Reviewing yearly has been a habit of mine since my college days. It is eye opening to look back and see how much can change and happen in the span of a year. My kids are a constant reminder of the passing of time. 2023 was my first year of full time engineering work in over 7 years. It was an adjustment. It felt like work swallowed up the whole day.
Looking back, we did make time for adventures in 2023. Reviewing the year and pictures really are the best. It really does help you appreciate and remember the year’s adventures, accomplishments and just the lovely day to day things like tending a garden.
How did that all matched up to my 2023 yearly goals?
Here is what I set down to do.
- Spring Break to Tennessee ( Travel, Relationships)
- 9 day trip (Lifestyle, Travel, Relationships)
- 1 local in-state trip (1-2 days)
- Max out 401K ( Financial)
- 4-10 speaking gigs paid
- Finish Shotcut course
- Finish Master Youtube course
- New speakers reel
- Yoga Headstand ( Health , Lifestyle)
- 8hrs of sleep a night
- 30 day minimalism challenge
- Complete 8 Duolingo lessons in Italian (Language, Lifestyle)
- read 1 book in Italian
- 1/wk Chinese practice
2023 Traveling wallet yearly review: Full time job and some travel
It’s been 10 years since I started this blog. More than just this year, looking back at all the other year end reviews and financial tracking and MAN what a decade can do to change the trajectory of your life when you are intentional about it.
I also got a new haircut. Shorter than its ever been before.
I will be the first to admit that having a full time job left little juice in me to do side projects so there were some missed goals. However, I have never subscribed to hustle culture. Being overly busy in search for the “Endless More“. Nope. Remember, one of the main tenets on this site is minimalism. Not just in stuff but in your calendar, your time.
Nothing ever exists in a silo. One action. Just one goal, Can impact many areas of life! That is the case with mine, still, here they are grouped for ease of reading. I like what I did previously with my grading of my goals so look out for a grading of Complete, Progress or Fail.
Travel
We’ve always lived far from Family. If its not Mr. Roamer’s in some other state, its mine. As such, a lot of travel and limited time off is spent visiting family. However, since our premarital counseling, I had been clear in my desire to see new places. It’s what took me from California all the way to Michigan for college, which is where we met. We knew our vacations would have to be split into 2 different desired goals. Family or some place new. Thanks to TVs, movies, friends or probably just Facebook, I had a revelation. If I could convince my family to travel somewhere. Then we could kill 2 birds with one stone!
1.Spring Break in Tennessee.
We hiked up to see the waterfalls. We took a chairlift ride to see the bridge. There was a mix of nostalgia and newness. The kids and I had never been to Gatlinburg, Tennessee. Mr. Roamer on the other had use to vacation here for spring break. He would play in the brook and would come with all his family and cousins. This was a chance for him to show us something. We made the trip with family and even ran into some of Mr. Roamer’s cousins. We also had some illnesses to contend with and so we hope to make it there again to hike more trails when we are all feeling our best. The trip deserves its own post. Given Mr. Roamer’s previous family experience I told him it was his job to plan. Score! for delegating. We did this trip in the end of March!
Final verdict: Complete. Lesson: I don’t need to plan everything. Delegate when possible.
2. 9 day trip
This trip was a major headache. Really, my first foray into planning a trip for a big group. I made a rookie mistake. I spent too much time trying to get consensus and have everyone contribute, or share the responsibility. To many opinions but no one else was doing any work. Eventually time was slipping away, prices were getting more expensive and in the end, I had to take control. If you don’t know this about me, I am very type A. I believe this was by far our most expensive 1 week trip, Ever! For this trip we again got to see family and also experience something new. Which was a train trip from Seattle, WA to Los Angeles, CA that lasted approximately 35 hr.
This trip in July included some days exploring Seattle. Again sickness struck us. We made the best of it but had to slow our pace. We made it to the places we gravitate toward. The library. One very awesome discovery which we took full advantage of was that there are wild black berries everywhere! So we foraged. We made it back to LA and all agreed that downtown LA was far superior to downtown Seattle. Again this trip deserves a post on its own. In the end the whole experience felt rushed.
Verdict : Complete . The lesson I am taking forward into the new year is. Like everything, planning group trips is a SKILL! It requires knowledge, It’s a different animal all together than a trip with just your fam. So I need to learn more, if I want to continue to do this.
3. 1 local in-state trip (1-2 days)
The plan was to do an overnight trip somewhere close-ish. 2 hours away. What we ended up doing was so much bigger! We drove for over 6 hours for a quick 2 night stay in the Upper Peninsula, Michigan. Originally the plan was to do this in October closer to fall colors. In the end we decided to do it on a weekend when the kids already had a day off. It was my first time going that far north! We made it all the way to Pictured Rocks National lakeshore.
We camped and promptly discovered you couldn’t see anything from our campground. We also had aspirations to catch the Aurora Borealis. We drove a lot, ate pasties and put our feet in 2 Great Lakes, 2 days in a row. So I soaked my feet into 3 Great Lakes in less than 48 hours! Lake Superior, Lake Michigan and Lake Huron.
Complete: The lesson, while it was a pain to sit on our butts for that long all in one day. That trip really made me realize. We can do this. We can drive this far and do things over a long weekend. And if its less than 6 hours away. PSSH no brainer.
That opened a door for me. As someone who prefers slow travel. Its good to know that I can explore locally without needing more time off from work and school. This also just felt different since no airplanes were involved.
BONUS trips!
Mr. Roamer goes to ITALY!
Also not part of anything to do with my goals but my Mr. Roamer also made it to Italy for a whole week in April. I survived solo parenting…WITH A JOB!! He saw some nice things and Italy is on our list of places to visit for our 1 year of travel. He did say with such a long flight a week is just not enough time.
Mr. Roamer and I go to Colorado!
We got to head over to Colorado in May to attend a good friend’s wedding. It was nice to get away just the two of us. We are trying to make that a priority. At least 1 trip, even if its just over a weekend, just the 2 of us.
Financial
4. Max our 401K
YAY I have a job. That means I have access to a 401K
I am so happy to say this goal, as most financial goals these days was AUTOMATIC. You can automate this and not think about it at all. Thanks to the FIRE movement, we are very intentional with our expenses. And not just that, we were previously living off of just one income. So, before anything in our spending adjusted, the 401K money was taken off the top. Then we could only spend what we received. In 2023 the max was $22,500 close to 30% of my income.
Also a great benefit of pretax accounts. You never see that money except in your investments. Want to make life easier? Get your 401k on automatic, don’t leave free money on the table and do participate in the automatic annual percent increase (if offered). In my experience, this usually maxes out at 10%. If you have FIRE dreams, you will need to continue to increase. If you can, every cost of living increase(“raise”), just throw that into the pot. I am not going to write about why saving in a tax advantage account is a great idea. Go read the Mad FIentist for that.
Complete. Lesson: Get your finances automated. Do check in on them.
5. Paid speaking gigs 4-10
LOL… I guess it depends how you cut it. Did I speak on personal finance or minimalism if front of an audience where I had to pitch a speech? I did not. However, I now currently have a steady paycheck as an engineer at a company. I volunteered to help with their Lean training. That means I gave presentations. LONG 4hrs+ presentations and I did get paid for it.
I got paid to speak.
Now I will admit the goal was to do freelance paid gigs. But I have to give myself props for continuing to incorporate public speaking. It’s still practice in front of an audience and practice fielding questions. Freelance gigs would max out at about 1 hr. Does that mean a 4hr one counts for 4? Total I gave at least 3 of these 4 hour presentations. I also volunteered as a sports announcer for Junior’s home soccer games and swim meets.
Progress. Lesson: Find a way to build and practice the skills you want to grow.
6. Finish Shot Cut course
I watched 11 more lessons from the shot cut course at the start of the year before March. When I made an effort to get back to it. I realized my subscription had ran out and paid to renew it. It’s a low cost so I thought it was worth it. With how much progress I made at the start of the year. I really feel like this one should have been all done. I only have about 4 lesson videos left. 😓 I really need to wrap it up.
Progress. Lesson: When my life gets busy if it’s not on the calendar it doesn’t get done.
7. Finish Master Youtube course
I did get back on. But still haven’t completed it Teehee. 😅
Fail
8. New speakers reel
Here is a link to my old one. I would love some feedback on it. Only version 1 exists.
Failed on making progress
Health and Wellness
9. Yoga 9
This year I think I really ignored my goals. I did not review them like I usually do. I did not really practice yoga headstand routines. If I did, I stopped doing it around summer. Point is. I didn’t track it and I sure as heck don’t remember …
Fail
10. 8 hrs of sleep
I do not feel I honored this goal at all. I feel like I stayed up a lot of nights and snacked a lot as well. Our trip to California in December was great because during that trip we were in bed by 10 and sleeping. It was due to the time difference but I am happy for the extra rest. I did sporadically grab a book and get into bed slightly earlier.
I had an alarm that would ring to send me to bed but I found I was ignoring it. It just became background noise so I deleted it. I would rather not build the habit of ignoring alarms or snoozing them.
Fail
11. 30 day minimalism Challenge
This year was the sorriest performance of our minimalism challenge. It really was meh. However, we did still donate some items like a bed frame and finally got them out of the house. Only took 2 years! Thanks Buy Nothing group. Doing a 30 day minimalism challenge usually removes about 465 items from what we jotted down we removed maybe 133 items.
On the downside. I fear I might have brought in more things from the buy nothing group than given away. 2 steps forward one step back is still forward movement. During our challenge we also clear out the garage and broke down a bunch of cardboard boxes to create more garden beds.
Progress: Going forward I want to make sure we also focus on simplifying our calendars. Especially during the week.
Language
12. Complete 8 Duolingo lessons in Italian
In preparation for our year of 2026 travel. I decided it would make sense to learn a new language every year. I don’t know really why I picked Italian. It wasn’t in the top ones I wanted to learn.
My original goal is to be fluent in 5 languages before I die. I know English and Spanish. I am learning Chinese. With the last 2 being between Hindi, Arabic, Japanese and Portuguese.
So why Italian? I believe it was because going to Italy is very high on our list of places to visit during out year of travel and I think because Mr. Roamer was headed there. Whatever the reason. I wasn’t as motivated throughout my Italian learning. I missed 47 days on Duolingo and didn’t do any writing practice.
Keeping my complaining to a minimum, I have to say I really dislike Duolingo’s change. They have created a single path for learning which has taken away my ability to select the topics I want to dive deeper into. My goal to complete 8 lessons which after the change are really Units. Each unit had 2 lesson topics so I covered 18 lessons total.
Complete Lesson: While Duolingo is good with it’s requirement to speak the phrases. You really do need to incorporate writing by hand to better recollect words.
13. Read one book in Italian…
I wanted to see if I could read a kids book in Italian. I did not. Upon further inspection even the library that carries books in languages such as Chinese , Hindi, Japanese… did not have any Italian children’s books.
Fail
14. Once per week Chinese practice
In 2022 I set out to learn and practice Chinese. I even recorded some videos. This year I switched to Italian. But, I wanted to make sure I still practiced my Chinese. To retain the new words I learned I would use Duolingo to practice in Chinese if I ever ran out of hearts. It meant using the CD I got from college. As a way to track my progress I can make some guesses based on the xp I earn on Duolingo. I did mark 6 weeks for sure.
I don’t have any conclusive data so the verdict is : Progress
While I worked on this I read Financial Samurai’s review and in it he has something he calls the X factor. For me that is my language learning.
- Spring Break to Tennessee ( Travel, Relationships) COMPLETE
- 9 day trip (Lifestyle, Travel, Relationships) COMPLETE
- 1 local in-state trip (1-2 days) COMPLETE
- Max out 401K ( Financial) COMPLETE
- 4-10 speaking gigs paid PROGRESS
- Finish Shotcut course PROGRESS
- Finish Master Youtube course FAIL
- New speakers reel FAIL
- Yoga Headstand ( Health , Lifestyle) FAIL
- 8hrs of sleep a night FAIL
- 30 day minimalism challenge PROGRESS
- Complete 8 Duolingo lessons in Italian (Language, Lifestyle) COMPLETE
- read 1 book in Italian FAIL
- 1/wk Chinese practice PROGRESS
9 out of 14 not too bad. Plus I am doing way better than the people who don’t take a shot. Right, Wayne Gretsky?
The year was full of other things as well. You might have noticed the really short hair. The shortest I have ever gone. We loved the time in the garden and had lot of raspberries to eat. This new year 2024, my word was going to be community, scrolling back through 2023 it was actually amazing to see how many old friends we got to see. We also did have to make some proactive money moves. Given that we were both earning an income we suspected not all of our traditional IRA would be tax deductible. So we opened up a Roth IRA and made some guesses on how much we should invest in each account. We will see how it all works out come tax time. This coming year I hope to keep my goals front and center thanks to a planner my sister gave me as a gift.
It’s already been a bit since we struck the clock into the new year. Maybe you didn’t sit down an look back. So I recommend it. How was your 2023? and what are you planning for 2024?
Ciao
Melissa
