In review: 2016

By Eric J Gruber

Published on: 2016-12-09

The future rewards those who press on. I don’t have time to feel sorry for myself. I don’t have time to complain. I’m going to press on. — President Barack Obama

It’s my fifth annual year in review! I can’t believe I’ve done this for five years, but here I am. It’s been quite a year for me and my family, and I’ve been looking forward to writing this post for awhile.

In last year’s year in review, I wrote about how I suspected one of the reasons I wasn’t hitting goals was because they weren’t really well-defined: I have learned that the reason why I don’t accomplish my goals, in part, is because they’re not really goals. A goal has a fixed moment in time you want to achieve something by, and I haven’t been doing that. These year-end reviews have mostly been good ideas instead of hard goals. Thus, I gave myself some hard deadlines to what I wanted to accomplish. I put them in my favorite task manager, and then started the year ready to go.

I had four goals, with defined timelines for each:

Finish my house projects by May 1. It took a little longer than anticipated, but I considered the house projects completed on July 4. This was the last of the things I needed to get done for us to sell our house. Our house in Lawrence went under contract after six days on the market. We closed and moved to Kansas City on July 23.
Have an awesome birthday by June 8. Although it didn’t turn out the way I had hoped (a big soirée with a surprise party and surrounded by tons of friends), it ended up being a birthday full of reflection.

Reclaim my time by March 1. It took moving closer to work to make this a reality, which I considered done by Aug. 10. After having commuted more than 90 minutes every day, my commute time has been shortened to about 40 minutes daily. This has had a huge impact on my mental health, and my relationship with my wife and kids.
Take a vacation by Aug. 1. I missed this by a couple of weeks, but for good reason. On Aug. 1 I went from being a contractor to a regular, full-time employee at the place I’ve been working since March 18, 2015. With it came some incredible benefits, and paid vacation time. I took the week of Aug. 10 off, and my family explored tons of Kansas City we’ve not seen before. It was a wonderful, relaxing vacation.

In other news …

Amy (the wife) and I completed Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace University, during which we paid off $5,037 in debt.
We purchased grown up life insurance. Should anything happen to either of us, each other, or our kids, will be WELL taken care of.

I consider 2016 to have been a fantastic year. It was a smashing success. But it really seems that setting a date to achieve a goal was really key to helping me get things moving in the right direction.

Goals

So here I am; goals for 2017:

Pay down $10,000 in student loan debt by Dec. 31, 2017. This is going to require some vigilance, and some side hustles on my part. I’m encouraged by the amount of money we paid off during Financial Peace University, but some of that came from the sale of the house (although not as much as I would have liked). But I’ve got some extra streams of income coming in aside from my regular job, so I think we can make this goal. There is, however, going to be a lot of the kids hearing “it’s not in the budget” for awhile, however.
Create a passive/semi-passive income stream by Sept 1, 2017. We’re pretty good at cutting out unnecessary spending, but that will only go so far in obtaining financial goals. I’ve been learning about passive income this year, and I’d like to set a goal to have some extra income coming in by this date to help us pay off our student loans and meet the above goal. Since I’m currently making zero dollars from passive income currently, literally anything extra would be considered a success. I’ll shoot for a goal of $100 per month extra, however.
Hit my goal weight by June 1, 2017. I go through these healthy/unhealthy phases and I’m quite tired of it. I’ve leaned on the old I’m commuting long distances and that’s why I’m unhealthy for a few years, but with my commute being much shorter that’s really not a valid excuse anymore. I really haven’t felt “healthy” since July 2013 when my wife and I celebrated our 10-year anniversary. I’m not ready to give specifics on my current health situation just yet, but let’s just say that by June 1, I want to be 25 lbs. lighter than I am now.
Have a regular date night with Amy by February, 2017. My wife has given up a lot in exchange for a life we have chosen to pursue that matches our values. We are homeschooling our children for a variety of reasons, and since she has the teaching degree it’s putting it to good use. She takes care of the homefront, and I bring home the bacon (mmmm, bacon). But that carries its own set of burdens. In essence, she’s always at work. Working parents get to get out of the house and away from the youngins, but the spouse at home isn’t afforded as many mental breaks. So my goal is to find a sitter, and by sometime in February, have regular, monthly date nights with the Mrs.

So there you have it. What a year. I’m so blessed to be where I am today, and I hope and pray for as good of a year in 2017 as we had in 2016.

I hope the same for you.