What I Want To Accomplish By Age 30 (But Why I’m Not Holding Myself To It)

I have a special guest post for you today coming from Kelsey over at On My Way to Happiness. Kelsey has quite a few goals she wants to accomplish by the time the big 3-0 rolls around. But, she’s also smart enough to allow herself some leeway should things not go exactly as planned. Take it away, Kelsey!

My 25th birthday is coming up, and I wouldn’t say I’m having a quarter life crisis, but I have been majorly reflecting on my life. What have I accomplished so far? What do I want to accomplish in the future? Am I actually working towards my goals, or wasting my 20s? Am I making the most of my short time on this Earth?

I decided to set a list of goals that I want to accomplish before I’m age 30. I use “30” as a milestone because it’s a big one. Women dread this number. For good reason. I mean, it’s when your biological child bearing clock really takes a turning point. Of course you can have kids after 30, and women still have had children up to 50. But you really can’t rely on that.

30 is also seen as when you have to be “responsible” for good. People always talk about the stupid mistakes they made in their 20s with fondness, maybe a little regret, but your 20s are an ok time to mess around with things. When you’re 30, you’re a really real adult now.

I want to be able to use my 20s to take risks and have no regrets in designing the life of my dreams. I want to throw myself at the goals I really want. I want to quit my job, learn new skills, start a business, take control of my health and build connections and a community.

Without any solid goals or plans, how do you expect anything but mediocrity from life?

I have goals to accomplish by the time I’m 30, but I’m not holding myself to them. I hate timelines. I’m picking this arbitrary age to light a fire under my ass and actually get shit done. But if I don’t get it done, who cares? I know I tried my hardest. It’s not about doing something before a certain age as long as I know I’m working towards it. Is it REALLY a huge deal if I do something at age 31 instead of 30, as long as I accomplish it? No!

I don’t want to say I have to accomplish something by 30 and then give up if I don’t. Spoiler alert: one of my goals is to be a millionaire. If I have $900,000, should I just give up? Should I just spend it all at once? Should I be pissed at myself because I earned a freaking 0.9 million instead of 1 million? NO! That’s still amazing and I should be PROUD I did that – forget the timeline!

These aren’t random goals like “play the flute” that are fun things I kind of sort of want to learn. These are actual goals that will change the trajectory of my life.

Goal #1: Have a six-figure business.

My ultimate goal is to one day own my own business. My dream is to have a successful business and work for myself. I currently run my blog On My Way to Happiness and hope that it leads me into a full-time six figure business. I’m far away from six-figures right now, but in five years, who knows? I’m working on this every day starting now and can only go up from here.

To meet this goal, I currently work really hard at my blog. In addition to my full time job, I try to put in another 30 hours every week. If I start this business now and gain traffic and skills, by the time I’m 30 I should see a lot of success! I love working on my blog and would love it to be full time one day.

I also work any side hustle opportunity that comes up, or that I create for myself. I try to stay open minded to opportunities and make money in any way possible.

While I like my job, I would love to work for myself even more. If I never get to this point, at minimum I am at least increasing my income – and diversifying my streams of income. If I ever got laid off, I still have a whole side business working for me.

Goal #2: Reach Financial Freedom.

Financial freedom is the number one most important goal to me right now. Financial freedom is when you have so much money that you don’t need to work anymore because you can live off that money forever. For my fiance and I, it will be about $1 million.

I don’t expect to reach this goal by 30, I know $1 million is extremely lofty of a goal. However, I want to work towards this goal with everything I’ve got. I am on track to reach financial freedom at age 38 (not age 30) if all goes according to plan. While I know I probably won’t reach it by 30, I want to continue to work hard at my business, provide value to my customers, earn promotions at my day job, all just for this goal. If I tell myself I need to hit it by 30 instead of 38, I will continue to work even harder for it.

Goal #3: Be in the best shape of my life.

This isn’t hard to do, considering I have never been in great shape, haha. As a kid who grew up “running” 15 minute miles in school, athleticism is something I was never great at.

I worked out just enough in college so I could still fit into the same clothes, although I am the first to admit health was not a priority. In your early 20s, it’s easy to let your health slide. Your body is will pick up the slack. You are pretty much not on the radar for any major disease or ailment.

My mindset was “I’ll never be in another place again with multiple kegs full of shitty beer, so I need to drink as much as humanly possible….but I’ll have years and years to work out”.

However, once I hit 30, is when I need to begin seriously watching myself. At 30, I’m still young enough to bounce back from health mistakes. I’m still not really at risk for major diseases just based on age. But it’s one decade closer to old age and I need to form good habits now. It’s harder to reverse damage the older you get.

Do you want to wake up one day when you’re 50 with a bad heart and have the doctor tell you that you need to completely 360 your life around? You’ve had half a century to form the habits that led you here, and you have to change them around now?? It’s only going to get harder the longer I let my unhealthy habits last and carve themselves deeper and deeper into my life.

While I’m working towards being in great shape, I’m also still figuring out how to easily implement it into my life. I’ve tried morning workouts and evening workouts. Sometimes I do yoga at home, sometimes I run on the treadmill, sometimes I take a class or run outside or walk or lift weights. I test out different workouts and different factors to see what works the best for me, that I can easily implement into the future.

Goal #4: Have an Entirely New Set of Goals

Every year I change so much, and create new goals to reflect where I am at the time. After all, “If we’re not growing, we’re dying”.

Five and a half years ago I was 19 and a freshman in college. Besides “get a job” and “still be alive” I don’t think I had any long term goals beyond the immediate tests, quizzes, homework, parties, and meals. My “goals” were to have an “in” at certain frats, make it to the dining hall each night before it closed, and not completely fail out. My mind was in such a different place back then.

And five and a half years before that I was 14.5, I was in the 8th grade. Was I even a person back then?? I’m sure my goals were simply to get boys to notice me and to survive graduating middle school.

The point is, I was clearly such a different person at every stage of my life. When I’m 30, how could I possibly predict where I’ll be?? Right now, I hope I will be my own boss and earn lots of money from my own successful business. But who knows where life is going to take me?

I hope that I meet many of my goals by the time I’m 30, and I hope I’m proud of myself and my achievements up to that point. However, I don’t want to just meet my goals and then stay stagnant forever. I want to continue to work hard and create new goals based on where I am at that time in my life.

My Ultimate Goal is Always to Be Better Than I Was Yesterday – No Matter What Age!

I always want to be sure I am living my optimal life. My ultimate, #1, non-negotiable goal is to be happy. I’m not waiting until 30 for this goal – just like my other ones, I’m tackling it now.

30 is a great age to set for these lofty goals to give myself something to work towards. I want to design my life the way I want it – and the earlier I start the more likely I am to achieve these goals. I don’t want to wake up one day when I’m 45 and wonder what I’ve done with my whole life prior to that moment. I don’t want to float through life hoping more good stuff happens than bad – I want to design my life and live it on my terms.

On the same note, I don’t want to wake up when I’m 30 and be depressed I didn’t hit my goals. So what?? It was an arbitrary date! Progress, not perfection, is what’s important. As long as I’m happier and better than the day before, or the month before, or the year before, that’s all that’s important to me.

Kelsey Yeager is a chemical engineer, blogger, entrepreneur, home chef, craft beer enthusiast, and founder of On My Way to Happiness, a blog for millennials looking for “more”. Kelsey paid off $30,000 of student loans in 1.5 years off of an entry level salary, and helps other twentysomethings get their finances in order in a simple and fun way.