Good morning everyone.  It is now January 2 and I am sure half of the New Years Resolutions are already broken.  I’m not sure if reading about anyone else’s New Years Resolutions is better than making/breaking your own, but we will give it a shot in this blog post.  “Experts” say that writing down your resolutions will increase the likelihood of them happening, so I’m sure typing them and sharing them with the world will make them practically guaranteed.  For simplicity, I divided my resolutions into 3 sections: blog, travel, and life.  Enjoy :)

Blog Resolutions

In 2015, I had almost 1.2 million total page views.  Divide that by 12 months and you get 100,000 total page views per month.  Divide that by 30 days and you get 3,333 total page views per day.  My goal for 2016 is to average 5,000 total page views per day, which would be 150,000 total page views per month, and 1.8 million total page views in 2016.  Achievable?  Definitely!  It will only take a few more blog posts per month.  I consistently tell myself to write 1 blog post per day, but that is too ambitious at times.  I will go with 5 blog posts per week and see what happens.  I will continue to answer as many reader comments, questions, and emails as possible and hopefully redesign the site’s appearance and enhance the mobile layout.

I used to do a lot of meetups in Orange County and around the Bay Area, but I have really slowed down in the second half of 2015.  My goal for 2016 is to do more meetups in both locations.  I have a few trips down to Orange County over the next few months (see travel section below), so I will organize a few OC Meetups while I am down there.  During the weekends I am in the Bay Area, I will try to hold a few meetups in San Francisco, Fremont, and the South Peninsula.  I hear there are a few In-N-Outs on the Peninsula…

Travel Resolutions

For the last 2 years, my travel resolution has been to travel somewhere every month.  Since I work Monday-Friday, the majority of my trips in 2015 were long weekends (leave Friday after work and then fly in Monday morning and go straight to work) or over 3 day holiday weekends (after all, the company is paying me to not work, so I might as well travel someplace fun).  I will renew my travel resolution and travel somewhere every month in 2016.  Short weekend trips are actually pretty enjoyable.  For 2016, here are the trips I have planned through mid July: 2 weeks in Europe (Jan), Amtrak from Denver to SF (need to book the train and flights still for President’s Day weekend), visit family in Orange County (Feb), Spring Training baseball in Phoenix (Mar), Easter in Orange County (Mar), 1 week in Peru (Apr), FTU Signature in Las Vegas (Apr), visit family in Orange County (May), and Fourth of July in Orange County.  My June is still wide open…

Besides the flights to/from Europe and the flights to/from Peru, the majority of the above flights are paid for with cash (discount Southwest Airlines egift cards or JetBlue/Virgin America sales).  I don’t use miles for most domestic trips.  I want to go to New Zealand over Christmas/New Years in early 2017 and have started researching award flights on Fiji Airways using Alaska Airlines miles.  I have 150,000+ Alaska Airlines miles and I want to cut that in half by the end of 2016.

In terms of booking paid travel, I follow the “look 2 holidays ahead” principle.  Most people (non-travel hackers) only look at the first upcoming holiday (MLK Jr. Day) and maybe a few people look at the second upcoming holiday (Presidents Day).  You will usually be able to find pretty good deals if you research and book travel after the second holiday (February 15).  3 day holiday weekends tend to be the most popular and expensive days to travel.  If you book early, you will save a lot of money and get the perfect flights for your trip.

Life Resolutions

I’ve been keeping this quiet, but I am moving from the East Bay (Walnut Creek) to San Francisco this weekend.  I will be in lower Nob Hill and will have a 30 minute walk to work (compared to the current 70+ minute walk and Bart commute each way to/from the city each day).  I plan to walk to work everyday and will try to walk home from work everyday too (rather than take the bus or pay for Lyft/Uber).  If I can get around an hour of walking everyday, I should lose some weight.  With a shorter commute (I am getting rid of my car), I should be able to write a few more blog posts every week, which should help with the above blog resolutions.

Next up, I will try to cut down on the amount of meat I eat on a weekly basis.  It seems like I eat meat for every meal except breakfast.  If I can get down to 1 meal per day with meat and eat more vegetables, I will be in better shape.  I can’t promise any changes to the amount of alcohol consumed on a weekly basis though.

Retirement planning and savings are my next priority.  Even though I don’t max out my Roth 401k, I do max out my Roth IRA, HSA, and NetSpend savings account.  If I can save an extra $100/month, I want to slowly increase my Roth 401k contributions.  Someday, I will max out the $18,000/year limit, but I still have a long way to go before that happens.

Lastly, I am a big fan of personal finance and I subscribe to Money and Kiplinger magazines.  Unfortunately, I am about 3-4 issues behind for each publication.  I just received the first issue for 2016 and I still haven’t read some issues from September or October.  My goal in this regard is to get to bed earlier and spend 10-15 minutes per night reading these magazines.  If I can read each magazine in under 2 weeks, I will be caught up in no time.

I better stop right here so I don’t over promise and under deliver on my 2016 resolutions.  What are some of your resolutions for 2016?  Please leave a comment below and share your goals for 2016.  Have a great day everyone!