At the beginning of 2021, we made a list of 12 goals for the year. We divided them up into four areas of life: projects, health, connecting, and finances.

When the year was over we took inventory on how well we met our goals. While we managed to do well with some (working out and travel), we missed the mark with others (self-improvement projects).

Well it’s a new year, and so it’s time to set new goals for 2022 (using the same four buckets)!

One wildcard is the COVID-19 pandemic, but we’re cautiously optimistic. We plan to hunker down for a couple of months and then re-emerge from the ice by springtime.

With that assumption in mind, we bring you our goals for 2022…

 

Projects 

After you reach FIRE, it’s always good to have some fun and interesting projects to keep yourself busy and challenged. Here’s what we have on tap for 2022…

1. Travel (3-4 Trips)

We are hoping to book three or four trips in 2022. To help facilitate these trips, we started ramping up our “travel hacking” game at the end of 2021.

Through the Chase Southwest credit card offer, we’re on pace to earn the coveted Southwest Companion Pass by February 2022. This would allow Allison (my companion) to fly FREE* with me anywhere Southwest flies through the end of 2023.

Here are the trips we hope to take in 2022 (using the Companion Pass for all but Europe):

• April: Georgia, South Carolina, New York, and New Jersey
• September: Southern California for FinCon22 (although the final location hasn’t been announced yet)
• November: My dad wants to visit the small Italian town where his father grew up. We’re hoping to meet him there as part of a larger European trip. 

Bonus Trip: Southwest also flies to a number of Caribbean islands like Aruba and Turks and Caicos. It would be nice to squeeze in a fun little beach / island getaway in between our other trips.

*taxes and fees aren’t included, but that’s a pretty small price to pay to Get Away!

2. Book #3 (and maybe #4)

We are finalizing talks with our publisher, Rockridge Press, to write a third book about personal finance. If all goes well, then we will be busy writing until March 2022.

While we can’t talk about the specifics yet, we’re very excited about this project. It has the potential to be as popular as our best-selling second book “Investing for Kids.”

Bonus Book: I would love to finally start writing a work of fiction (one of my bucket list items). At the very least, I hope to start outlining the basics of plot, setting, and characters this year.

3. Declutter

In March of 2020, Allison and I attended a small presentation with a professional organizer. She talked about all the various ways you can clear away clutter and organize your living space.

Just what we needed! We even won a free consultation, but unfortunately, due to the pandemic we never got to take advantage of it.

During the two-year pandemic, we seem to be accumulating more stuff. So, this year, as we move on from COVID-19, I’m hopeful we can turn that around.

We don’t like to throw things away, so Allison joined a local “buy nothing” group. Our goal will be to give away as many items as we can to people who could use them. We also have lots of paperwork to be shredded, used batteries to recycle, and random items to be tossed.

 

Health 

We have two larger travel goals: “60x60” (60 countries by age 60) and “7x57” (all seven continents by age 57). We’re about halfway through, so we want to stay as fit and healthy as possible to complete these objectives.

For our 2022 health goals, we’re focusing on three M’s: muscles, mental health, and maintenance.

4. Muscles

A great way to keep your body fit and young is to work on your muscles with strength training. Benefits include not only stronger muscles, but improved heart health, greater mobility and flexibility, stronger bones, and improved brain health.

I put together 12 different workout plans that each work our entire body (performed three times per week). We use a combination of barbells, dumbbells, cables, weight machines, and body weight exercises.

My goal is to continue increasing our strength while keeping things fresh by regularly varying our routines.

5. Mental Health

There are many ways to boost your mental health, and this year we’ll work on some new ones.

Last year we worked on meditation, cuddling (intimacy), and unplugging. This year we’ll focus on gratitude, generosity, getting into nature, and laughing and having fun.

We want to inject more happiness, love, and kindness into the world. The world has enough anger, hatred, and despair already. By putting out this positive energy, we’re doing good not only for others but for ourselves as well.

6. Maintenance

Now that we’re in our 50s, we realize how important it is to stay healthy and fit. To help with this, we need to focus on all the little things to maintain our health. It’s like the maintenance you do on your car to keep it in tip top shape.

Good health maintenance includes getting proper sleep and rest, staying hydrated, using SPF, and eating a healthy diet. It also includes staying up-to-date on all our medical exams (annual physicals, dentist appointments, eye exams, etc.)

Along the way, we’ll continue to combat COVID (and other ailments) with vaccines, boosters, and mask wearing when necessary.

Bonus goal: We used to get regular massages to relax and soothe our muscles - we need to get back to that!

 

Connecting 

Being able to connect and interact with other people is part of the fabric of life.

Over the past two years it’s been difficult because of the pandemic. We had some great times with other people during our 41-state road trip. We also had periods of hunkering down and only seeing our neighbors in passing.

Hopefully this year we’ll finally feel comfortable hanging out with others again. Here are our goals for reconnecting in 2022…

7. Say Yes to Friends & Family

Our plan is to do more with friends and family this year. We’ll be saying yes to lunches, dinners, coffees, drinks, hikes, parties, and just hanging out.

Allison has a group of female FIRE friends that she’s been talking to on a weekly basis for about a year. They live as far away as Portugal and Australia, and they’ve never met in person. That will change when they all finally get to meet up in Savannah, GA.

We’ll combine that with a trip to New York and New Jersey to visit our East Coast family and friends. Get those NYC pizza and bagels ready!

8. Social Groups

I’d like to create a social group that goes out and does things on a regular basis. Allison’s dad does this with some friends in NYC. They go to a different restaurant every Tuesday night in Manhattan, Brooklyn, or Queens.

Their only rule is that the restaurant has to have decent beer on tap. That’s a rule I could live with!

9. Re-engaging with our Community

There are two local communities we want to re-engage with this year…

Condo: Allison and I are on our condo Social Committee, and we have a number of great events planned for the year. It’s a great way to interact with our neighbors (our building has 134 units, so there are lots of folks to meet).

Local Businesses: We want to get back to the pre-COVID meetups with our local neighborhood improvement district. It was great, because it allowed us to connect with owners of nearby restaurants, cafes, bars, and businesses (even the Oakland A’s).

 

Finances 

After reading the book “Die With Zero” we realized we need to start planning how to spend down our portfolio.

We’re currently closer to “Infinity FI” than we are to “dying with zero.” To rebalance that, here are our financial goals for 2022…

10. Spending on Experiences

We have always been much more interested in spending on experiences than on possessions. When we FIRE’d seven years ago, we even created a site called Experiencify, focusing on having amazing life experiences.

In addition to traveling more and saying yes to doing things with friends, we need to start planning more experiences. For me, that means creating a spreadsheet! It will be a brainstorm with short and long-term experiences we would like to have.

11. Giving More

Sure, we’ve regularly donated some of our time and money to worthy causes, but we need to start ramping that up. This means coming up with a list of our favorite charities and creating a giving plan. Cool, another spreadsheet!

It also means just generally being more generous to those around us. Tipping more, buying the next round, or being the ones to treat for fun events and special occasions.

12. Re-evaluating Where to Live

It’s been eight years since we moved from San Francisco to Oakland using “GeoArbitrage” to pay off our mortgage. While we love our Oakland condo (the weather, the people, the amenities), we’re starting to consider our next move.

That involves finding a new place (part of our trip to NJ/NY is to look at possible places). We’re not in a hurry, but 2022 feels like the year to start this plan.

 

Conclusion 

Let’s all hope that 2022 is the year that we can finally start getting back to some normalcy. Our cautious optimism is growing, and it’s exciting to get some of our plans on paper.

Who knows what the year will bring. We may realize halfway through that we need to alter or totally change up our plans. And we may not accomplish all these goals, but we’ll enjoy the ride.

How about you? What would you like to do in 2022? What are your goals around projects, health, connecting, and finances? Perhaps this is the year you reach FIRE, or you travel to a new country, or you write a novel.

Whatever awaits you, we wish you the very best for this new year!