2021 is over just like that! It’s been a pretty crazy and unique year. Overall, I’m really pleased with my progress towards my 2021 goals. I’m happy that I achieved a few key goals and made some decent progress towards some others. FYI: If you’re a fan of graphs, tables, and numbers, I think you’ll enjoy this post 😛

Below, is a summary of my goal progress over 2021, noting whether the goal was Achieved, Partly Achieved, or just straight up Not Achieved.

I have placed my starting point for each goal along with my current standing to show clearly how much has changed.

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Finances/Wealth

Grow Net Worth to $200,000 – Partly Achieved

• On the 1st of January 2021, my net worth was $94,555.69.
• On the 31st of December 2021, my net worth is $147,567.55.
• This shows a growth of $83,011.86 (with an average of 4.4% growth per month) over 2021. Not quite the $200,000 I was aiming for, but really happy with how much it managed to grow, which is definitely doable next year if not more. Most of it was due to my investment portfolio and super accounts growing steadily over the year which can be seen in the table below
• See below for a graph of the growth of my net worth since properly tracking:

Grow Self Wealth Portfolio to $100,000 – ACHIEVED

• On 1 January, my Self Wealth Portfolio was $68,449.52
• By the end of 2021, my net worth grew to $104,268.74
• I’m incredibly happy that I surpassed this goal! This gave a growth of $35,819, which equals $2,984 per month (including deposits and returns over the year).
• It was a somewhat slow year in terms of my performance through Self Wealth and how my portfolio performed over the year (see below for a chart) compared to the market (ASX 200).

Spend a Maximum of $30,000 – Not Achieved

• In 2021, I ended up spending a total of $47,612. This equates to $3,967 per month.
• Yearly savings rate was 41.8%! I’m really happy and excited to see that my savings rate was still so high even after all my spending.
• While I aimed at $30,000 total spending, what I didn’t particularly include in calculations was any expenses towards Nathan’s Mobile PT. This calculation was based on having an investment portfolio value of $750,000 and withdrawing 4% to live on the returns. I did this as an experiment to really see how much I currently spend to get a better idea of what I need to aim for in the future. There were also other expenses like buying my motorbike which is a bit out of the ordinary, but I would like to be able to do things like this in the future.
• Based on my total spending amount for 2021 (rounding down to $45,000 per year spending), my goal FIRE number may need to be recalculated to something around $1,125,000 before I can fully retire and live off 4%. It’s A LOT higher than previous calculations but I will need to take it into account if I want to spend the same amount per year while retired. I’ll have to work on this, going from $750k to $1.125m is a lot to work on, and lowering my spending amount would greatly help to keep that number low and easier to reach.
• See below for a chart of expenses for the whole of 2021:

Grow House Deposit to $40,000 – Achieved!

• In January, my house deposit was sitting at $16,500
• At the end of 2021, my house deposit is $41,575!
• I’m happy with my progress in one year. While 41k is a decent amount, with the recent 2021 housing insane explosion, unfortunately this would only give a 5% deposit for a house in Canberra.

Health/Fitness

Increase Strength Across the Major Powerlifting Movements, Reassessed Every 3 Months – Not Achieved

• Current lifts and goals are updated as below:
  • Squat (reach 120kg – started at 95kg – haven’t tested one rep max)
  • Bench Press (reach 95kg – started at 82.5kg – currently at 87.5kg – 15 April 2021)
  • Deadlift (reach 160kg – currently at 140kg – haven’t tested one rep max)
  • Overhead Press (reach 70kg – started at 57.5kg – currently at 60kg – 15 May 2021)
• Since August in Canberra, gyms were closed for months and COVID was circulating. Because of this I avoided the gyms when they reopened, and therefore I didn’t really train strength properly since mid-2021. I did a few one rep max tests in April and May for Bench and Overhead press, and I’m happy that I made some sort of progress. But overall, I didn’t really make any progress on this goal.

Increase Lean Muscle Mass – Achieved!

• Starting lean muscle mass was 63.5kg. Finished with 65.3kg.
• Starting weight 83.9kg. Finished with 93.8kg.
• Starting body fat 17.1kg. Finished with 25.7kg.
• Looking at my overall goal of increasing lean muscle mass, this goal was achieved! Now, looking at the actual numbers you can see inthe graph below that my weight increased much more than the muscle mass, and unfortunately that was mostly due to an increase in fat mass. I’m happy to see some sort of growth of lean muscle mass, based on the scales that I’m using.

Nathan Challenges Life

Grow YouTube Channel to 1,000 Subscribers and Reach 4,000 Watch Hours (monetisation criteria) – Partly Achieved

• In 2021, I gained 144 subscribers, bringing my total subscriber count to 408 :D. Still a long way off my goal but happy with the increase, especially with minimal input over the last quarter of the year.
• Watch hours during 2021 was 740.6. A very long way to go. Great to see some videos get pretty consistent views over the months of 2021. But for me to reach 4000 watch hours within a 12 year period will require a lot of videos, consistency, and good quality content.
• See below for 2021 stats.

• Over the year, the following videos gave the most views. It’s good to see that some videos that took days with multiple hours to make are up there, along with some YouTube Shorts that took less than 30 seconds to make 😛

Publish 100 Videos on my YouTube Channel – Partly Achieved

• By the end of 2021, I published 85 videos on my YouTube channel. Most have been targetted towards 30 day challenges, and a few were just random Shorts to test them out.
• I didn’t have the time to put the work into YouTube in the later half of 2021. I’ve got a back log of videos I want to create in 2022, and hopefully during 2022 I’ll reach the 100 mark.

Write 50 Blog Posts on Nathan Challenges Life – Not Achieved

• Over 2021, I published 19 blog posts on my Medium profile (here)
• I had fun writing and creating posts on Medium. They were shorter, snapshots mostly about personal development. I thought at the start of 2021 that writing 50 short posts would be easy, but I soon found myself forgetting about this or being pre-occupied with other things to write articles/posts.
• I don’t think I’ll be continuing this in the future.

Personal Development

Create Nathan’s Mobile PT and Gain 5 Regular Clients – Achieved!

• I’ve currently got 6 clients, and over 2021, since around March/April I’ve consistently had more than 5 clients.
• At the very end of 2021 I managed to employ a casual personal trainer to conduct training sessions with new clients. I’m really looking forward to growing this in the future and it will be a major focus of 2022.

Read 30 Books – Partly Achieved

• Over 2021, from my records, I read 24 books.
• I didn’t quite reach my goal of 30, but there were multiple times I wasn’t really interested in reading as I was doing something else. Also, normally I’d listen to audiobooks on the drive to work and back, but after working from home most of the year, that wasn’t a regular thing.
• My favourite books included:
  • Will – Will Smith
  • Green Lights – Matthew McConaughey
  • The Obstacle is the Way – Ryan Holiday
  • The Almanack of Naval Ravikant – Eric Jorgenson
  • The Subtle Art of Not Giving A F*ck – Mark Manson
• I post all my book reviews on my Goodreads profile – check them out!

Experiences

For 2021 I kept a list of things I wanted to do over the year. I managed to get a few done, but COVID really prevented me from doing a few of them below that involved people and/or travel:

• Test drive a Tesla – DONE (June)!
• Get my motorbike licence – DONE! (January)!
• Get my full motobike licence – DONE! (November)!
• Attend a Jiu Jitsu class – Not completed.
• Organise a cycle-touring holiday/trip – Not completed.
• Attend a CrossFit class – Not completed.
• Break a Guinness world record – Not completed.
• Complete an obstacle course race – Not completed.
• Go to an escape room – DONE! (August).

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Summary

2021 ended up being a pretty interesting and successful year. I managed to get a number of goals completed or partially completed. There were a few that I came kind of close, and a few that were very far away.

After this year, I’ve got a good idea of what I want to focus on in 2022. At this stage I’m planning on lowering the number of goals, but having them focused more towards things I really want, rather than just setting a goal for a category that doesn’t really inspire me.

I hope that you are inspired by my progress above, and not put off by it. That’s the last thing I want to do. I want to make you feel empowered and believe in yourself that you can achieve what you want in life.

Be on the lookout for my Goals for 2022 post!

Nathan