2023 Is Here! Time For New Years Goals & Market Predictions
Happy 2023!!
Part of living an intentional life is looking ahead at where you’d like to be and taking steps to get closer to those goals vs looking in the rearview mirror thinking “coulda, shoulda, woulda”. Life is an iterative process and those who act intentionally will be more likely to live the life they want.
In 2022 I set some specific goals and predictionslet’s give them a review and then set the 2023 goals!
This article is broken down into 5 parts (Jump Links…)
Lose 20lbs -> FAILED
So I started 2022 at 205 lbs… and ended the year at 205 lbs. so I missed this goal! I will note that I did lose 30lbs in 2021 so I’m proud I didn’t gain any weight back. BUT I know what I need to do here so for 2023 we are going to try again.
I’m not going to view this as a failure (since I didn’t gain any weight!) but I can do better
2X Amazon Earnings
in 2021 I averaged around $800 per month in sales. in 2022 I averaged around $1,400 per month in sales. So I didn’t quite double the revenue, but I was pretty close. I also took a 3 month break at the end of the year do to personal reasons so I’m pretty happy with my progress here. for 2022 we’ll continue to work on growing the amazon revenue.
Travel More
I certainly did this this in 2022! I totally blew my travel budget. Places I went included the following states: NC, SC, TX, AZ, UT, CO, NM, LA, MI, all in all a busy year! LA and MI were both new states for me so that puts me at 38 states visited in the United States. (most of the ones I haven’t been to are in the NE corner.
Invest $20K New Money
Goal achieved! - I invested around $22K of new money into the portfolio this year
Full 2022 portfolio performance can be Found Here!
Grow my website to 1K visitors per month
Goal Missed: while the Blind Luck Project did see some good growth this year I’m still not to 1,000 unique visitors a month yet. I average around 400 to 600 visitors per month which is good progress. I wrote 35 articles in 2022 which was less than my goal of 1 per week (52) but I’m proud of the quality of work I put out and it is more writing than I’ve done in the past so I’m pleased with it.
Make your goals SMART Goals
Before we get into my 2023 goals I want to remind everyone that of one of my favorite quotes “Activity is not the same as achievement” be intentional with your goal setting and make sure they are steps toward where you actually want to be vs a “list of random things” you think you “should do”.
Always the overachiever, I don’t just do one “New Year’s Resolution”, I do 3-5 every year. I think 3 is idea to stay focused, and more than 5 you risk not doing any of them!
My criteria are similar to the S.M.A.R.T. Goals system often used in management. (I started doing this before I knew what smart goals were but I think it’s a useful system so let’s take a moment to review what S.M.A.R.T. Goals are.
S - Specific
M - Measurable
A - Achievable
R - Relevant
T - Time Bounded
Here are a couple notes I have about the more formal S.M.A.R.T. goals method.
*While these goals should be Achievable, don’t lowball yourself. The point is to set ambitious goals that you’ll have to stretch yourself and grow to achieve. If you fall a little short that’s ok, you’ll still make progress toward the outcome you desire. Too many people set the bar too low and make little to no progress toward the where they’d like to be in the future.
**Not all worthy goals are easy to measure
-Goals like spending more quality time with family or living more intentionally are hard to quantify
That being said you can still take specific actions within a period of time to help you reach these goals, so I still find this system useful.
You’re going to notice some of these goals in 2023 are very similar to my 2022 goals. This is because some of these are stepping stones to larger goals that I have on my “5 year plan” I know where I’d like to be 5 years from now and I’m systematically working to get there. Most highly successful people I know have a very clear “mission” in life and don’t just bounce from one fun idea to another every year but systematically build their lives to get there. Learn more about this check out my Activity Is not The Same As Achievement post where I outline how high achievers think and go into depth about the about building your 5 year plan to live an intentional life.
Lose 20lbs -> FAILED
So I started 2022 at 205 lbs… and ended the year at 205 lbs… So we get to TRY AGAIN!
Health is important to me so this will be a major effort this year.
Goal: 185lbs
2X Amazon Earnings
In 2022 I averaged around $1,400 per month in sales. So I almost doubled revenue from 2021! For 2022 we’ll continue to work on growing the Amazon revenue stream, my system works so with some work I think 2X is possible, especially if I’m comitted.
Goal: $2,800 Monthly Revenue
Travel Less
So I over booked myself last year partly because I had over promised to visit/ see people during COVID. in hindsight I’d rather take less but higher quality trips. I don’t have a hard number for this but want to keep it on my radar so here it is. In 2022 I traveled to 10 states…. so maybe something less than 10 would be good?
3rd week in January I’m doing a road trip so not off to a good start with this goal! I’ll be 4 states deep before we even close out January!
Invest $20K New Money
I’m going to hold my $20K per year goal again this year. I had some extra expenses toward the end of last year between buying new hearingaids, ($3,500) a laser eye treatment ($800 after insurance) and some travel I didn’t originally budget for at the beginning of 2022. Don’t feel bad for me, I’ll be fine, but I do need to direct some of my cash into rebuilding reserves in the first couple months of 2023.
Goal: $20,000 of new money Invested
Grow my website to 1K visitors per month
I’m going to hold this goal this year. my growth last year was lower than expected so I’m going to focus off hitting that magical 1,000/ month number in 2023.
Goal: hit 1,000 site visits per month
Action: Post 1 article every week
As you can see, I’ve outlined specific goals then taken the next step and specified what actionable I need to take to turn these goals into reality. Remember a goal without action is just a dream.
Additionally these goals are things I can directly control. I stated I wanted to invest $20K this year which is very much within my control. VS. I want my portfolio to grow 20% which isn’t in my direct control due to the whims of the markets.
Wish me luck and I look forward to giving you an update at the end of the year with how I did!
After reading the book Fooled By Randomness I realized how much of a role chance has in our lives. It’s easy to look back and say “well of course that’s what happened, that’s the obvious outcome”. Our ability to predict future is actually quite abysmal, that’s partly why the average trader does worse than the market average. Things aren’t so predicatable as they seem.
In an effort to keep myself humble, I made 3 predictions last year to see how well I could guess future events. Turns out it’s harder than it sounds!Let’s see how I did on the 2022 predictions.
2022 Predictions
S&P500 will hit 5,500: (FAIL: 3,3839.50 at end of 2022)
As of January 1st 2022 the S&P500 is 2,783.50, I was predicting an increase of 14.98$I had my reasons, and I was. clearly wrong here as the S&P500 had a historically bad year in 2022! hopefully we’ll have a better 2023.
Housing will go up around 7% nationally in 2022: (Close”Ish”)
With all the negative news about housing and rate hikes lately many people may be surprised to hear that housing was actually up 3% in 2022! This is largely due to the fact that the housing market moves very slowly and the first half of the year the market was still pretty hot. things in the second half of 2022 and continuing into 2023 are certainly on the down trend.
United States will get involved in another war: (Sort of? Ukraine is pretty serous, but we don’t have boots on the ground)
This was a more controversial prediction of mine. no body likes war and it’s not a funny topic.
within 3 weeks of 2022 Russia invaded Ukraine and western powers started directly supplying Ukraine with weapons and supplies. .
Alright that’s it for this article. I’m not going to make any formal predictions for 2023 because clearly, I’m no good at it! which was the point of that experiment. Life is a collection of random events we largely can’t control. That being said there are somethings within your control, hopefuly you have some goals for the 2023 year, if you do let us know what they are in the comments below! Go out there and make 2023 the year you want it to be!
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