2025 Goals and 2024 Goals Review

Spend 5% less — Failed

In 2024, we wanted to spend 5% less. Instead, we spent 3.5% more. We utterly failed that goal.

There are multiple places where we spent significantly more.

• Both my wife and I spent significantly more than last year on our miscellaneous expenses. For me, this is the main issue.
• We spent a 1000 CHF more on groceries.
• We spent much more on transportation (mostly my wife going out with my son).
• We spent much more on health (we were more sick, not much we can do about that)
• Daycare increased significantly because of the second day of daycare.

Of course, some things are just pricier, like food and insurance. But overall, it comes to not paying enough attention anymore. We have started to be careless when spending money. And this is not a good sign because if we continue that route, we will end up in the lifestyle creep trap (again!). We should be careful about not reproducing that pattern in 2025.

Increase income by 5% — Failed

In 2024, we wanted to increase our income by 5%. Instead, we reduced it by 7.1%. Again, we failed that goal.

For this goal, the main reason is that I did not account properly for the switch to the LLC. Now that we have an LLC, we are withdrawing a fixed salary every month. And this salary is lower than the total income we get from the blog. So, our effective income is lower than it used to be. My salary is higher, and our dividends have increased as well, but overall, our total income decreased. This is on purpose because we will be able to reduce our taxes with that.

However, I should have taken this into consideration into our 2024 goals.

Increase savings rate by 5% — Failed

In 2024, we wanted to increase our savings rate by 5%. Instead, we reduced it by 4.1%. So, we failed that goal.

This is directly related to the two previous goals. We spent much more than I expected, and we earned less than before. When you put these two together, it is not surprising that our savings rate is falling down. We need to make progress here.

I am not pleased about our savings rate in 2024.

Optimize 3 bills – Success

In 2024, I wanted to optimize 3 bills. By bills, I mean recurring bills, either yearly or monthly.

I managed to optimize 3 bills this year:

• We reduced our taxes by doing a second pillar contribution.
• We got rid of some complementary insurance.
• We reduced the heating bills by 45 CHF per month.

In the long term, this will save us a significant amount of money because these savings will come each year. We also managed a few cost savings on the blog side, but this is not counted here.

Now that our recurring expenses are well optimized, it will be difficult to keep doing that goal. But I will keep doing it for at least one year to try to push me to reconsider our expenses.

Work out 20% better – Success

In 2024, I wanted to work out 20% better. I managed to work out 148% better. So, this goal is entirely passed!

In the previous year, I did a small calisthenic workout. I started well with that, but then I quickly reduced how many stages I did of it. And I was not pleased about the result (linked to how little I was doing of it).

So, in 2024, I switched back to strength training. I created a small training plan with the help I could find on YouTube. This is very similar to what I was doing at the gym when I was still doing. The difference is that I am limited to a bench and free weights (barbell and dumbbells).

My current program is not perfect, but it is much better than what I used to do before. And so far, I have been able to stick to it easily. Also, I can feel progress, which is essential. I definitely intend to continue this in 2025.

So, I am delighted about my progress there.

Walk 5% more per day – Success

In 2024, I wanted to walk 5% more per day. I managed to walk 100% more. I was able to pass this goal entirely.

If you wonder how I could walk twice more, the answer is a treadmill. When I started having back pain, I decided to get a treadmill to walk at my desk. And it turned out to be a great habit for me. I am thrilled about my waking desk. I still cannot walk all day (far from it), but I easily do multiple hours per day when I am at home. Next year, I plan to continue walking more.

Again, I am very pleased with this goal.

Reduce energy consumption by 10% – Failed

In 2024, we wanted to reduce our energy consumption by 10%. We reduced our energy consumption by 4%. So, we failed that goal.

Even though we failed that goal, it is great that we managed to reduce our energy consumption, even by only 4%. I was expecting more since we replaced our boiler. But other things may have played a role. The problem with energy consumption is that it is difficult to know exactly where energy is spent. I know (from counters) that my computers and accessories are consuming close to half of our total power consumption. I will optimize this again in 2025. The rest is probably mostly used by electric appliances.

Overall, I am pleased that we were able to reduce our energy consumption.

2025 Goals

In 2025, I want to be more careful with my goals. As discussed, some of our financial goals were not really realistic due to the change of income. Such an even will not happen in 2025, so it should be easier to plan for the year.

One good thing is that our 2024 goals (the goals themselves, not the results) were better than in 2023, by focusing on the gain rather than the gap. I will continue with this logic. I also like focusing on monthly results. So I will consider the monthly average for almost everything (steps are better expressed per day, for instance). This also makes it easy to track the progress.

So, here are our goals at the beginning of the year:

I have mostly kept the same financial goals. And I have improved my personal goals. I could not think of a blog goal for this year. And I was unable to think of another interesting financial goal either.

Of course, at this point, the status, result, and progress columns do not mean much since we have not yet finished one month. But this will start to make sense in the first monthly update of the year.

I will now go over each of our goals independently.

Spend 5% less

In 2025, we want to reduce our expenses. This is the same goal we already had for 2024, but I consider this goal essential. We cannot afford to continue the pattern we started in 2024.

Again, we would like to reduce our before-tax expenses by 5%. Since we have increased our baseline, we should aim for more than 5%, but I do not think we can do more. It will be challenging to even do 5%.

Increase income by 2.5%

In 2025, we want to increase our income. It is a critical goal (although not as critical as spending less). We failed this in 2024 because of the way we accounted for the blog income. We will have no excuses in 2025.

In 2025, we aim to increase our income by 2.5%. This may sound little, but over time, this can make a significant difference.

Increase savings rate by 2.5%

In 2025, we want to increase our savings rate. This will be achieved by a combination of our income and expenses. If we keep our expenses under control, we should be able to reach that goal.

In 2025, we would like to increase our savings rate by 2.5%. I aim to be cautious with that goal since our average savings rate is already high and even slight increases are good value.

Optimize 3 recurring bills

I am keeping the same optimization goal from 2023 as a goal for 2024. In 2024, I struggled to find three expenses to optimize, but it is an interesting goal.

So, in 2025, we want to optimize three of our recurring bills. I do not know how we will achieve that yet.

Workout strength 10% better

In 2024, I have taken my strength workouts to the next level. I would like to reach the next level again in 2025. For this, I intend to improve my consistency at doing the workouts. And I also hope to improve my secondary workout to do more for my lower body.

Overall, I would like to improve my strength workouts by 10% in 2025.

Workout cardio 50% better

Now that my strength workouts are doing well, I need to up my game in cardio workouts. I do not enjoy cardio, so it is difficult for me to focus on these workouts. But it is nevertheless very essential.

In early 2024, I bought an indoor bike and started doing some trainings. But then, my back pain started, and I could not do any training without pain. Finally, in November 2024, I bought a recumbent bike instead and started doing some trainings. I want to continue doing these trainings regularly in 2025.

I plan to do few workouts, but consistently. My plan is for one intensive but short training (VO2 Max training) per week and one to two longer but less intensive (zone 2 training) per week.

So, in 2025, I aim to do 50% better at my cardio workouts.

Walk 5% more per day

Using my treadmill worked really well for increasing my step count. In 2025, I want to continue on that course and increase my steps even more. I hope to increase both my actual steps (outside) and my treadmill steps.

Since I am also doing more cardio, this goal will be more difficult. I need to make sure to find a good routine and balance between everything I do.

So, in 2025, I want to walk 5% more per day on average.

Use 5% less water

We are not particularly heavy water users. But I thought it would be nice to try to reduce our water consumption. I do not know exactly what we will do about that. I expect that most of our water consumption is coming from showers. So, we will likely focus on that first.

Therefore, in 2025, we want to use 5% less water. 5% is probably not a lot, but we are already careful about water, so, I do not think we can achieve much more.

Use 5% less power

In 2024, we tried to reduce the power we were using. In 2025, I would like to continue on that route. I do not really know what we can do about it at this point. We will need to be creative to reach that goal.

In 2025, we want to use 5% less power.