If you’re new here, every month I share how I’m doing with my goals for the year. This includes personal, blogging/business, and of course financial goals. This post holds me accountable to the goals I set every year, but more importantly, it helps my readers to see that having financial goals in place are the key to succeeding with money. If you need help setting financial goals, make sure you read this post here on the steps to setting financial goals.

**If you’re on my email list, you already know about this – – I’ve decided that I will no longer be posting 3 times a week. I’m going to be posting on Mondays and Fridays for now or at least until my home life isn’t so crazy. 🙂

Blogging

My big goal this year is to double my income from 2015. That will put me at a full-time blogger level, which will be an amazing feat if I accomplish it! 🙂

Contribute 25% of income to business emergency fund. (I use Capital One 360 for my business emergency fund) – (I struggled with this one this month. I need to find a way to automate this process…)

Attend 2 Conferences –

FinCon16 – tickets already purchased.
Mini retreat with one of my mastermind groups – Sooooo, this didn’t get to happen. My Mastermind Group still got to meet together but I was unable to attend due to a family emergency. :-/
SheSpeaks – I really wanted to attend this conference but now that the dates have been announced I realized that I would be unable to attend because it’s happening the weekend my cousin is getting married. So, I’ll add this one to my list of conferences to attend in 2017.

Write and release self-published book – Okay, so I decided to scrap this one after reading Pat Flynn’s book, Will It Fly because honestly, my heart wasn’t in this book idea…soooo, I’ve decided to concentrate my efforts in developing a book to go along with the course I am planning but that will all depend on my readers. Email subscribers, be prepared because I’ll be picking y’all’s brains! 🙂

Have signed contract with literary agent by December 31^st.

Release one eCourse by October 1^st. (This will be a little different than originally planned but still keeping my target date of October 1st.)

Have an average of 500,000 PVS a month by December 31^st.

PVS for January 2016: 488,826

Make One Media Appearance – TV or Radio

Speak at at least one event

Increase Facebook followers to 10,000 by April 1st.

Increase email subscribers to 15,000 by August 1st.

Current number: 10,557 (this will more than likely change by about 2,000 in the next week when I do a clean up of my email subscribers.)

Read at least 5 books on business/blogging

What I want to read:

What I’ve read:

Will it Fly by Pat Flynn – amazing, awesome, and hands down one of the best, in-depth, hold your hands business book I’ve read in a very long time.

Personal

Continue using the Tupler Techniques every day. (These are found in the book, Lose Your Mummy Tummy) – These are kicking my tail! Seriously, mamas if you’re struggling with the whole postpartum, my body feels out of whack stuff that happens after you have a baby, try these exercises. They’re hard but I can already feel a difference in my body. These aren’t really designed to make you skinny but they’re designed to correct your core after being stretched to accommodate a growing baby.

Complete P90X by December 31^st – Haven’t started on this one yet….I want to get my body feeling more normal before I push it to it’s limit by starting the insanity that is P90X…

Read at least 2 books just for me.

Marriage Goals

~~Write one love note to Pat a month.~~ (Done for this month)

Plan at least one date night every 6 months.

Read at least 3 books on Marriage:

Just another crazy day at the Fearon house….

Mothering Goals

Spend at least 30 minutes every day playing with my children. (I struggled with this one this month…)

~~Write in Motherhood gratitude journal every day.~~ (Done for this month)

Plan a date night with my boys once every 6 months.

~~Read one new book every month with boys.~~ (Done – the boys’ preschool allows them to check out books from their library to take home. So we read The Princess and The Pig this month.)

Read at least 1 book on Parenting/Motherhood.

Snow Day??? We only got a dusting. 🙂

Spiritual Goals

Since the season of Lent is upon us and Catholics usually either give up something or add something to their daily lives as an offering for the sacrifice that Jesus Christ made for us, I’ve decided that for the season of Lent I’m adding praying the Rosary to my daily life. Which, this will be a challenge for me because I lack patience and it takes forever to pray the entire Rosary. :-/

Complete 1 Bible Study. (I’ll be completing the Lenten Study through Blessed is She.)

Volunteer once at our church. (I’m baking items for the bake sale…does that count??? 😉 )

~~Read Bible Daily through Blessed is She.~~ (Done for this month)

Read at least 2 books on Christianity.

Financial Goals

Okay, so many of y’all have been wondering what our budget changes for this year will be since I posted about it on Facebook. It’s not super exciting, in fact it’s not exciting at all…it’s about health insurance. My husband’s company has decided to go with an Affordable Care Act plan so our deductibles for this year are insane…thank the good Lord we had Charlotte last year under our amazing insurance with a reasonable deductible.

We were going back and forth on whether or not to join a Christian Healthcare Sharing Ministry but we ultimately decided against it. (I’ll write a post on Healthcare Sharing Ministries to share our research with y’all because they may be a great option for some and we may end up going with one eventually.) So our premium will be going up by about $20 a week but our deductibles have now tripled….ugh.

3- Month fully-fund emergency fund by December 31st – goal is $10,500.

Current Balance: $6,684.43

Pay mortgage principal down by $10,000 by December 31st. (We didn’t pay much extra to our mortgage this month.)

Owed on mortgage as of December 2015 is: $33,835.25
Current Balance: $33,493.71 (our current payment hasn’t calculated in yet.)

Read at least 1 Financial book:

What I Want to Read:

What I Have Read:

Retire Inspired by Chris Hogan – I’ve actually lent my copy of this one to my mama because it’s packed full of important information for everyone in regards to retirement. I love that Chris breaks it down for you if you’re in your 50’s or 60’s and you haven’t saved for retirement yet what you should do. It’s a great guide – so read it. You won’t be sorry. 🙂

Not as much progress as I had wanted but I’ll take any form of progress I can make! 🙂 How are you doing with your goals so far this year?

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Comments

MomofTwoPreciousGirls says
February 1, 2016 at 5:57 am
If you’re now on a low premium high deductible plan, look into a Health Savings Account to set aside the funds for the deductible. We max ours out every year and it’s a huge relief knowing its there. Most years we don’t by use it so it rolls but in a bad year (like 2015) it is a lifesaver.
- Jessi Fearon says
  February 2, 2016 at 10:04 am
  We tried to get an HSA but his company offers a FSA so we were denied. The FSA funds are lost if not used within a year. It’s been a crazy mess. :-/
suzi whitford says
February 1, 2016 at 7:19 am
Ah! You’re Catholic? I was excited to see you wanted to read a book by Pope Francis, but then I kept scrolling and saw the additional list of Catholic books. I am so excited! My husband and I both converted a few years ago and we love the faith. Thank you for this great list of resources!
I want to read Pat Flynn’s newest book – did you learn a lot of applicable and practical things you can use? 🙂
- Jessi Fearon says
  February 2, 2016 at 10:01 am
  Yay! A fellow Catholic blogger! 🙂 Yes, Pat’s book is amazing – it goes in great strategic depth about figuring out your target audience and developing products around their needs. He even gives screen shots of his in depth spreadsheets. 🙂
Emily says
February 1, 2016 at 8:08 am
We are in the same boat with the health insurance. Ugh…ours was going to go up well over $400 per month! We were able to figure something out, but it wasn’t painless for sure!
I love all the books you have listed here. I have so many more to add to my growing reading list! Great job stepping back on your book idea. If your heart isn’t into it, I have a feeling that would have been a miserable process. 🙂
Emilie says
February 1, 2016 at 7:51 pm
I have prayed the rosary while I walk…get in exercise and prayer at the same time. I find it takes about 20 minutes.
- Jessi Fearon says
  February 2, 2016 at 10:05 am
  That is a GREAT idea Emilie!!! Thank you! 🙂
Amy @ DebtGal says
February 1, 2016 at 9:58 pm
I haven’t put my goals summary together, yet, but I think January was only okay. I succeeded in creating a meal plan each week, did pretty well with my meditation and stair climbing goals, read 1.5 books (need to read 2 per month to achieve my goal of 24 books this year), need work, and haven’t finished my summary of January’s income/expense/account balance numbers for a meeting with my husband, yet.
Savannah says
February 4, 2016 at 9:06 am
If you find time…a book I would add to your personal list (it could be business too!) is “Rest Assured” by Alli Worthington. It’s been kind of life changing for me!
myriam says
February 5, 2016 at 1:59 pm
I love this. First time commenting. I am a subscriber.
due to your words about Pat’s book – stopped reading and headed to Amazon and grabbed an e version.
Love your blog. As for debt, have too much of it and can’t see the way out under the pile despite our income being being in the 120K. Still holding on to hope

2016 Goals Update #1

Blogging