A year in review - 2022
If you celebrate Christmas, I hope you had a wonderful, joyous, and sweet day!
We made it to the final week of 2022. How is that feeling for you? In less than a week, we will begin an entire New Year, with which often brings promises of better times, renewed energy, and prosperity. Before we embark on discovering what 2023 has to offer, be sure to take time to reflect on what 2022 provided.
First, for me, I want to say thank you for spending this past year with me here, reading along, sending in emails and comments, and your general support as I share something so important to me. I managed to maintain an almost weekly, on average, blog for the year. The most popular blog posts this past year were “You can have anything you want; you just can’t have everything you want”, “loyalty – a good quality for a person, but not necessarily for your budget,” and “running through resistance”. For most of 2022, I hosted a Zoom forum every Wednesday night. The idea was to create a space where people could set aside time to look over their finances, find support through me and others, and generally normalize the importance of creating mindfulness around money. I really enjoyed this time with those who joined.
I leaned into my mediation (read mediation, not meditation) practice. I taught mediation throughout the year at the University of New Mexico School of Law and took a weeklong advanced course at Harvard. I realized how important mediation was to my personal finance work. I expanded my offerings at Bottom Line to include one-on-one financial coaching, speaking, group coaching (first group begins next week!), and financial mediation. Through financial mediation, I work with business partners and romantic partners to have difficult conversations around money and improve both money relationships and personal relationships.
My goal setting in 2022 was divided into 7 categories: Family, Career, Spiritual, Financial, Social, Physical, and Intellectual. As I reflect on the goals I set in each category, I feel content with where the year ended. There are goals from 2022 that will make it to the 2023 list, some goals I accomplished (read on for the biggest!), and there are goals I will reevaluate to make sure I get the interest, rather than just the goal, on paper. Some categories seemed less important in 2022 and may carry greater importance in 2023, such as the spiritual and physical categories. For the spiritual category, my goal was to start a meditation (now meditation, not mediation) practice. I see tremendous value in the ability to be introspective, yet it is a practice I’ve always struggled to begin.
This past week, I submitted my final documents for my Accredited Financial Counselor certification. It is complete! I am officially an Accredited Financial Counselor. This was a big goal for 2022. To become accredited, I had to complete a curriculum, take a long test, and obtain 1,000 hours of experience related to financial counseling. Of those 1,000 hours, I logged in nearly 400 hours of one-on-one counseling over the past years, a lot of them with you! So, thank you! I am most proud of achieving this goal this year.
A big part of the reflecting that I do is of our own personal household finances. I always do an annual reviewof spending and adjust our budget accordingly for the new year. I like to look back at the entire preceding twelve-month period and readjust our budget to align with our goals, our values, and with our spending habits. Looking back provides realizations that might mean cutting spending, finding ways to increase income, and perhaps also increasing savings, investing, and giving. Give yourself the gift of a year-end review before you start setting goals for the New Year. It will set you up for success in the New Year.
Managing finances is so important – choices we make today affect us 5, 10, 20, and 30 years from now. I know there are categories where my family needs to make some changes, and some of that is going to be require that necessary reflection and introspection. I love to think of managing money as this analogy: If you only had one glass of water (8oz) to last you for the next three days, how would you use the water? If we can begin to think of our money in that same way (somewhat finite for a given period of time), we can better allocate it to the things we care about. You may realize you need to drink the water more than you need to wash your hands.
I’d be remiss to say that 2022 was all good. Dear friends suffered a tragic loss which put both a cloud and a perspective on the year. When we think of this loss, it reminds us of what’s important. It’s not the stuff we can acquire, it’s that special time with those we love.
Enjoy this last week of the year, give yourself time to reflect on the good that it brought, acknowledge and learn from the challenges that arose, and take the time to review what you may like to change going forward.