Not My Mother

A lot of my blogs have been setting their goals for next year, so I’ve been trying to come up with mine. It’s hard because I have no idea how next year will go. I could say that about every one of the last 6 years, but this one will definitely be different. I’ll become a mother. I’ll be moving to a part-time salary, and although I’ve worked out a tentative budget that shows we can do things quite comfortably, I have no idea how out of pocket we’ll end up with the birth, or how much the baby will cost (although Mum’s gone a bit mad buying stuff and friends have been very generous, so that helps out.) Hell, I have no idea at all what being a mother will do to me or my life, so it really is all up in the air right now.

I’ve not really tried setting goals before. Resolutions, sure, I make a billion of those, and promptly forget them. One year I had 13. How many did I achieve? Your guess is as good as mine. So for the last few years I’ve not bothered making them. Best to avoid the sense of failure. But I can see the point of setting goals, especially financial ones, otherwise you drip through the year with no focus. But how to do it? Goals should be achievable and measurable and everything else that makes them SMART. Also, I don’t want to have a goal for each aspect of my life (too much to focus on), but neither do I want just one financial one (an area that IS measurable) that I’ll get obsessive about, I’m obsessive enough about that already. So what to do?

I was talking to Dave about it and he gently pointed out that I am a knucklehead and next year WILL have one main focus, and it won’t be finances. We are becoming parents, everything is going to change. Thus, 2010’s goal should be to adjust to parenthood.

Spend the first three months preparing for the baby, then recover from the birth and adjust to being a mother. Look, I have no idea how I’ll go with that, other than it will change everything for ever (thanks, friends with helpful comments). I’ll probably be overwhelmed by it all and I’ll likely get postnatal depression. So he says I need to forget everything else and concentrate on that, get settled into being mum, get healthy and well, get our routines going and so on. And he’s right. I know he’s right. It’s really important and it doesn’t come at all naturally to me, I need to give it all my focus.

But I’ll need some sub-projects to keep me going, right? You know, for when it all that parenting gets too easy? So here are a few more I came up with.

Finance

1. Get emergency fund up to $20,000.My ultimate goal is $30,000 (6 months full expenses including mortgages for rental properties), but I’ll aim for $20,000 by the end of next year. It is currently sitting at $9,500, so we can comfortably make $20k by adding about $1000 a month.
2. Work out exact financial position. I’m embarrassed to say I don’t really know where we stand at the moment. I’ve lost track of how many shares we have (we get some as part of our end of year bonuses, usually held in trust for a year or more, and I’ve not kept the records of what’s vested and what’s not, up to date), and some of our old superannuation funds have old addresses so I haven’t got up to date statements from them. Plus, Dave tends to be a bit slack with some stuff like managing the account for paying one of the investment mortgages, which makes it hard for me to know how the budget’s going, so I’d rather just get it all under my control.

   This one also means making sure we’ve got everything covered that we should, like life insurance and wills, and to start getting educated on our superannuation options.

3. Grow net worth by $50,000. Again, I don’t know what the current year will bring so I don’t know how realistic I’m being, but if we include superannuation contributions (as we must) this should be easily achievable. It will be hard to definitely assess our success because a lot would depend on property valuations and I can’t see us paying for new ones again next year, but we’ll do what we can. For the record, I did some sums and I estimate our current net worth as being somewhere around the $490-500,000 mark, so $50k would be a nice round 10% increase. (See why I need the exact financial position? $500k would be such a nice milestone to hit and I don’t know if we’ve made it yet!)

Organisation – get home life in order

This one ties into the main goal of adjusting to parenthood, and just getting our lives working smoothly so things don’t fall apart when I go back to work. One of my most common freakouts is that I don’t feel like I’m coping now, so how will I manage when there’s a baby to wrangle as well? So this is all about setting up routines and systems, like meal plans and filling the freezer so we have food, and getting housework and admin down to a quick art. It bugs me that I always have a big list of things hanging over my head that should be done, so I want to make a concerted effort to work through them all and get them sorted out once and for all.

(And before you point and laugh at me for thinking I can do that with a baby around, she won’t be here for a few months yet and hopefully will sleep a lot at first. I could be kidding myself, but leave me my illusions for now, okay?)

Health and wellbeing

Dave says he wants to get down to 85kg (um, about 187lb) by the end of the year. He’s 6 feet tall with a chunky muscular build anda bit of a belly and probably weighs about 104kg (229lb) at the moment. I can’t imagine him that light but he thinks he can do it, and it will help with his cycling. I was 85.9kg (189lb) when we got married and am 94kg (207lb) right now, so I figure I’ll target that too. Ideally I’d like to get under 76kg (168lb) which would get me out of the obese range for my height, but I honestly don’t know how I’ll go. I’d rather have a modest goal I have a hope of achieving than something I don’t believe I can do.

Really though, I’d just like to finish the year feeling fitter and healthier, with better food and exercise habits and a body that doesn’t hurt. This will be part of establishing our new routines. Details still to be worked out.

So that’s it. Of course I’m most interested in the financial ones right now because I’m comfortable in that area. I’m actually quite excited about what next year will bring,

What do you think of these goals? What are your goals for the coming year?