Recap Of Our Goals From 2025
At the beginning of the year each of us set ambitious goals for ourselves that were a mix of personal & professional, as well as both money-related & non-financial. Join us as we review these goals and critique how well we accomplished (or perhaps didn’t accomplish) them.
Note: Summaries of each goal are included below, but for full context refer to our initial post Goals And Plans For 2025.
Scout
Looking back at the goals I set for myself this year, I honestly have mixed feelings. On the one hand, I’m slightly embarrassed because none of my goals were overly complicated or impossible, yet I didn’t feel like I fully achieved any of them. On the flipside, I know I had a productive year and made good progress towards these goals while also doing many other things. As a bonus excuse (or perhaps just a lame justification), most of my goals were not very discrete in the first place and could really be considered life-long efforts that I’ll be continuing to pursue in 2026 and beyond.
- Be more in-control of money.
Summary: Since retiring a couple years ago I’ve constantly worried about money, perhaps even overvalued it. My goal was to regain control by prioritizing life over finances and reducing money’s influence on my mindset.
Recap: This one has been tough because it’s been a constant battle between my logical brain vs. my unconscious (and seemingly uncontrollable) emotions. I am proud to acknowledge that I fully realize the situation I’m dealing with and I’ve been proactively taking steps to achieve this goal. However, I think it will just take time and may even be a lifetime struggle. One of the positive actions I’ve taken was to finally work with a professional to get financial advice. With a long-term strategy in place and someone to consult with, this has helped ease some of my worries. In parallel, as silly as this sounds, I’ve successfully “forced” myself to spend money on “positive” experiences such as traveling and attending sporting events & concerts, which are all things I really enjoy. Although there’s still been some discomfort with this actual spending, reflecting on it after the fact, it’s been well worth it.
- Continue building friendships & community.
Summary: Despite my own surprise at my newfound sociability, I was excited to connect with friends both old & new at EconoMe and FinCon. Closer to home, I also wanted to continue growing the local ChooseFI groups in my area that I was part of.
Recap: I had a great time connecting with others in the FI community this past year. It was definitely fun seeing old friends & catching up, but perhaps even better was meeting so many new people. Although most of us are spread out all over the country, I’ve intentionally tried to do a better job of staying connected, even if it’s just via an occasional text. I know that over time these relationships will continue to get stronger & stronger as we share more & more experiences together. At the local level, we had a HUGE win that I’m so proud of… Around the time that we launched Epic Financial Journey, The Squire & I had just attended the EconoMe conference for the 1st time and thought it would be cool if we could organize something similar in our area. Long story short, on a rainy Saturday in May we held an EconoMe-style knock-off event in Seattle that drew almost 80 attendees from all over the region! It was such a success that we’re planning to hold a similar event in 2026.
- Help others learn.
Summary: Although I didn’t have a concrete plan nor was I an expert by any means, I aimed to share financial knowledge and my personal experiences with others through various channels such as podcasting, volunteering, discussions at meetups, one-on-one conversations, etc.
Recap: Rather than using a direct approach with distinct lessons, my teaching style has always been more hands-off with a preference to lead by example. Because of this laissez-faire attitude it’s never been my intention to educate anyone in the traditional sense such as giving a talk or presentation. In my view, all of the technical knowledge about personal finance is already out there and readily available in the form of books, podcasts, etc, so as a nonprofessional myself, I really have nothing new to add. So in lieu of formal education, I’ve leaned towards simply talking to others casually about their financial lives while trying to interject my own thoughts & experiences if/when helpful. Although way more informal than other teaching methods, I think most people just need someone else to listen to their situation and provide feedback, rather than being lectured at.
- Finish/Update my estate planning.
Summary: Embarrassingly, my wife & I started our estate plan back in 2020, but it has remained unfinished all these years later. Although the legal documents were signed at the time, I still hadn’t retitled all the accounts correctly which became my goal in 2025.
Recap: TLDR – I’m still embarrassed. There, I’ve said it. Although the estate plan is still not fully finished, I did make some partial progress this year… Fresh on the heels of publishing this goal at the start of 2025, my wife & I did reach out to our lawyer to reestablish contact and to declare our intention to finally wrap up our estate plan. But of course, soon afterwards life got in the way and no additional progress was made. Not to use this as an excuse, but when we were ready to pick up again at the end of summer, we found out that my wife’s legal plan through her employer was cancelled and couldn’t be renewed until open enrollment in the fall. She did end up reenrolling and our intention is to absolutely complete everything early in the new year. On the brightside, because it has been 5 years since we created our initial estate plan and our lives have changed since then, this gives us the perfect “opportunity” & “excuse” to revisit the contents of our plan. As a sidenote, we did work with a financial planner this year and part of the process was reviewing our estate planning documents and all of our beneficiary designations. Although not a lawyer, in our planner’s opinion the estate plan was typical for what he would expect and surprisingly (at least to me) almost all of our accounts were already titled sufficiently. So suffice to say, perhaps this goal for completing our estate plan in 2026 won’t be so daunting after all!
- Grow EFJ & make it better.
Summary: After many years of stagnation, The Squire & I finally launched Epic Financial Journey in 2024 knowing that it would always be a work-in-progress. Our goal has been to continue growing our community by improving content, website, and reach.
Recap: Our focus here at EFJ has always been towards creating consistent, quality content for our readers. We’ve maintained this primary focus throughout 2025, but it’s come at the expense of fully pursuing a goal of growing the blog and making it better. The Squire and I did technically make improvements to the website including a new search feature, categorizing our posts, and updating formatting for increased readability, but in all honesty I think it was minimal and we could’ve done more. As far as marketing & improving reach, I’ve admittedly done a poor job as well; I hate self-promotion and always feel awkward mentioning EFJ to others. In fact, none of my family and perhaps only a handful of my friends even know about this blog. Hopefully I can become a better marketer in the future, all in an effort for us to improve & continue building our community.
- Bonus Failure: Reconnect with old friends & acquaintances.
Summary: After ample contemplation about the importance of relationships and the success I’ve had with building friendships in the FI community, I set a personal goal of reconnecting with people I had lost touch with over the years. My idea was to reach out and reconnect with 4 people whom I had not seen in at least a year.
Recap: I was so fired up about this goal and thought it would be fairly easy to accomplish; 4 people throughout the year equaled only 1 person per quarter! I kicked-off this goal in the 1st quarter of 2025 by meeting up with a retired coworker at a brewery since we were both into craft beer. We had such a great time catching up that we even discussed getting together on a regular basis. Spoiler alert: this intention never materialized nor did the rest of my goal ever come to fruition. Life got busy the rest of the year and although this goal was always in the back of my mind, I never did get around to reconnecting with anyone else. In my limited free-time I chose to prioritize strengthening existing relationships or nurturing new ones rather than revitalizing old connections from the past. Ultimately I believe this may have been a better choice anyways since there was obviously a reason why some of these old relationships withered away.
The Squire
2025 was a positive year, even if there were setbacks from time to time. It is fun to look at the goals I set for myself, and although I didn’t pass with flying colors, I appreciated these goals and feel that I was able to spend at least some time working on them.
- Family.
Summary: I was happy to say that we’ve been spending time with family, but wanted to make sure this practice continued into this year as well.
Recap: I’m happy to report that we were able to continue to take vacations with famil, and enjoy memories with our kids as well. We spent several weeks with extended family all together, and I think we were able to balance the amount of activities all together and with just our immediate family. Although we didn’t pack our days with activities, we tried to gear vacations to suit the kids well. We also tried to partake in more regular gatherings locally visiting relatives, and even planned a few events ourselves. All in all I think we are doing a decent job of spending time with family. Those with kids seem to only get busier, so it is never going to be possible to get everybody to get together for every get-together, but keeping these relationships strong and making memories is important to us.
- Relationships.
Summary: I shared that we tend not to spend much time with people outside our family, and that it would be great to connect with current friends and maybe others in the Financial Independence community.
Recap: I went with Scout to FinCon. Although this wasn’t as impactful as the EconoMe conference, it was a great experience. In addition to FinCon, I was able to attend a Northwest Financial Independence event that was very successful and so much fun. This is something I’m very hopeful will take place again. Meeting people at these events reinvigorated me and allowed me to talk about things that I’ve become passionate about over the last decade or so. I was able to talk with people passionate about sharing financial education with others, along with talking with others about what they are doing with their lives outside of finances. Other than these events however, I was not able to connect with people outside of family and work. Although I was grateful for who I was able to connect with, I was a bit disappointed that I wasn’t able to foster any relationships with people outside of my family and work.
- Money.
Summary: I wanted to learn more about some of the specific tactics that we will need to understand to prepare for going into retirement.
Recap: Yes, I do enjoy listening to and reading about jumping into early retirement, and I’m constantly picking up little pieces of advice. Sometimes after I’ve heard something for the twentieth time, I finally hear it from a different person or in a different scenario and am able to finally apply it toward my life. I’ve been trying to plug in numbers into spreadsheets and play through different scenarios for potential withdrawal methods, and am learning things this way too. I’m also realizing through Scout and other references that it will probably be a good idea to talk to a financial advisor when we do start to get close to retirement. I know that we are still quite a ways away from being financially independent, but perhaps in the next few years it will make sense to check in with someone to make sure we’re on the same page and considering all the factors that will be involved in our situation.
- Health and fitness.
Summary: I’m at a computer 40 hours a week, and really need to focus on exercise and eating healthy.
Recap: Fortunately I was able to lose some much needed weight this year, though unfortunately I gained some of it back. I was able to focus on eating smaller portions and making sure that when I went back for more food that it tended to be a healthier option. I was doing great until the fall. We had some unexpected house projects, rainier weather, and I did more stress eating and holiday eating than normal. I spent quite a few lunch breaks on house projects rather than getting some fresh air and much needed exercising. I would say that I did very well for 3-4 months, and am in better health than I was a year ago, but I really need to and believe I can get back on the right path in the coming weeks and months.
- Work.
Summary: Work needs to continue to be a positive part of my day.
Recap: The people I work with are great and the work I do continues to feel fulfilling. Although I’m not too outgoing, I’ve felt comfortable enough to share my opinions, both good and bad, and although things don’t always go how I hope, I feel listened to and respected. This year has been very positive and I’m very thankful for this. I can’t avoid all conflicts between colleagues, but I think that if I can be thoughtful, respectful, and positive, that I can play my part in making sure I work in a good environment. I’m trying not to take for granted how it’s currently going, but also to make sure I check in with myself from time to time to make sure I’m in a good mindset. If I find myself in a bad mood at the end of a work day, I’m trying to reflect on what I can do to prevent that feeling in the future. I’ve found that communicating better with others usually helps with stressful situations.
Links/Resources
Reader Questions
- What were your goals for 2025 and did you successfully achieve all of them?
Leave your answers or comments below – or email us directly at info@epicfinancialjourney.com