Our 2011 Goals

Hello, New Year!

This past year has been a really great year for the Wimmers, but we are SO pumped about 2011! Amongst other things, we will be going on a dream vacation to New Zealand and (hopefully) buying our first home! Yeah!

Since it is a brand new year, we decided to set some brand new goals. Aaron and I have always been fairly goal-oriented, but it didn't really "click" for me until I read Dave Ramsey's book, "More than Enough". In it, he first quotes Proverbs 29:18, "Where there is no vision, the people perish." Then, he goes on to say:

Perish as in die? Yes. When we surrender vision, we surrender our dreams, our hopes, and reach a despair or, worse yet, a level of apathy as thick as syrup.

When I read the rest of this chapter, I was totally inspired. I was traveling for work and reading this book on the plane, and when I got to my hotel that night, I called Aaron right away and we started brainstorming some goals. One of the things Dave recommends is to set a big goal first, like a really crazy and wild one, and then set smaller goals or baby steps that lead to it. For us, this goal started out something like "Have the freedom to do whatever we want". Very generic. In the book, Dave states that any good goal must:

1) Be YOUR goals, not someone else's idea or suggestion. You must own the goal.
2) Be measurable. Convert your goal into a number so it's measurable. Measurability in money is alright if money isn't your only motivator. Try to measure your vision in something other than dollars.
3) Be written down. There is something powerful that God does for you when you force your thoughts onto paper.
4) Have a time limit. Monthly, weekly, daily, or even yearly is fine but there needs to be a finish line.

Love this! Ok so our goal evolved into something like "Be salary-independent by the time we are 40, so we can spend more quality time with our family and travel the world". Which we then broke down into smaller, more imminent goals around budgeting expenses (and sticking to them!), saving for a healthy down payment on a house, contributing to a college fund, and building passive income. And some of these goals we reached in 2010! Hence, why we're coming up with new ones for 2011!

And, we haven't just created financial goals, we've also talked about personal and spiritual ones too. Like "Grow spritually" (I don't like to translate this goal into something number-related, I like to just leave it open like that and then decide at the end of the year whether I did this or not). However, I did write down some more measurable sub-goals or action items like "join a Bible study or small group". And, my personal goal for this year is to "get more organized!" I'm currently going through all of the super messy areas in our apartment and organizing them as part of the 21 Days to Getting Organized Challenge at A Bowl Full of Lemons. More on that later...