How the year 2020 helped me reach my goals

Background Photo by Joshua Bedford on Unsplash

Hello my loyal readers! Happy January 2021!

I cannot believe it is a new year already. Last year felt like forever, but at the same time it passed by so quickly.
I hope you all had a great holiday season and celebration of the new year.
The holidays were certainly different for me and my family, and I am sure for many of you as well. Even with the differences from “normal” I hope you found joy in the season.
The best part for me was that we got snow on Christmas Eve, and got to experience a white Christmas for the first time since I was a child. It certainly was a magical feeling to wake up and see snow outside.

My fiancé and I enjoyed our first engaged and white Christmas together!

I enjoyed the last two weeks of 2020 being off from work, and getting to spend some extra time at home working on projects, including the blog. It is funny, after a year of mostly being at home that is all I wanted to do when my winter break from work came around.

During the break I enjoyed making my first batch of homemade cinnamon rolls, went hiking with my best girlfriends, read two books, went to a birthday drive thru, and participated in a five day heathy eating detox at home. It was certainly a relaxing break that was much needed after a crazy year, and was a good mixture of relaxing and productive. The best part about this break was that it gave me time to reflect on many parts of life, and what I want in the year to come.

Homemade Gluten Free Cinnamon Rolls! Recipe provided by King Arthur.

Since becoming more of an adult I have really learned to enjoy New Years Eve and Day, and it is two of my favorite days of the year.

Reflecting on the past but making goals for the future is what this time of the year is all about!

“The year 2020 took a lot away from us, but it also gave us a lot if we take a deeper look. It is all about our perspective.”

Even though a lot of 2020 is flowing into 2021, we still have the opportunity and invitation to work on things that are important to us, and live intentionally.

In this post I wanted to reflect primarily on one of my accomplishments in 2020 and the good it brought me. I plan to premiere what my 2021 goals are at the end of the month for you all, so you all will have to wait a little bit longer on that one.

Biggest Accomplishments I had in 2020:

Going into 2020 the biggest goal on my mind was my finances.

At the start of 2020 the thought of my finances would send my anxiety through the roof, and my emotions into a downward spiral. Like most millennial’s I was, and still am, sitting on a pile of debt.

The majority of my debt is student loan debt, but I had let poor financial choices rack up close to $10,000 in credit card debt from December of 2015 to the end of 2019.
At the start of 2020 I had very little in my savings and was having a hard time building it back up since the car accident I had in 2018. My car was not totalled thankfully, but meeting the deductible for my car insurance completely drained all of my savings and contributed to some of my credit card debt. It was all so bad that I just avoided looking at my accounts all together.

“I was ashamed of what I had done to my financial health, desperate for relief, and I had no idea where to begin.”

Thankfully, I had heard and read a book at the end of 2019 and start of 2020 that gave me the kick in the butt to tackle that part of my life. I knew that paying off my credit cards needed to be priority since my interest rate on one of them was 23% at the time.
Even though COVID has been a horrific thing, the CARES Act putting my student loan payments on hold gave me the freedom in my budget to tackle my credit card debt. I ended up paying off one of the two cards I have and eliminated half of my credit card debt overall.
I am going to be writing a review on the book I read and I cannot wait to dive deeper into the techniques I took away from it that have been life changing not only to my finances but to me as a person.

On top of getting my finances into better shape, I kept attending counseling sessions. I knew that this was something I wanted to continue to keep working on becoming the best version of myself, and is something I suspect I will continue doing in the new year upon us. 2020 certainly made my anxiety a fun thing to manage, but I am proud of not letting it get the best of me too much at the end of year.

I also started a new position at work in October of last year. It was more of a lateral position change, but got me closer to doing what I truly am passionate about doing which is working one-on-one with students over a long period of time. I knew going into 2020 I was wanting to get back into a position that aligned more with my passions and interests. I was grateful for my prior role and all that it taught me, but I was ready for a change.

I also ended up reading 20 books, which was just shy of my original goal of 24 books in a year. Even though I did not reach my original goal I was still very proud of this achievement, and hope to read 21 books this year as a follow up to it.

So there is my biggest accomplishments from 2020. I am looking forward to telling you all more of how I have been turning my finances around, and hope that my story brings hope to anybody else swimming in a pile of debt.

What good did 2020 bring you? Was it something you suspected would happen? Reflect and share with us in the comments.

Until next time,