2022 Goals and Resolutions

Another new year, is it time for another set of new goals and resolutions? Or maybe not?

Since 2019, I have set goals and resolutions at the beginning of the year and tracked them via a spreadsheet. Thanks to these goals and resolutions, I kept myself motivated and accountable throughout the year. In the last three years, I accomplished many of these goals. If I didn’t accomplish them, I usually came close to my targets.

For example, my goal of publishing every Monday kept me motivated and allowed me to continue to write engaging articles and plan ahead. If I didn’t set this goal for myself, it was highly likely that I wouldn’t have kept up with such a consistent publication schedule and perhaps I’d have given up blogging altogether given how time-consuming running a blog can be.

Last year was a mentally challenging year for many of us, myself included. At beginning of this year, I struggled with whether I should continue with setting these annual goals and resolutions. On one hand, I wanted to cut myself some slack, set zero goals for the year, take it easy, and just be OK with that. Then, on the other hand, I know that I like to keep challenging myself and continue growing as a person. After much deliberation, I decided to continue setting goals and resolutions for 2022 but with one important caveat…

Despite accomplishing eight out of ten of my 2021 goals, I felt that I was straining myself especially toward the last half of last year. Some of the yearly goals like meditating for five minutes each day became a tedious task. Tracking my progress on a daily basis was not fun and it had become a chore.

Knowing myself, I know setting high expectations has worked well for me, which meant setting challenging and ambitious goals in the previous years. In other words, if I shoot for the stars, if I don’t get there, at least I’ll get to the moon.

But this year, I decided to take a different approach. I wanted to set out goals that will inspire me to accomplish them but not overly challenging that will result in me abandoning them half way through the year.

2022 Goals and Resolutions

With what I stated above, here are my 2022 goals and resolutions. Once again I will track these goals via a spreadsheet. I kept the spreadsheet very simple. Most of my goals are yearly long goals. There are a few goals I plan to accomplish by a specific month.

Financial Goals

This blog is a personal finance blog and most of the articles are about money, so having some financial goals shouldn’t come as a surprise.

Dividend Income over $36,000

In 2021 we received a total of $30,912.20 in dividend income. Unfortunate, it was more than $1,000 short of our annual target of $32,000. For this year, I’m aiming for an annual dividend income of $36,000 or more. This would put a YoY growth rate of 16.46%. At a 4% dividend yield, it would mean adding $127,195 of new capital to our dividend portfolio.

Yes, that is a large chunk of money. But let’s not forget we are increasing our dividend income via three methods – new capital, organic dividend growth, and DRIP.

Many companies stopped raising dividends or even cut dividends in 2020. In 2021, as companies got a more clear picture of their profitability and revenue, many companies have started raising dividend payouts again. For example, the Canadian banks announced significant dividend increases after sitting on a giant pile of cash reserves. Suncor also reinstated their dividends to the pre-pandemic amount. I anticipate these dividend increases to continue throughout 2022. Therefore, I believe the 16.46% growth should be achievable. Achieving this goal would put us on the projection of living off dividends by 2025.

Use up WestJet travel bank & free companion vouchers

We planned to go to Disneyland in the fall of 2020 after FinCon. We booked airfares but had to cancel due to the pandemic. As a result, we have money in the WestJet travel bank. The travel bank money is set to expire later this year.

Thanks to having the WestJet World Elite MasterCard, Mrs. T and I each have a special free companion voucher that will expire in April (usually, the companion voucher would cost $199 for a round trip within Canada and the US and $399 to Hawaii and Mexico). Currently, we plan to close our WestJet credit cards before the new annual fees kick in at the end of April. But since we will lose the companion vouchers if we no longer have the credit cards, we need to book a trip and use the vouchers before closing our cards.

So, the idea is to book a trip before the end of April so we can cancel our WestJet credit cards. The trip can either be for later this year or before April 2023.

Blog Goals

Publish a blog post every Monday

This is the same goal as last year. A weekly publication cadence has worked well for me. This goal also helps me to plan and write ahead instead of scrambling around late Sunday night. The consistent publication cadence means that many readers now remember to check out the blog on Mondays.

This goal means I will publish at least 52 articles in 2022 but it doesn’t mean I can’t publish more. For example, I plan to continue to publish the “Good reads from the PF community” roundups every so often.

Re-construct blog menu and sort articles into categories

As of writing, I have published 500 articles (wow!) with 8 articles scheduled to publish. That’s a lot of articles with a wide range of topics. Per the readers’ survey, a few readers pointed out it would be nice to group the investment related articles into Beginner, Intermediate, and Advanced categories. This would greatly help readers at different points of their own financial independence journey.

I can’t agree more with this idea. It’s a lot of work but I think it’s a long-overdue task.

Finish Ahrefs blogging course

Ahrefs has an academy with a few training sources. I’d like to finish the Blogging for Business course to learn a few more things about advanced SEO. The course is 4 hours 50 minutes long and has 40 lessons. I anticipate I can finish the course before the end of March.

Personal Goals

For this year’s personal goals, my focus is personal wellness.

Work out at least two times a week.

This is the same goal as in previous years. In 2021, I averaged four workouts per week so I briefly considered changing the workout frequency to three times a week to challenge myself. But after looking at my workout history, I noticed that some weeks, like when we went camping, it was challenging to even fit two workouts that week. So I decided to keep the same workout frequency.

 

 

 

 

 

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A post shared by Bob Lai (@tawcan)

I have been working out using a 16 kg kettlebell since August 2020. After working out with a kettlebell consistently for over one and half years, I have noticed quite a bit of physical changes. Overall I feel stronger and I plan to focus my workouts on flow routines/complexes that target the entire body rather than specific muscle groups.

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A post shared by Bob Lai (@tawcan)

Read for 10 minutes before bedtime

I’ve read in various articles that reading for 10 to 15 minutes before bedtime is a great way to unwind and prepare your brain for a good night’s sleep. Learning from my meditating goal last year, I am not going to track this goal in the spreadsheet every day. I don’t want this goal to become yet another task on my to-do list. I want to make this an enjoyable daily routine.

With this goal, it will be interesting to see how many books I end up reading at end of 2022.

Body fat <=15%

According to the smart scale we have, I have been bouncing around 16-18% body fat throughout 2021. I would like to get to 15% body fat. To hit this goal, I have to continue working out regularly and be mindful of what I eat.

Fun Goals

Go to Disneyland

Our planned Disneyland trip in 2020 was cancelled due to the pandemic. I’m optimistic that we can put the pandemic behind us later this year and we can go to Disneyland like we used to. But there are a lot of things outside of my control with this goal.

Go camping at Goldstream Provincial Park

Last year we camped at Goldstream Provincial Park for four nights and had a blast. We really liked the facilities at Goldstream and it would be great to go back there this summer and camp there.

Summary – 2022 Goals and Resolutions

There you have it, my ten goals for 2022. As usual, I will update my progress every quarter to keep myself motivated and accountable.

Dear readers, did you have any goals and resolutions for 2022?