A couple of years ago Jason and I took a tip from some successful friends and started writing down goals and a game plan for the coming year. These aren’t the dreaded “New Years Resolutions” and I’m purposely waiting until the second week of January to write this blog post. It’s not about what day we start; it’s about making a plan for the year. In fact, we haven’t written our goals for 2012 yet—though we both have a bunch floating around in our heads. We’ve used this tiny notebook to record our goals for the past 3 years:
Some of our goals are on a personal level, some are career related, some are for our family and home, some financial, and some are big picture goals.
We didn’t hit all of our goals for 2011 and that’s OK. We set a lofty income target and we didn’t quite make it, but we did see a significant leap. We’ll try for that goal again in 2012. We had goals to finish some home projects like put a shade roof on the pergola and build a privacy fence around the patio and garden, which were completed. Others, like replace the plumbing mainline to the street, we decided to forego.
We had written a goal to start saving for our next vehicle. We ended up buying the Silver Bullet in cash. Yay!
We had planned to save up money for an adoption or for medical expenses if we had a baby. We ended up draining all of that money preparing our home to become foster parents. That works, too!
We had intended to save, save, save for our future (kids, vehicle, retirement) in 2011 but we ended up just saving a little (see above two points).
My favorite goal of 2011 was “Take more risks.” At the time, that was a big picture goal. We didn’t have anything specific in mind when the calendar page flipped over to 2011. Turns out we became foster parents, which was a pretty huge risk. We also bought a piece of land and put our beloved MCM ranch on the market with plans to build our dream house in 2012 with rooms for more kids.
It’s fun to look back at how much life has changed in one year. 2011 was a challenging, stretching, overall good year.
Here are a few of our (not too personal and/or financial) 2012 goals:
• finish new home build
• move in and get settled
• finalize Precious’ adoption
• specific goals for our retirement savings
• save up cash for a new vehicle to replace our 10-year old Ford Focus
• reopen our home as foster parents
• release Jason’s first solo album, Acoustic Lullabies
• specific marketing and distribution goals for Acoustic Lullabies
• get debt-free (but the house)
• specific home related financial goal
• specific income target
myMCMlife.com 
This is great! My husband and I make mental notes of the things we would like to do in the next 5 years (aka the 5 year plan). We should start writing it down so we can cross stuff off!
It really does help to have a plan doesn’t it!
For sure! And there is just something about writing it down that seems to make it more real for us. Crossing things off is very satisfying.