2025 Year in Review, 2026 Goals

Happy New Year, everyone! We are 14 days into 2026 and here I am doing our 2025 year in review which includes wins and misses and of course the goals we’ve set for this year.

Every new year, I set 12 goals for me and my partner to achieve until the end of the year then rinse and repeat. All these annual goals contribute to what we want to achieve by 2030. For 2025, we achieved 10 out of 12, which was not bad at all.

Let’s start with the wins:

Our biggest win — we were able to travel to a lot of new destinations, and that included our Winter Wonderland trip to Finland last month. We also traveled to 11 cities within Spain, explored Portugal, went around Amsterdam and Paris with my sisters, and work trips to the UK. For the entire year, we had a total of 11 trips. Our goal really was to explore more of Spain because we want to find the best city for us, and I think we found it but let’s see how that will turn out. This win was not really surprising because being a traveler is a big part of me. All my friends and family will agree with that.

Ngl, it was exhausting and expensive but traveling is really my one and only vice so money spent on experiences I consider as money well spent.

Second win, I got my Spanish citizenship. I don’t have to dive deeper because majority of videos here are about my experiences obtaining my citizenship. In the future, I will be talking more about the privileges of having a Spanish passport because it really goes beyond just having a stronger passport.

Third win, I did something uncomfortable and stuck with it. And here’s where creating and publishing YouTube videos come in. It’s really uncomfortable for me to put myself out there and talk to a camera. You should have seen in all my videos how awkward and uncomfortable I was but I embraced it and kept going. I almost lasted a year but fell through at the end of the year, with 47 videos published, because I was traveling for 3 weeks and doing last minute work before the year ends, which meant I didn’t have time to create more videos. But I took the down time to reevaluate if YouTube is still worth it, and as of now, I can say that yes, it is still very much worth my time. So I hope you all stick around. My partner helped a lot with shooting broll shots that I’ve used in my videos.

4th win, I learned a new skill. Well, 2 skills actually — first is how to manage a TikTok Shop and 2nd, how to edit videos. Editing videos came with publishing YT videos and instead of outsourcing it, I had to force myself to learn Davinci Resolve which was hard at first, obviously, but it became easier with each video I posted. I know I still have a lot to learn and improve on so the learning continues. TikTok shop, on the other hand, surprised me because it was relatively easy to learn and I know that it would help my career progress. My partner also improved his skills by understanding more how to run our business and leveraging his knowledge with Vinted and Wallapop, eCommerce platforms that are popular here in Spain.

Continuous learning is something that’s important for me so every year I make sure that we learn something new, preferably a marketable skill, because investing in ourselves is one of the best things that we can do for us.

5th win, our Amazon business was finally profitable and we hit ROI, which meant we got back what we invested from all the products we launched. In case you don’t know yet, I manage Amazon and marketplace accounts and I also sell on Amazon with my partner. We sell products under our own brand that we created, and we also buy wholesale from small and established brands and sell on Amazon and other eCommerce platforms. 2025 was a good year for our business and this year, we have big things planned to grow the business more. I will be creating videos about this in the upcoming weeks because a lot of people are asking about the remote jobs I have and how to get started selling on Amazon.

6th and 7th wins are more health-related. Considering our age, we are both above 40, it has been our goal to keep our blood sugar, cholesterol, and blood pressure down because we really don’t want to be taking maintenance meds. And when we had my physical check up last July, everything was normal—nothing was elevated which was great. We were able to do this by having an active lifestyle (translation-going to the gym often) and having a healthier diet by learning to cook more balanced meals, eating better, and proper hydration. In spring and summer, we ate so much fruits because they were delicious, and we prefer fish/seafood than beef/pork, and vegetables had been part of our diet too, because again, we’re not getting any younger and we have to make a conscious effort to stay healthy. Once you reach 40s, you will have better understanding I hope. And ngl, we strongly dislike working out but we do it not to stay thin but to stay healthy. Personally, how my body looks doesn’t bother me anymore because I know I’m healthy.

8th win, to perform well at work which I did. To be honest, I actually failed to achieve my annual targets, none from the sales team achieved their targets, but the accounts I handle grew almost 200% YOY, which was not easy to do given all the complications and restrictions, which is why I consider this a win.

9th win, I was able to improve my Spanish. I enrolled in online classes, which was an effort for me given my tight schedule, and I practice regularly with my partner through everyday conversations. My goal really is to keep practicing so I don’t lose everything I’ve learned and hoping it will just come naturally for me eventually.

10th win, this I guess is the simplest one which is to declutter. We don’t like to hoard things so every year, we give away/sell/donate clothes that we don’t use anymore. I, personally, don’t want to buy things that I won’t get much use of. But I do have 3 big purchases in 2025 — 1) a DJI camera which I use for recording videos for YouTube and when we travel so we’ve used it a lot in 2025, 2) an espresso machine because our Nespresso machine broke down so I took the opportunity to finally learn how to make coffee using an espresso machine and I love it, and 3) an OMNI-HEAT and OMNI-TECH Columbia jacket which we used when we were in Finland with -15C weather. I have no regrets whatsoever spending money on these because I consider all these as good investments.

Now for the misses, we have 2 — first, we fell short of our financial goal. We have a goal to save €xxx at the end of the year but we only achieved 65% of that goal. You can argue that it’s primarily because of all the trips we took, and yes I agree at some level but I already knew at the start of the year that achieving this goal would be a stretch.

Second, and this more for me—I failed to read 4 books. Worse, I didn’t even finish reading 1 book. I’d like to say I don’t have the time but sadly, my screen time would tell me otherwise. This year, I should do better…I’ve been telling myself that for the past 5 years. I know, it’s kinda hopeless.

Anyway, for this year, our goals are pretty much the same because again all these goals contribute to our 2030 main goal. The 3 main ones for this year — first, a financial goal set to €xxx which can be achieved by increasing our monthly income/revenue by 25% and/or reducing spend, second is to improve my video editing and storytelling skills, and third, to grow our businesses by making more strategic and smart investments (i.e. launching new products or brands that are a hit instead of a miss).

So yeah, that’s our 2025 in review. It may be a lot for some, it may not make sense for the others, but these goals serve as a guide for us all throughout the year. And when we review our goals from the previous years, it’s shows us that we’ve come a long way and I can’t help but be proud of everything we’ve accomplished. Remember, you have to be your own cheerleader because everyone else is busy with their own lives to notice.

As always, if you have any questions, feel free to send me an email. And if there are any topic that you want me to discuss, let me know and I will do my best.

¡Hasta luego!