Goals, Goals, Goals (In Depth 8,9, &10)

To see the full list of my 19 in 2019 goals click here.

8) Open an Investment Account

Along with Goal 1 this is some financial housekeeping to push me closer to my early retirement goals.

Action Steps to reach my Goal:

1. Do research to choose where to invest.
2. Do research to choose what to invest in.
3. Decide what amount of money and how frequently to invest.
4. Open the account and set up automatic deposits.

9) Work toward a 5am Wakeup

This is the first step in many to improve my fitness.   I know from past experience that the only way I’ll fit exercise into my day is to do it in the morning.  The problem is, I HATE mornings.  I really struggle to get up early.  My goal is to slowly push my wakeup time earlier and earlier until I’m waking no later than 5:15.  At first I will use this time to make myself better breakfasts and just not have to rush so much in the mornings.  But once it’s early enough, I will implement some sort of exercise.

10) Be active at least 3 times per week.

Are we seeing a theme with number 9?

Action steps to achieve this goal:

1. Leave a pair of sneakers at the office so that I can walk during lunch or breaks when my workload allows.
2. Plan family activities that are more active. (Hikes, walks, swimming, yoga with my daughter, etc)
3. Schedule long dog walks into my week.
4. Try to start off Saturdays with lifting weights, yoga, etc.
5. Schedule these activities on my planner and make them a priority!

 

Anyone else trying to kick the couch potato habit?

Goals Goals Goals (In Depth 1&2)

As promised, here’s a bit more in-depth information about some of the goals I have for this year.

 

Open an IRA for ME.

I’m moderately obsessed recently with retiring early.  I mean, I’m still at least 10 years out, but that would still have me retiring about a decade earlier than most.   In order to do that, I have some financial housekeeping that I need to take care of.  (Maybe I’ll get more detailed about this journey in the future.) One of those housekeeping items is to open an IRA.

Action steps to achieve this goal:

1. Research low fee options for where to open the IRA. (I’ve already done this, and am going with Vanguard.)
2. Open the account
3. Research how I want to invest my money.
4. Choose my investments based on my research.
5. Decide how much and often I will deposit funds.
6. Set up automatic deposits.

Transfer my husband’s IRA

My husband just isn’t into financial stuff as much as I am but is happy to have me handle most of the financials for our household.   He was a stay at home dad for about 10 years and has only been working outside of the home for the last three years.  He works part-time at a non-profit and also makes a bit of money off of his YouTube channel.

Obviously, neither of these income streams come with a 401(k), pension, or any other sort of retirement account.   We opened an IRA when he started working three years ago and he has automatic deposits set up.   However, when we set it up, we really had no idea what we were doing and just went through the bank we have our checking accounts at.   Now that I’m a bit better educated, I realize that was a crappy decision.  The fees he is paying are well higher than average and we need to remedy that.

Action Steps to achieve this goal:

1. Basically 1-4 above.  I’ll only have to do that work once.
2. Research how to transfer the funds from his current IRA to the new IRA.
3. Make the transfer and update his automatic deposits.

 

I think I’ll have these steps completed within a week.  It will feel good to knock a couple of items off the list before we get too far into the new year.

Does anyone else have big financial goals for 2019?