guitar.  I’m going to start with a StewMac kit and go from there, starting as soon as the weather gets warm.
3. Daily blogging.  Same metrics as last year.

You will notice that several items fell off the list.  It’s not that I don’t want to do some of these things, I just don’t want to make them explicit goals.  I considered taking daily blogging off the list since I’ve built up a very good habit here, however I don’t want to give myself the room to stop doing it.  I find it key to my unwinding, venting, and relaxing.  I have no idea if others find it valuable or not, but I sure do enjoy it.

I’ll probably have a few other things to keep tracks of this year, but I’ll go with this list for now.  More soon!

1. Refresh financial goals by going through the 13-week Financial Peace Home Study again.  Target for completion: April 2010.

   SUCCESS! We did this one right on time, completing Financial Peace Home Study with Tasha and our friend Kanika.

2. Secure debt freedom by paying off my final student loan.  Target for completion: September 2010.

   SUCCESS! This is the one I’m most proud of: we are DEBT FREE except for the house, and we got there on March 31st (way ahead of our September target).  You can read more at the link on our reflections after achieving this monumental target, but I would like to take a moment to thank Dave Hickman for giving us The Total Money Makeover book when he saw my goal to pay off credit card debt way back in 2006.

3. Begin on full emergency fund of 3-6 months of expenses, saving at least two months of expenses by year end.  Target for completion: December 2010.

   FAILURE! (Kinda) Thanks to a certain special addition to our family, we didn’t quite make as much progress on this as we had hoped.  Right now we’re sitting right around one month of expenses, but this one is going to rate high on the goal chart in the coming year.

4. Continue keeping grocery budget records.  Target for completion: December 2010.

   FAILURE! This one also became difficult with the new addition… and we got lazy.  I kept many of the receipts for 2010, staying diligent through June but at this point I don’t care enough about tracking this to slog through 6 months of receipts.  I plan to track this in 2011, but it’ll fall short of being on the goal list since we’ve kept a fairly good handle on our food budget.

Personal Development and Recreation

1. Increase karate workouts, averaging twice a week at a minimum. Target for completion: December 2010.

   FAILURE! Only made 53 workouts last year, I aim to do better this year.

1. Complete TotallyGuitars.com‘s Acoustic Genius series. Target for completion: December 2010.

   FAILURE! (Kinda) I made it a fair way through the Acoustic Genius series, and then I got distracted on other songs and guitar stuff… there was too much information on the site to remain focused.  I have been playing a lot more often, which was the intent of the goal but in black-and-white terms this is still a failure.

2. Create a “man cave” for myself in the basement. Target for completion: June 2010.

   SUCCESS! (Kinda) The furthest I got on this goal was clearing out the basement and setting up a small area to relax.  After July, however… the basement became a dumping ground for boxes of stuff displaced from the office, which will become a nursery in March.

3. Daily blogging this year, metrics remaining the same as last year. Target for completion: December 2010.

   FAILURE!  (Kinda) I missed 6 days of blogging this year, usually due to not paying close attention to the time.  I made 375 total posts throughout the year, taking the grand total to 2,903 as of this writing.  Another interesting metric thanks to the WP Word Count plugin: my blog contains 587,300 words.  Using National Novel Writing Month standards of 50,000 words, that’s 11.74 novels from a word count perspective.  Notice how I do not compare myself directly to actual writers here, merely using word count to put some context around that number.So despite the fact that I once again failed to blog every day this year, there’s still some good stuff going on here.

That about wraps up 2010!  I don’t like seeing so many failures in that list, but I am comforted by the fact that many are just partials.  Stay tuned for my 2011 goals soon.  Here’s a preview: there’s likely to be fewer.

The motivations for this project are two-fold: first, I enjoyed having a basement space in our old house and second, I wanted to have a place where I can play my guitar on the amp and not bother Tasha.  A few people have sent me links to DIY sites for framing and finishing a basement, and I don’t think I’m prepared to make that type of remodel now.  That directly conflicts with the “get out of debt” goal so that level of Man Cave will just have to wait.

Mostly the goal revolves around clearing out and rearranging the basement space to make the most of it.  I am thinking about potentially building a corner bar using two of these IKEA kitchen peninsula hacks that were recently featured on IKEAHacker.com.  That’ll be later in the year (if at all), the first step is going to be cleaning out the basement and getting the space set up as best as I can.  Tonight I took a few lingering boxes of garbage out of the basement to get the ball rolling, so hopefully this goal will get finished quickly!

Debt Freedom

At long last, this long-term goal is in sight.  At the time of this writing, we have only one remaining debt aside from our house: my student loan.  The way the debt snowball functions, the last debt that you have is the largest and this is our largest.  In fact, we’ve fought it down to almost halfway paid off in 2009 and this year we finish the job.

1. Refresh financial goals by going through the 13-week Financial Peace Home Study again.  Target for completion: April 2010.
2. Secure debt freedom by paying off my final student loan.  Target for completion: September 2010.
3. Begin on full emergency fund of 3-6 months of expenses, saving at least two months of expenses by year end.  Target for completion: December 2010.
4. Continue keeping grocery budget records.  Target for completion: December 2010.

Personal Development and Recreation

I’m creating one category to house a couple different goals around hobbies, recreation, and self-improvement.

1. Increase karate workouts, averaging twice a week at a minimum. Target for completion: December 2010.
2. Complete TotallyGuitars.com‘s Acoustic Genius series. Target for completion: December 2010.
3. Create a “man cave” for myself in the basement. Target for completion: June 2010.
4. Daily blogging this year, metrics remaining the same as last year. Target for completion: December 2010.

2010 – Opening Remarks and a Call to Action

This is going to be a tough year, as work will remain extremely demanding for the first half of the year.  This will also be a rewarding year, with debt freedom looming on the horizon.  Once this milestone is met the fun begins.

I’ve had several people ask me why I do this every year.  I feel very strongly about goal setting, and it becomes far too easy to get used to the routine that you’re in and not strive for something better.  I’ve said it many times in the past, and will continue to say it: I don’t do average well.  These goals help to keep me motivated so that I won’t look back on 2010 and have nothing to count for it.

The best advice I can give is simply this: take an honest look at your life and TAKE ACTION.  It doesn’t have to be anything grandiose or crazy, but set an actionable goal that you can work on a little at a time so that in the end you’ve got something to count for yourself.  Set yourself a fitness goal.  Set yourself a blogging goal.  If you’re feeling particularly crazy, set a big goal you’ve always wanted to do and DO IT.  Hell, my friend Debra wrote a freaking novel last year in a month.  That’s crazy and awesome.

Figure out a way to be crazy and awesome for yourself.  Then document it somewhere where you have to be accountable for the results.  I use this blog because the threat of friends and family asking me how things are going is enough to keep me plugging away at my goals.  I want to hear about your goals.  I’ll be that friend that asks you randomly throughout the year how its going to keep you motivated.

Here’s to a safe and happy 2010!

Debt Repayment and Tracking

1. Attack Remaining Debts -This year we’re going to continue making strides against our three remaining student loans.  At a minimum, I expect to be down to just one remaining debt (aside from my mortgage) by 12/31/2009.

   RESULT
   Success!  On May 5th, we made a major step down the road to debt freedom in paying off Tasha’s student loan.  That brings us down to only my student loan left for our non-house debt, both Tasha and I are excited to have achieved this milestone.

2. Track Food Budget For Entire Year – The reasons for this are twofold: I want to understand what proportion of eating out versus cooking at home we are doing, and I also want to track the amount of savings we get from couponing and using TheGroceryGame.com.  With any luck this will allow us to control our food budget better and should roll up into gains for the debt repayment goal.

   RESULT
   Success!  I kept a spreadsheet all year long that tracked our food budget spending.  Thanks to TheGroceryGame.com, we were able to save 74.93% on our groceries this year.  We averaged under our monthly food budget this year, and only spent 10.55% of our food money on fast food.

Personal Health / Exercise

1. Karate – I intend to get back into the dojo in a major way in 2009.  Since I am unsure how often my monthly dues will entitle me to work out at the Denver dojo, I am going to set this goal at an average of the two workouts a week that I know are covered.  Additional weekend workouts or at-home workouts will be icing on the cake.  Expect karate tagged items to track my progress.

   RESULT
   Epic fail.  I ended up with only 49 workouts this year, not even averaging once per week.  Work was the primary contributing factor, but laziness and travel time to the Denver dojo for the first half of the year also reduced my ability to train at the dojo regularly.  This got better toward the end of the year after I joined the Arvada dojo, but I believe it was too little too late for this goal to succeed.

2. Gym – During 2009, I intend to join several of my coworkers at the Louisville Recreation Center for workouts on my non-karate nights.  I will define a more realistic goal for amount of working out, I suspect it will be around twice a week given my current workload and karate schedule.  I hope to begin this goal sometime in January.

   RESULT
   Another epic fail here.  Things went well in the early part of the year, but I only made 20 visits to the gym.  I wasn’t very diligent about tagging my gym workouts so there might be one or two more that were mixed karate/gym visits, but I wanted to do a bit better than this as well.

Recreation / Blogging

1. Daily Blogging – I intend to blog on average once daily for 2009.  I will track this similarly to how I did for 2008, keeping tabs on complete months, number of days blogged, and total number of blog posts.

   RESULT
   Partial success on this goal.  I blogged a grand total of 363 days this year, missing only one day in August and one day in October.  I made 384 blog posts during this time, crossing a milestone of 2,500 posts since this blog began back in 2003.

2. Guitar – I intend to practice my guitar on average three hours per week in 2009.  This has been an interest of mine for quite awhile, its time that I assert myself toward practice so I improve.

   RESULT
   Partial success here.  I didn’t really begin practicing the guitar in earnest until June, so I was way behind the curve on my three hours per week goal.  I did pretty well in the last half of the year, since this is a hobby I can do in a few hours at the end of the day to relax.  I didn’t really track hours spent playing during this time so I can’t be certain on my success, but I have gotten better since the beginning of the year and I’m willing to count that as a partial success.

3. Multitouch Table – Last year I started acquiring materials for my multitouch table.  The relocation prevented me from completing the table and I never executed on a final build.  I want to have this one completed by 09/30/2009.

   RESULT
   Complete failure to launch here.  It took me until October to even find the materials that I have purchased, and I quickly realized that I lack the tools needed to construct this project and that purchasing said tools and materials conflicted against our debt repayment goal so this one lost out.

Professional / Technical Development

1. Learn C# – This one’s for my job.  I want to self-educate on C# and .NET 3.5, so I purchased a book, C# 3.0 Unleashed by Joe Mayo.  I would like to have the entire book read with code examples complete by 02/28/2009.

   RESULT
   Success!  I have learned C# enough to be dangerous at the office, working on several coding projects this year.  I used the aforementioned book as a reference, however it quickly became apparent that reading a coding reference book wasn’t very conducive to learning.  I did employ this book frequently in my coding projects, so I’m willing to count this one as successful.

2. Learn Adobe Flex – This one is equal parts my job and the multitouch project.  I want to learn Adobe Flex, the action plan is undetermined on this one thus far.  Stay tuned and more details will surface as the year progresses.

   RESULT
   Another failure to launch here.  I still don’t have an Adobe Flex license that I can use productively at work, and the multitouch motivator never materialized.

Final thoughts on the year…

In general, I consider these goals a mixed bag this year.  I think I was far too aggressive and had too many goals, so expect to see next year’s goals streamlined.  I wish I would have succeeded on a few more fronts, specifically my karate and gym related goals.  I am happy that I have figured out a few hobby and relaxation related goals that appear to have stuck, which helped to dissuade the job-related stress that has set in this year.

I’m most proud of the debt repayment, tracking, and blogging goals for this year.  We really focused on these goals this year and it showed, hopefully next year will be no different.  Expect to see my 2010 goals tomorrow!

That big check satisfies my minimum debt repayment goal for the year… so we’re going to see how far we can get to cut that last student loan down.  I want to be done in time for our birthdays next year.

So yeah… its good to be us right now.  We’re even getting half a house of new windows tomorrow!

Not much else to report tonight!

Debt Repayment and Tracking

1. Attack Remaining Debts – We’re trucking right along on this one, electing to take the prudent path of accumulating the money to pay off our two remaining student loans.  Tasha and I are going to see Dave Ramsey in Colorado Springs to provide a little motivation as we kick it into high gear.
2. Track Food Budget For Entire Year – It’s getting done!  I’ve got a few receipts left to enter from last weekend, but we’ve saved 75.02% using The Grocery Game so far!

Personal Health / Exercise

1. Karate - This one has recently gone a bit awry… work schedule and a minor stomach bug has put me a bit behind.  I’m staying pretty close to 2 workouts a week all the same.
2. Gym - Still doing pretty good on this one.  I’m at 11 workouts so far, keeping right on it as a supplement to my karate.

Recreation / Blogging

1. Daily Blogging – No problems here!
2. Guitar - This one is red, I’ve not had much time to devote to it.
3. Multitouch Table – Same story here, this one is going to be more of a summer project.

Professional / Technical Development

1. Learn C# – Doing good here.  Didn’t make it through the book, but some intensive on-the-job training has me feeling pretty confident.
2. Learn Adobe Flex – Not started on this one yet, either… probably going to be tied somewhat closely to the Multitouch Table.

I think that’s all of them for now!

I was taking a look at my 2009 goals, and I’m really lagging on my guitar and electronics research. I don’t think I’m going to actively make any time for those until the weather gets nicer, but it is a bit distressing. Right now I’m more content focusing on the dojo, gym, and work advancement, so we’ll see how the rest of the year falls out.

Also, for the record: 24 oz steak and Western fare == a mighty wind. I don’t believe the interior of my cubicle at work will ever be the same. Also, we need a moment of silence for the guy that sits over the cube wall from me, may he rest in peace.

I’m going to have to dig around in some of my still packed boxes to see if I can find my materials for this project and get it going again, however I suspect that it will have to wait until Spring or Summer before I get any actual construction done on it.  I might take one of the infrared LEDs and hook it up to my Arduino microcontroller and mess with that a bit, since its an easy platform to mess with on my coffee table.

Fun stuff!

Debt Repayment and Tracking

1. Attack Remaining Debts -This year we’re going to continue making strides against our three remaining student loans.  At a minimum, I expect to be down to just one remaining debt (aside from my mortgage) by 12/31/2009.
2. Track Food Budget For Entire Year – The reasons for this are twofold: I want to understand what proportion of eating out versus cooking at home we are doing, and I also want to track the amount of savings we get from couponing and using TheGroceryGame.com.  With any luck this will allow us to control our food budget better and should roll up into gains for the debt repayment goal.

Personal Health / Exercise

1. Karate – I intend to get back into the dojo in a major way in 2009.  Since I am unsure how often my monthly dues will entitle me to work out at the Denver dojo, I am going to set this goal at an average of the two workouts a week that I know are covered.  Additional weekend workouts or at-home workouts will be icing on the cake.  Expect karate tagged items to track my progress.
2. Gym – During 2009, I intend to join several of my coworkers at the Louisville Recreation Center for workouts on my non-karate nights.  I will define a more realistic goal for amount of working out, I suspect it will be around twice a week given my current workload and karate schedule.  I hope to begin this goal sometime in January.

Recreation / Blogging

1. Daily Blogging – I intend to blog on average once daily for 2009.  I will track this similarly to how I did for 2008, keeping tabs on complete months, number of days blogged, and total number of blog posts.
2. Guitar – I intend to practice my guitar on average three hours per week in 2009.  This has been an interest of mine for quite awhile, its time that I assert myself toward practice so I improve.
3. Multitouch Table – Last year I started acquiring materials for my multitouch table.  The relocation prevented me from completing the table and I never executed on a final build.  I want to have this one completed by 09/30/2009.

Professional / Technical Development

1. Learn C# – This one’s for my job.  I want to self-educate on C# and .NET 3.5, so I purchased a book, C# 3.0 Unleashed by Joe Mayo.  I would like to have the entire book read with code examples complete by 02/28/2009.
2. Learn Adobe Flex – This one is equal parts my job and the multitouch project.  I want to learn Adobe Flex, the action plan is undetermined on this one thus far.  Stay tuned and more details will surface as the year progresses.

I think that’s all of them for now!