2015 Goals in Review

I can’t believe that it is almost 2016 already.  2015 was a busy and exciting year for me.  I hope 2016 is a bit quieter, but I doubt it will be.  I already know of all sorts of exciting and fun things that are in the works, so I’m enjoying the down time this week.  (I have the week off work and am spending a lot of it at home, reading and puttering around my house.)

Anyway, I figure it is best to get my 2015 review done before the end of the year, so I’m going a bit off schedule of my regular Tuesday/Thursday posts (regular in that I’ve been trying for that schedule for about a month now…) and am posting my review today so that I can squeeze it in before the new year.

Last year, I started my blog off with 4 posts about the goals I had for 2015.  I did a bunch of somewhat mid-year reviews in August and September that pretty much covered everything… and I honestly haven’t done much since then to get any further on my goals, so if you read that, this won’t really contain anything new… and will be a quick summary of how I did with my 2015 goals.  I’ll talk about my new 2016 goals in another post, probably next week.

Financial Goals

First up, my financial goals.  In my initial financial goals post I made five goals.  I reviewed them all in August, but didn’t really make any major changes to them…

1. Budget:  I am really happy with how far we have come with our budgeting.  We keep track of our spending, and while we aren’t always super frugal, we have made good strides towards living a more frugal life.  The turning point for me was definitely finding the YNAB software.  I am a sucker for the built in graphs and reports.
2. Planned Spending:  I’m not sure if I should be proud of the accomplishment of saving up a bunch of money then spending it all… but we did it.  We had three big savings goals and though we haven’t actually spent all the education money yet, it’s there waiting to be spent.  If we add that all up we saved over $30,000 for our planned spending this year.  That’s pretty good savings.  Now we just need to put that towards more long term goals…
3. RRSP: I started the year with a vague goal for my RRSP contributions, and throughout the year I made changes to it… first to make it more concrete… and then when I reached that goal a few times, I increased it.  I’m happy to report that at this moment, my RRSP is over $50,000 so despite my low value when I did my review in August, I did manage to meet this goal!  YAY!
4. TFSA: Let’s just say this didn’t happen and move on, shall we?
5. Emergency Fund:  Originally this was a $10,000 goal, but with over spending in a few areas throughout the year, I decided to go smaller to start… and $3000 was the final goal… unfortunately, I only made it to $2500.  Better than nothing, but not there yet.

Professional Goals

Reading over my three original professional goals, they weren’t really specific enough, or very measurable…  (definitely not “SMART” goals), so it doesn’t surprise me that in my mid-year review, and even now, I don’t really feel that I’ve done well at these goals.

1. Write my exam: Check!  Do the rest of my paperwork associated with this?  Not so much… I hope to pull it all out today and at least go over where I am at the moment and get a game plan together to hopefully get it sorted out before I head back to work in the new year.
2. Be more productive at work: Hmmm… how to measure this one… I definitely haven’t been getting to work at 8am like I wanted to… except when I’m at site… then I’m on the road by 6am at site by 7am, so there was a good chunk of the fall where I did that… productivity in itself I felt better nearing the end of the year… so maybe I’m moving in the right direction… I’ll just call this a pass and a very poor goal…
3. Work related learning:  I abandoned this goal a long time ago… and finally admitted it in August when I did my mid-year review… At least it was measurable… FAIL!

Health & Fitness Goals

Probably the most traditional new years goals that people make… I had originally six goals in this list.  I thought they were pretty good measurable goals, but in my review in September I hadn’t been very successful… not much has changed…

1. Lose 15lbs: I’m back up to my Xmas holiday weight from last year… It is so hard to say “no” to all the delicious food and drink around this time of year… FAIL!
2. Run 10k in 60 minutes: Pass (as described in my mid-year review, I feel I can use the first half of my half marathon for this pass).
3. Run half marathon in 2 hours: Fail, but then I made a second goal of 8k in 45 minutes, which technically I also failed at, but still got myself a personal best for that distance, so going to say Pass!
4. Fitness 3x/week:  Pass for winter/spring/early summer, Fail for late summer, Fail for most of the fall (when away for work)… but Pass for December… so… Pass…ish…
5. Meal Plan:  Seeing as I didn’t do any meal planning before… I feel like I have come leaps and bounds from before, but there were still some weeks where I got busy and neglected to make a plan, which resulted in convenience food being purchased… But all-in-all, I’ll say pass.
6. 7 drinks/week: Fail.  Not much to say on that… but it might be a reason for my weight being up… I liked the idea of this goal, and may revisit it for 2016… I know at the beginning of the year I was pretty good… then summer patios came around… and celebrations… I was pretty good for part of the fall (mostly when I was away for work)… but generally FAIL!

Misc. Goals

These were the random goals that I had for the year… in hindsight, perhaps they weren’t exactly goals as much as they were things I wanted or needed to do… like tasks… rather than goals… My mid-year review results were so-so… and nothing much has changed…

1. Decluttering:  I didn’t do the weekly tasks I had originally planned to do (but I did some)… and I didn’t end up finishing up the 31 day challenge either (but again, I did some)… but I did just recently read the Marie Kondo book and go through my clothes… so there has definitely been a focus on decluttering and organizing around the house.  And I’m happy to say that most of the areas that were decluttered have remained that way, which is huge really.  So… pass-ish?
2. Garden: I gave myself a pass on this for my mid-year review, and then had grand plans of planting a winter garden… but I promptly went away for work… and well, that just didn’t happen… so now I wait until the early spring to get started on another year of gardening.  I got a couple new gardening books, so I’ve got some reading to do before I get started, but I am happy with my progress this year.  We even got a pumpkin from our lacklustre pumpkin plants.

   

   My final harvest in the fall.

3. Wedding Planning: Done! Pass! Check!  I’m married!  Maybe I didn’t get it planned in the organized way that I had imagined… but I somehow pieced together a pretty awesome party that my friends and family are still talking about… can’t complain about that!

2015 Summary

So there you have it… my 2015 goals listed out and reviewed.  I’ve been reading a bunch of blog posts reflecting on 2015 and posing questions that are aimed to get you thinking about the positives of the year, and go over some of the speed bumps along the way… In doing that, I have to say that 2015 was a pretty sweet year.  I got married in Tofino, which was AWESOME!  And we had some fun adventures watching the womens’ world cup in Vancouver, going to see Taylor Swift in Seattle… We also got a bunch done around the house, with the new roof, lots of garden work and decluttering… Maybe I’m no closer to retiring early, but I’m definitely enjoying the path I’m on and I am looking forward to where it will take me in 2016, so I really can’t ask for anything more!

Have you done a review of your 2015 goals?  I hope that you have found the positive in as much as you can and are looking forward to another great year in 2016!