2012 and 5 Year Review – So many GOOD things!

In May, I did a 5 month update on my 2012 goals. I’ll be honest, I haven’t looked at my yearly goals since that day in May, so I’m a little afraid of how this post is going to look.

Yes, there are still a couple of days left in 2012, but I’m pretty positive that I’m probably not making headway on any of my goals in the last couple of days of 2012. I also plan on making a 2012 blog review soon, so be on the look out for that 🙂

I would say 2012 was a great year and a lot changed in my life. I went on several really great trips. Kauai, Las Vegas, St. Thomas and St. John. I very much LOVE a good vacation, who doesn’t?

I also substantially increased our income and we have lowered our budget as much as we would like to (got rid of things that we thought were unnecessary) and now our expenses and debt payments are only around 30% of our total take home monthly pay. That is quite far from where we’ve come. When I first started this blog around 1.5 years ago, we were definitely not the strongest financially that we could have been.

My extra income is to the point where I could live off of it, however the instability is what scares me. I do enjoy my job, so of course I will keep it. I do plan on making a full detailed post on this soon. If you have made the jump to self-employment, what made you switch? Would you go back to the way things were before?

I finally figured out a lot of things in my life, and thanks to all of you I realized that I need to start living my own life. My sister moved into my house as well and I love having her more in my life.

I was also asked to be a bridesmaid in two of my good friend’s weddings, I also got engaged, and they’ll be in mine as well. Here’s to all of 2013 to wedding planning! 🙂 And if you already follow my personal Pinterest account, then I am deeply sorry for all of the wedding pins that I have pinned already.

Here are my 2012 goals:

1. Get toned. FAIL. I got rid of my gym membership in order to save money. We are possibly going to buy some items for a home gym soon. Anything that we should keep in mind when doing this? How much did you spend on your treadmill? I’ve been seeing some pretty low prices of $500 and didn’t know if that was too cheap?
2. Have a great year at work. PASS. It’s been a great year at my work. Love my job and everything that it brings.
3. Get my MBA. PASS. Finished my Finance MBA in August of 2012 🙂
4. Pay off my car by March 2012. PASS. Paid off our original car loan but we now have another car loan. HOWEVER, we only got a loan on the new Jeep because the interest rate was insanely low and we would rather save and invest our car money instead.
5. Decrease my student loans to $20,000. PASS. I’ve been doing pretty well on my $38,000 loan payoff plan.
   
6. Save around $4,500 for vacations. PASS. Went on a lot of great vacations as said above!
7. Make $10,000 in side income.  PASS PASS PASS. I have been linking to my monthly extra income posts under my extra income tab above. So far this year I have made approximately $23,000 in extra income from my side jobs and next year I’m hoping for an even higher number. It’s interesting to think that in the beginning of 2012, I thought this was near impossible.
8. Grow my blog. PASS. What I wrote in May is almost funny. I never thought that I would honestly come as far as I have, and I’m looking forward to making my 2012 blog review post live.
   
9. Volunteer twice a month. FAIL. Haven’t volunteered at all…
10. Increase my net worth to $85,000.  Not sure yet. I’m definitely doing better than what I was at (I believe I was at a positive net worth of around $70,000 in the beginning of this year. I have increased my income substantially and will do a 2013 net worth update within the next week or so.
11. Keep track of my goals.  FAIL. This is always something that I’m bad with. I haven’t looked at my goals since May as I said earlier!

Here’s my 5-year plan (from my 5-year plan blog post):

• Pay off student loans completely. ON TRACK. Still on track for these to be completely gone by the end of March or April.
• Start aggressively paying off mortgage. This has been put on HOLD. We have decided that we want to buy our next house sometime in 2014. We still like the house that we are in, but we want something with a bigger yard.
• Add a bathroom to the basement. This has been put on HOLD. See above.
• Add a bar area to the basement. See above…
• SAVE like crazy for a house down payment. We really want to sell our current house and move into a bigger house. This will require us to save as much as we possibly can because I would preferably want to pay around 30% to 50% of the total home value.

• Have our house at least 50% to 75% paid off. 
• Our new goal will be to buy a new house and pay around 50% on it.
• Get married! We plan on probably getting married in May of 2014. We wanted it sooner but some things came up (as talked about on Twitter last week) but we are happy with waiting 1.5 years.

• Go on a month long vacation. We have talked about possible taking a long honeymoon (maybe 3 weeks or something). Not sure where to, but we are definitely looking forward to this.
• Go on a long hiking trip. This is definitely still high on my goals. Maybe one day! Have any of you ever done this?
• Probably start thinking about a baby eventually. This is new to the list. We will be 28 in 5 years, so I guess a baby should be thought about haha. We want kids around the age of 30, but haven’t really thought about it too much. So no worries, no baby posts from me anytime soon 🙂

Do you have a 5 year plan? What are your goals?