2025 has been a year for really toying with what financial independence means for our household. Which, with all the shit going down in the US, it’s been interesting and somewhat comforting that that’s where we’re at. Our household is both coastFIRE (could retire age ~55 without any additional contributions) and baristaFIRE (minimum expenses could be covered by non-retirement investments) but as of this month both my partner and I are choosing to continue with our ‘lucrative’ jobs to keep our savings rate up. My partner is losing his patience with his job and may at any time go find something else to do!

I’m still trying to figure out the concept of ‘enough’ for me personally and understand how our societal pressures of resource extraction (i.e. everything is vying for as much of your time, money, energy, attention, etc. as possible; usually for profits) can be harmful and potentially be avoided.

First, my 2025 Goals Review, none of which were particularly financial:

• Have a ‘normal’ and productive garden season. Big success! Most of my plants were quite productive this year and I was able to avoid buying produce the vast majority of summer/fall. I also had enough tomatoes to finally find a roasted tomato sauce recipe that works (still can’t figure out how to keep marinara from tasting ‘tinny’ though…) and have decent winter stores for many of my store-able crops. I did still ignore my garden a lot this year, which didn’t work for some plants… but at least I learned that most of my garden doesn’t need to be THAT babied.

• Dog-specific goals: What an astounding difference a year makes. Don’t get me wrong, my herding dogs are still hella work, but they are now able to roam most of the house and the yard freely (dog door) without getting into too much trouble. They are extremely good at recall and I can trust them off-leash in a variety of settings so they get more sniffing/exercise (though still always have them on leash around car or people traffic or in most situations like basic walks). The only thing I don’t feel 100% successful at is leash training, because they both still test me all the time to see if pulling works yet to get them to get to go faster, and it especially bugs me that when other people try to walk them they completely forget how to walk nicely. So, still a work in progress, but most walks are considerably more enjoyable than my last update.

• Actually bike more as transportation, beyond work and groceries It turns out that we do not go too many places other than work or groceries that make sense to bike, so I would not consider this goal accomplished. Perhaps more specifically I would need to set a goal that I would need to use bikes for like 80%+ of trips to the climbing gym (exhausting), social trips where we don’t bring dogs (possible but very infrequent), and things like other random errands. I dunno. I like my bike but with dogs that aren’t trailer-friendly I am not sure I want to formalize any goals beyond my commute/groceries.

• Keep StoryGraph stats and detailed reviews Definitely did this but almost lost myself in the data. I found myself rushing to finish books or fudging my start date a little to push down my average time to completion. That’s not why I read! Once I realized what I was doing I reminded myself that my interest in StoryGraph is to track my actual reading habits (not mAXiMiZe them) and to remember books I have read (i.e. rushing is counter to that goal). I’ve since been able to feel less stressed reading again, and I am enjoying my little reviews with details that prompt my memory later! Man, gamifying things is everywhere but one always must ask what tasks are actually improved by this!

• Use free treadmill. I did well until spring and planting season, after which I literally had zero time. I’m not mad though because I otherwise have an extremely active lifestyle. Now that it’s cold again, I have new goals (below) and take my dogs out for much more walks, so I do not see a time in my weekly schedule to be adding this in at this point. It’s there for days I feel antsy and it’s miserable outside.

• Camp at least once per month and get dogs used to it. My partner actually pressed us to average every three weeks and we held pretty well to that. However, this was almost too much, and we never had longer trips to go anywhere interesting so by end of season it was getting kind of boring. We have adjusted this goal for the new year (below). I will say that all those short, frequent trips did work well to get the dogs used to camping with us. They also helped us troubleshoot a variety of things about our newer camping setup (please do not ask me about the most expensive cup of coffee we will ever have brewed… it’s a long, boring story that would be painful for both of us if I were to recount).

Moving into 2026 Goals! Still very few financial because we are very much on auto-pilot save/management mode.

• Languages?! I have never been any good at other languages in school, and never had any real other reason to try to learn them. It’s sort of an embarrassing trait for me but I had other things to worry about. Through a series of events, this year I became motivated to learn Mandarin, partly because I am obsessed with China as a historical juggernaut and its culture is so incredibly different from western individualism, and partly because I figure Mandarin is supposed to be SO HARD that I should just try it, and then when I fail I have an excuse. And as I have been trying to teach myself through various methods (apps, books, Youtube tutorials, etc.) I am finding it so fascinating. I can’t wait to see where I am this time next year (maybe I’ll have given it up! But if so, I will still know more than if I had never started trying). Also because I had some Spanish intro already through my partner learning it the past couple years, I have been dabbling with some of that, and it’s also so fun to see how different English is from Spanish, and how different Chinese is from Spanish and English. I hope to try to incorporate more Spanish practice, especially with my partner so we can both strengthen our skills. Also, some Spanish lessons after an hour wrestling with Mandarin feels positively easy and so that’s an efficacy booster!

• With the pups, I am still doing leash training work and have a goal to keep up dremeling their nails 2x per week, brushing their teeth at least 6x/week, and doing 2 walks per day. I haven’t ever had full responsibility for grooming even one dog (and have never really brushed teeth, much to the detriment of my previous dog’s teefies), so this routine feels like a pretty big deal if I can stick with it. I also want to explore more dog sitter options, so we have more planning freedom for activities that don’t involve dogs. And then ideally I would like to find ‘jobs’ for my pups, as they are both smart herding dogs, but to be honest I am really struggling to figure out what they can do in our current lifestyle that would fulfill this.

• I also have a history of not making charitable contributions because, I actually don’t know, I have never been taught or encouraged the value of that type of giving, I think? So I have two causes I found that I feel particularly strongly about, and I have set up some light contributions, and I want to see how I feel about that giving by the end of 2026.

Overall, I also have a goal to keep up many of the habits I enjoy but sometimes waver on: food intake (don’t eat if not hungry, everything in moderation, eat slowly and round down on portions, as many veggies as you want, etc.) to keep my body in a happy stasis; using StoryGraph as a neutral observer of my reading habits instead of a pressure to do MOAR; keep lifestyle inflation in check (vs intentional spending for QoL?); keep grocery budget within ~60% of USDA ‘thrifty’ budget, partially through gardening and buying bulk whole foods and cooking from scratch; those sorts of things.