Can you believe how quickly 2015 is passing by?
We’re nearing the end of June, which means we are almost at the halfway point of 2015.
Since we are almost halfway through the year, it’s a great time to check in on your annual goals and see how you can improve on them. A year is a long time, so you definitely want to do a major checkup on your goals at least once.
Plus, there’s still plenty of time for you to reach your goal. Just because the first half of the year may not have gone as planned for you does not mean that the rest of 2015 has to be thrown away.
You should try to take advantage of the next six months and try as hard as you can to reach your goal.
Varying financial goals (don’t forget about personal goals either though) that you may want to checkup on may include goals such as:
Saving more money;
Cutting your budget;
Earning more money;
Paying off your debt; and so on.
Below are different reasons for why it’s important to check on your goal progress. I’ve also included my mid-year checkup.
You can become motivated all over again.
By checking in on your goal progress, you will most likely feel reenergized and pumped about your goals all over again. I know that usually happens to me!
This motivation and energy may be exactly what you need to power you through the end of the year so that you can reach your goal in time.
Also, if you are doing well with your goal but you are feeling a little tired about it, checking in may help you feel positive about your goal again and remind you about why you should push forward.
You can track your progress.
By checking in on your annual goals, you can track your progress and see how you’re doing. This can help you determine if you need to speed things up or if something may be holding you back.
Tracking your goals is extremely important for the reasons above. If you don’t know how you are doing, it would be very hard to know if your plan needs to be changed, if you are doing something wrong, if you are even on track, and so on.
Things can change in a year.
A year is a long time. A lot can change in one year so setting goals and just forgetting about them may not always work.
You could possibly lose your job, experience a medical issue, come across a large unexpected expense, and most of all, you might not even need/want to reach that goal anymore. You might be trying to reach a goal that needs to be completely changed and without reevaluating, you might not even realize that.
You can create a new plan.
If things are not going as planned, then you may decide to create a new plan to reach your goal. Sticking to your old plan that isn’t working for you would just be a waste of time so you might as well change it to what you want to change it to.
By checking in on your goal progress, you can decide on a plan that will help you to reach your goal more effectively and efficiently.
Here is my mid-year check in. Below are my annual goals along with my progress.
1. Increase the business’ income. PASS. Yes, I know I make a good income, but ever since I left my day job it just seemed to remain flat. This was even though I was able to add around 50-60 hours a week by cutting my day job out of my life, so you can probably see now why it’s frustrating to have flat income when you have so much more time. However, my income is finally increasing due to improving my blog, promoting it more, and so on. If you take a look at my recent income report, you can see that my income is starting to go upwards. I believe this will continue into the future.
2. Challenge our budget. PASS. After a few years of increased spending, we made it our mission this year to be more minimalist, spend less money, and stop focusing on material things. We have done very well with challenging our budget. We are living a super fun life full of travel and adventure (we’ve been to many places this year already including California, Nevada, Utah, Gulf Shores, Memphis, and more) yet we are spending less money than ever. We also went down to one car, got rid of a lot of our belongings, canceled cable, and more.
3. Get life insurance. FAIL. I know, I know, I have been saying this for what seems like ages! I know that getting life insurance soon would be a wise decision for me and Wes due to the fact that life insurance provides financial security for your loved ones in the event of your death and that you shouldn’t simply rely on savings for this. A life insurance death benefit can cover your income, monthly expenses, debt and more. So, it needs to be done soon since our income relies on our business and my blog. It’s also smart for us to get it now because we do plan on having children eventually and we are young, so life insurance is pretty much as cheap as it will ever be right now for us. According to Haven Life’s calculator, our recommended coverage for life insurance is a $950,000 policy with an approximate cost of $47 a month. That doesn’t seem bad at all! I always thought life insurance was much more expensive than that. Haven Life is the only place where you can buy term life insurance online. They only offer policies to MA residents right now, but you should at least try out their calculator to see how much coverage you need.
4. Spend less money on clothing. PASS. This is a big goal of mine and I am doing very well. I have bought some new hiking clothing but that has been it. I believe I have spent around $200 on clothing in 2015 so far, and I don’t expect to buy any clothing anytime soon either.
How is 2015 going for you? What goals are you trying to reach this year?
Disclosure: The team at Haven Life reads my blog (and saw that I don’t have life insurance) and reached out to see if I’d like to try out their life insurance calculator. They compensated me to mention them on my blog when discussing my goals for the next six months. As always, however, everything in this post is 100% my opinion.
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