The year 2021 certainly was a mix of highs and lows. Between vaccines, Delta, boosters, and Omicron, it was quite a rollercoaster.

Like everyone, our 2021 was up and down and all over the place. Along the way, we did hit some nice milestones: I turned 50, and we celebrated our 20th wedding anniversary.

At the beginning of the year, we put together our plan of 12 ways to make 2021 great. We divided up our goals into four buckets: Projects, Health, Connecting, and Finances.

While we hit a number of our targets, we also came up short on several of them. Overall, I would give us a Grade of B.

 

Projects

Here were our three project goals for 2021:

1. Travel Again (if possible)

This was one area we did very well. We planned to do a road trip, a wedding in New Jersey, FinCon in Austin, and an international trip. We did all but the international trip.

Our crown jewel was the 41-state 12,500-mile road trip. Over two months in the summer we visited dozens of old friends and family members. We explored a dozen national parks and monuments, and we reached our 50x50 goal of getting to all 50 states by age 50.

2. Do More with Retire By 45

We had hoped to do work on our site with more blog posts, improved courses, and more promotions for our books.

Unfortunately, we fell well short on all of these goals. We didn’t do any work on courses or new books, and we only published eight new blog posts in 2021. Our most popular one was probably “10 Epiphanies About the FIRE Lifestyle.”

[Side Note: Our book “Investing for Kids” did manage to do spectacularly well in 2021. To our surprise and delight it sold over 40,000 copies and garnered over 1,500 reviews!]

3. Fun Self-Improvement Projects

These would be things like getting a SCUBA certification, learning a new language, playing an instrument, or writing a third book.

We didn’t get around to doing any of these, so this goal was a complete goose egg.

Projects Grade: B- (only because we hit it out of the park with our road trip)

 

Health

Here were our three health-related goals for 2021:

4. Overcome COVID-19

Our goal here was to stay healthy, get our vaccines when available, and avoid getting COVID throughout the year.

Not only did we get our COVID vaccine, but we ended up getting six different shots in 2021. These included the Moderna vaccine (2), the flu shot, Shingles vaccine (2), and the Moderna booster.

So far we’ve managed to avoid COVID (knock on wood), and hopefully we can dodge Omicron. If not, we’re confident being thraxxed (triple vaxxed) will keep us out of the hospital and symptoms to a minimum.

5. Go Beyond Home Workouts

We got back to the gym and were really good about working out regularly. We both put on a few pounds of muscle from lots of weight lifting (I went from 172 to 177 pounds).

I created 12 different routines, because I know Allison gets bored easily, and added some challenging new exercises like deadlifts.

For cardio, I was diligent about swimming three days per week and added flip turns, which makes it more challenging. Allison and I also walked outside every single day for about 2.5 miles on average.

All this cardio has been great for my heart health. At the beginning of 2020, I averaged 124/79 blood pressure and 74 resting heart rate. By the end of 2021 I improved to 110/72 blood pressure and 62 resting heart rate.

6. Refocus on Mental Health

My big win here was sticking to a daily meditation practice (almost) every morning. It’s a great way to calm your emotions, focus your thoughts, and set your mind for the day.

My other mental health goal was to spend more time cuddling and connecting with Allison. So after my morning meditation, I go back to bed to cuddle with Allison (who likes to sleep in) for 20-30 minutes.

[ Tip: cuddling has lots of benefits like creating intimacy, boosting immunity, and relieving stress.]

Areas that we fell short were reducing exposure to news feeds, cutting down on social media, and reading more books. We unplugged during our road trip, but it’s too easy to plug in at home (something to work on).

Health Grade: A- (we hit most our goals)

 

Connecting

Going into the year, we had three goals around connecting with other people for 2021.

7. Get Back to Normal Activities

For part of 2021, we were able to feel some normalcy again.

After our initial vaccination, we got wonderful massages at a fancy spa in Sausalito. We also got back to some indoor dining again, although we always opted for outdoor seating when possible.

And we returned to our regular (and super affordable) Asian hair stylist in Oakland’s Chinatown neighborhood. We even gave her a signed copy of “Investing for Kids” for her two pre-teen daughters.

8. Doing Things with People

We were really looking forward to meeting up with people again, and we certainly accomplished this goal.

Along our road trip, we saw a wide variety of people that we hadn’t seen in years. There were former classmates, ex-boyfriends, old co-workers, extended family members, and even my favorite teacher from high school.

We also put together several successful social events for our condo building. I’ve always been a little more of an introvert, but post-COVID I have been leaning more to my extrovert side. I guess it took a pandemic to realize the importance of connecting with other human beings.

9. FinCon in Austin

This was an easy one -- goal accomplished! We weren’t sure if COVID would spoil the event even up to the last couple of weeks before. Fortunately, it went off without a hitch, and we had a lot of fun.

There were three highlights for us. First was organizing a speaking panel about “life after FIRE.” Second was the conference book booth, where we got to meet readers, sell signed copies, and mingle with other authors. Third was immersing ourselves in the food and party atmosphere of Austin.

Connecting Grade: B+ (we connected more than I thought we would)

 

Finances

Lastly, we had three Finance goals for 2021.

10. Create a Spending Plan

We wanted a plan both for spending on ourselves (with interesting and fun experiences) as well as on philanthropic giving.

While we didn’t exactly make a plan, we did a better job this year of opening our purse strings. We spent freely on our big road trip on all our lodging, food and drink, and gas and transportation costs. And for Christmas, we even bought each other gifts for the first time in many years -- new laptops!

At the end of the year, we made some generous donations to local charities that we care about. Our giving focused on feeding the needy and elderly, as well as helping pets and animals.

11. Legacy Planning

This goal was to finally create a living trust or will and a legacy plan for all of our assets. Allison did start working on a free will program. However, Microsoft’s blue screen of death convinced her that this was not the time to create a will just yet.

We’ll have to add this to our goals for 2022!

12. Evaluate Living Options

Eight years ago we moved from San Francisco to Oakland using geographic arbitrage to FIRE nine years ahead of schedule. While we love the weather, the people, and the amenities (pool, gym), we’re just not sure we’ll be here forever.

We have been slowly evaluating our possible living options. One of the reasons for our big road trip was to see if any other places stood out to us. We’ve even considered the nomadic lifestyle.

It looks like we’ve whittled down our plan to either staying put or moving back to the East Coast. We have a lot of family and friends there, and we would bring Allison’s mom with us. Since we’re not into extreme weather, our plan would be to travel during the summers and winters.

Finances Grade: C+ (we were hit and miss with these goals)

 

Conclusion

I think we were pretty ambitious with our 2021 goals, especially given the pandemic. However, as they say “nothing ventured, nothing gained.”

We certainly made the most of another difficult year. And we feel blessed that we have the resources to allow us to do all these things. We realize that many people don’t have the luxury to stay sheltered when necessary and then roam freely when they want. We never want to take our financial freedom for granted!

So, how about you - did you have any goals in 2021? And were you able to achieve your goals?

What would you like to do in 2022? If it’s helpful, consider breaking out your own goals in the same buckets as ours: projects, health, connecting, and finances.

We will be sharing our 2022 goals in our next blog post. I can already see travel being top of the list. We’re very close to getting the coveted Southwest Companion Pass, and we can’t wait to start using it!