I'm hoping (hoping!) that 2016 is a little less crazy than 2015. Well, we don't know what NT's medical bills will come to. And now it's looking like our basement bathroom is going to cost more and be more trouble than predicted. And of course, I have it in the back of my mind that my mom isn't doing well, and NT's grandma sometimes mentions that she doesn't think she'll be around much longer. Anything happening to either of them would throw our emotions AND our schedules/finances into turmoil. But aside from those known unknowns, hoping it's a fairly calm year.

That's not to say I don't have fairly ambitious plans and goals for the upcoming year. First, the financial:

- To fully fund a trip to my 20th college reunion in New York for me, NT and AS in early June, with possibly a day or two tacked on to visit NYC. As part of that, I want to make a largish donation to my alma mater, possibly $500 if I can swing it.

- To fully fund a 2-week trip to England late June-early July for all five of us. (We've saved up enough for the plane tickets, and hopefully the UK rental money we accumulate between now and then will be enough to cover incidental expenses.)

- To fully fund a side trip to Barcelona for me, NT and AS during the England trip. (Our plan is to leave the kids with the British grandparents for a few days and go to Spain with some friends.)

- To continue home renovations. Under consideration: our main-floor bathroom (complete redo), central AC. We also may need to replace our dishwasher before we're ready to completely redo the kitchen. Maybe replace some old weathered window frames and windows, and get a bit more electrical work done (adding outdoor outlets for the front balcony and back yard). We'll firm up plans for priorities as we start to see our budget surplus big picture. We'll only do as much as we can pay for upfront.

- To max out our 2016 Roth IRAs. (I would also LOVE to max out our 2015 Roths, but I'm going to start contributing to the 2016 ones in January to make sure we max them out by the end of the year. Any extra money will go toward the 2015 Roths until the April deadline. After that, whether or not we maxed them out, I'm going to start earmarking budget surplus, which has been almost exclusively going toward retirement catchup these past 6 months, for renovations and other expenses.) I've set up quarterly automatic transactions for all of our accounts: AS will contribute $1375 in January, April, July and October; me in February, May, August and November; and NT in March, June, September and December.

- To get my and NT's 401(k) contributions up to 10%. I'm including company match, so it'll really just need to be 8% of gross for NT and 8.5% of gross for me. Right now he's at 4% and I'm at 6%, so it would be a 4% bump for him and a 2.5% bump for me. (Maybe, if things are going well this year, I'll bump all three of us up to 12% at some point later. But baby steps!) Still trying to decide if I should do this right away (which would reduce our surplus we'd be putting toward maxing the 2015 Roths) or wait until after the April deadline for maxing 2015 Roths.

- To continue exploring the possibilities of selling part ownership of the duplex to my downstairs neighbors, and of converting our garage into an accessory dwelling unit. I've made a couple of calls to the city and can't really tell my chances of doing that, so I need to do some measuring, gather some info and go in to talk to someone in person. And I can't move on the ownership thing until my neighbor finishes up the papers; he's been promising those for months, so who knows when that'll become a priority? At this point figuring out the ADU situation is a more pressing issue for me, because my friend would like to know whether it's a possibility so she can decide whether to stay in her current apartment a little longer or explore getting a different place.

Those are all the financial goals, and I think it's more than enough. It's hard to predict our income now that AS is a freelancer, so I'm not sure how much of it we'll get done.

As for non-financial goals, AS came up with an idea during NaNoWriMo in November: to make every month a "do something" month in 2016. In other words, to come up with a creative or outside-the-box goal for each month of the year.

So that's my goal. The great thing is, nothing has to be set in stone. I have a few ideas, but I'll basically pick something at the beginning of each month. Some ideas so far:

- Learn to play my harmonica
- Read X novels in a month
- Edit my 2015 NaNoWriMo
- Have a "Rocky" marathon and do a related activity (boxing workouts? Essays? haven't decided)
- Do NaNoWriMo again in November
- Learn to crochet or knit
- Take a drawing class and produce X drawings

So we'll see! Oh! And I want to try and do the photo-a-day gratitude project that PatientSaver suggested.

I may also make one organizational or productivity goal per month as well. At least for the first few months; I've got some tasks I've been putting off, so I'm hoping having a goal and a month to complete it will motivate me.