Despite not traveling so much this past year due to a focus on saving for grad school, I still managed to travel to a few places this year. Here are my highlights from 2018:

Cities Visited: 17
Countries Visited: 4 countries
Miles flown: 47,511 miles
Weekends away from DC: 13
Total miles redeemed: ~100k (for flights to Hawaii and Asia)

January – Louisville

 

February – Maui

February – Big Island

 

February – Vienna, Austria

February – Bangkok, Thailand

February – Siem Reap, Cambodia 

May – Las Vegas

August – Brussels

August – Gorges du Verdon, France

August – Nice, France

August – Monaco 

August – Paris

 

 

 

August – Paso Robles, California

November – Albany, New York

December – Ashville, North Carolina

December – Nashville, Tennessee

December – Southern Kentucky

 

December – Charleston, West Virginia

 

I’ve neglected to post on this blog the whole year, but it would be strange if I didn’t post an annual review! Hard to believe I’ve been doing this for nearly the whole decade! And after doing this throughout my 20s, I’m writing this blog post as a now 30 something! You can check out my previous annual reviews here:  2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011.

How did with my 2018 goals?

Keep running and lifting

• I only did one race this year, and it wasn’t even a half marathon! As a result, I didn’t set a new PR. Additionally, while I have consistently gone to the gym throughout the year (yay!) I haven’t increased my weights all that much. Perhaps I need to switch it up this year with classes?

Keep cooking

• This one surprised me. While I did continue to cook throughout the year instead of eating out, I didn’t really expand my repertoire of dishes to make…thanks Trader Joes!

Keep saving and investing

• This one was a bit tough considering I was saving so much for grad school while paying down more student loans. I managed to contribute about ~$5k to retirement this year, but didn’t add to my emergency fund or set up a 529 plan.

Keep improving my Mandarin Chinese

• Surprisingly, I did have a tutor (briefly) for the school year in the months leading up to grad school.

Get my Private Pilot’s License

• I completely failed on this one. I didn’t even schedule a call with flight instructor to do a demo flight. This is still something I want to do, but not quite sure when it’ll happen. Now that I’m not doing grad school, hopefully I can get to this goal.

2018 Areas of Focus:

Career

• By far the big thing this year was my decision on doing a career change from marketing to international affairs, and the possibility of starting grad school. I finally applied, was accepted and started grad school at The George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs. Between juggling school and work full-time, quickly realized that while I LOVE learning about other cultures, international affairs as a career was no longer for me. So happy that I went through the process. I can finally move on with my life!
• Switched jobs again from marketing analytics back to marketing automation. Realized that I (1) still prefer being on the execution rather than strategy side of marketing, (2) I operate better working in smaller rather than larger organizations, and that (3) it’s better to work for a company as a full time employee rather than as a contractor.

Relationship

• Continued to grow in my relationships, both with myself, my significant other and friends.
• So happy that things are going well on this front! 

Fitness

• Managed to maintain my weight throughout the year, as well as continued to workout and cook my own food several times a week!

Travel

• Visited four new countries and crossed a few places off my bucket list: Ankor Wat/Cambodia, Brussels/Belgium, Paris/France, Monaco.

Finance

• Paid off two additional student loans (roughly ~$7k) and have just one loan remaining!
• Paid in cash my first semester of grad school (roughly ~$13k)
• Didn’t get to saving more as a result of my focus on education expenses this year.

2019 Goals

After having done these year-end reviews for now 8 years, I’m realizing that most of my goals are pretty much the same as they are every year. Perhaps this means I need to think bigger and outside the box. In order of priority, here are my goals for 2019:

• Finances: Pay off my car ($6.8k remaining) and Penn student loans ($4.2k remaining)
• Traveling: Visit at least 3 new countries this year, go to someplace new in the U.S.
• Career: Get certification in either Salesforce/Pardot/Marketo (tools I use for my day job)
• Health: Gym at least 4x/week; PR my half marathon time.

That’s it for now, let’s see how this new (and final year of the decade) plays out!

Compared to years past, I flew a lot less this year. Check out my travel highlight posts from years past: 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013 and 2012.

Here’s where I went this year:

Cities Visited: 16
Countries Visited: 2 countries
Miles flown: 57,107 miles
Weekends away from DC: 25
Total miles redeemed: 85,000 miles

And here’s what all that traveling looks like for this year:

January:
Cities Visited: Reykjavik
Miles flown: 5,568

Iceland

February:

Cities Visited: Portland, OR
Miles flown: 5,603 miles

Portland, Oregon

March:

Cities Visited: Miami
Miles flown: 1,851 miles

Miami

April:

Cities Visited: Raleigh, New York
Miles flown: 0 miles

Raleigh

New York

May:

Cities Visited: Los Angeles, New York, Punta Arenas 
Miles flown: 10,965 miles
Los Angeles 

New York

Torres del Paine National Park, Chile

 

June:
Cities Visited: Santiago, Chile; Amsterdam, The Netherlands; New York City; Los Angeles; Hilo, Hawaii 
Miles flown: 18,861 miles
Travel Costs:

Chile

Amsterdam

New York City

Los Angeles

Big Island, Hawaii

July:
Cities Visited: Honolulu, HI; Cape May, NJ
Miles flown: 4,817 miles

Oahu, Hawaii 

Cape May, New Jersey

August:
Cities Visited: Boston, MA; Portland, ME; San Francisco 
Miles flown: 5,577 miles
Boston

Portland, Maine

San Francisco

September:
Cities Visited: Chicago, Philadelphia, New Haven, Newport, Boston, Portland (ME), New York, Dallas 
Miles flown: 3,656 miles
Chicago

New Haven, Connecticut

Boston

New York

Newport, Rhode Island

Philadelphia

Dallas

October:
Cities Visited: Claymont, DE 
Miles flown: 0

Delaware

November:
Cities Visited: Charlottesville, VA; New York 
Miles flown: 0 
Charlottesville

New York

December:
Cities Visited: Philadelphia, Durham (NC), Charleston (SC)
Miles flown: 0
Philadelphia

Durham, North Carolina

Charleston, South Carolina

How did I afford to do all this?

A lot of my travel this year was actually through road trips. I also redeemed quite a bit of miles not only for myself, but also for friends and family. A major highlight this year was redeeming 25k miles less than a day before a friend’s wedding for a cross-country flight for a friend who’s flight was delayed due to weather. I also redeemed my points to fly back to Hawaii, the first time I’ve been back in about two years, and for my brother to fly out east for Christmas.

I also relied heavily on Southwest. With the exception of my flight to Iceland and Portland, Oregon, all flights that I paid for were on Southwest. Now that all the major carriers have gone revenue-based and have made award redemptions increasingly harder to redeem, I’m going with the cheapest option. I’m even considering flying Spirit in the coming year!

Conclusion:

Unlike in years past, I did not travel solo at all this year. All of my travels were either with friends or family. I’ve also done a lot less credit card hacking, having opened up just one new account this whole year! 2017 was another amazing year of travel, and hope to continue exploring more in 2018!