Goals

Living on $10k a Year

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My plan for this year is to keep my expenses under $10k and so far I am on target to do that.  Of course there is a lot of time left in the year for something to go wrong.  I was curious how much a $10k a year budget translates to as a daily amount.  My calculations put the daily budget for $10k a year at $27.40 rounded up.  This does not seem like very much money to live on and the daily budget number could be a little intimidating when first making plans to live on a $10k budget.

On the other hand the daily budget number looks great when you look at it from the perspective of how much income you need to make.  I have a goal of making $10k a year in alternative and passive income. Earning an average of $27.40 a day looks pretty easy.  I don’t make that much money from my blogging and alternative income now but the figure certainly seems attainable.  My blogging income from last year would cover about 40% of the days in a year.  My dividend income would cover about half a month.  That puts me close to having half the year covered. I just need to find some additional sources of income and/or increase my current income streams to cover the rest of the year.  I probably won’t reach the $10k level in alternative/passive income this year but the goal is close enough that it seems realistic that I’ll make it in the next few years.  Being able to see progress and knowing I don’t have to wait too long for the payoff should make it easier to stay on track towards my goal of having $10k a year in alternative and passive income.

January 2009 Goal Review

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I set three goals for myself this year. I’m going to check on my progress at the end of each month to keep myself accountable and to see if I need to make any changes to meet my goals.

My first goal was to increase my passive income. I purchased several dividend paying stocks this month which should help me reach this goal. Sometime this month I need to add up how much passive income I made last year. This will allow me to know exactly how much passive income I need to make this year to reach my goal.

My second goal was to lose thirty pounds. My weight has gone from 214.1 at the start of the month to 213.6 at the end of the month. I’m going to count that as no progress since my weight fluctuates more than a half pound from day to day. I had several sub related to diet and exercise to help me lose weight. The only one I’ve come close to keeping so far is doing the hundred pushup challenge. The others I need to work on this month.

My third goal was to increase my subscribers to 500 from 300. I made some progress on this and my subscriber count spiked up to over 350. It has since come down and is hovering around 325. I should be able to steadily increase this amount over the year to reach 500 and I have some more plans to increase the number of subscribers to TFM.

I did ok on my goals for this month. Two out of three ain’t bad but I’d like to make that three out of three this month.

Goals for 2009

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I have already posted about a couple of goals I set for 2009 but with the New Year rapidly approaching I decided to add a few more. I’ve also decided I should try to make them S.M.A.R.T. (specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and timely).

The goals I already set were to have my expenses under $10,000 for next year and my income to be higher than my expenses. I may not have thought out those goals too well though. I can probably keep my expenses under $10,000 next year if I don’t include the cost of bar prep; with bar prep included that goal probably isn’t very realistic. I might not be able to have my income be higher than my expenses either because I plan on hiking for five months of the year. During which time I’ll be making very little money. I’m keeping these goals as non-smart goals for now and I’ll revisit them when it becomes clearer on whether they are realistic of not.

Now on to the S.M.A.R.T. goals.

Financial
Increase my passive income- This goal should easily be met. I will be investing in more dividend-paying stocks and developing other sources of passive income such as eHow.

Health
Lose 30 pounds- My goal last year was to lose 20 pounds. I went backwards on that and now I need to lose 30 pounds. If I go hiking the last 5 months of the year I will easily lose 30 pounds. Hiking would be a lot easier if I were in shape before I started though. My plans to get in shape include. Run/do cardio 3 times a week or more. Finish the Hundred Pushup Challenge. Drastically reduce or eliminate my soda consumption. Eat out no more than 2 times a week. These are all attainable steps but I haven’t done them in the past. I need to do them now.

Blogging
Increase my subscribers to 500 or more- Last year I started off with less than 100 subscribers and my subscribers hover around 300 now. Natural growth alone might get me to 500. I have some plans to help promote the blog though. I will submit my posts to Carnivals and Festivals more often. I will have giveaways at least once a month. I will write more posts. And lastly, I will look for more ways to promote this blog.

I will check up on these goals at the end of every month. That way I can see if I am making progress towards my goal and adjust accordingly.

Reviewing My Income and Expenses

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Jacob at Early Retirement Extreme is having a 30 Day Early Retirement Extreme Makeover.   One of the goals of this makeover is cut your expense level to $10,000 or less a year.  I thought I was close to this goal already since I try to keep my monthly expenses at $1000 a month or less and I knew I was below that level a few months this year.  After reviewing my expenses for the year I realize I’m farther away from the $10,000 goal than I thought.  Although I did have some months below the $1000 level I had more months above the $1000 level.  I’m estimating that my total expenses will be about $15,000 for this year and  my total income at about $12,000.  This is not as good as I thought but that is part of the reason why I track my income and expenses; so I can review them and tell how I’m doing.

Looking at my expenses my budget busters are transportation and entertainment.  The transportation category is somewhat misleading because I drove my car delivering pizza most of the year.  Some of that expense should really be a deduction from income.  Still there is plenty of room for improvement in the transportation category and I will be making some major changes there.  Some of the increase in my entertainment expenditure is from having a GF but most of it was just the result of stupid decisions on my part.  This expenditure can easily be reduced just by choosing more free or low-cost options for entertainment.

Since the new year is almost here I’ll go ahead and set a couple goals now.  The first is to have my expenses under $10,000 next year.  The next is to have my income higher than my expenses.  These are reasonable goals and I will be planning specific measures to achieve them.

Goals Review and December Goals

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At the beginning of this year I made three goals for this year. They were to incur no new debt(other than student loans), improve my blogs, and to lose twenty pounds. The year isn’t over but I’m going to wrap up these goals now. The first goal was easily met and I don’t plan on incurring any new debt ever again. The second goal was also met. This goal is somewhat subjective but I have increased my readership on this blog from under 100 readers to occasionally over 300 readers. I’ve also increased my online income overall by an even bigger percentage. I feel it is fair to say that I’ve improved my blogs. The third goal will not be met. In fact I will most likely end up with negative progress on this one. With the holidays coming up I will likely gain weight rather than lose it. This goal will be revisited next year with a specific plan for losing weight.

I’ll be out of school for most of December so that is a great time to get stuff done. I’ll be setting a couple of goals for myself and hope to get more done than that. My first goal is to write an article a day for either Associated Content or eHow. That should give me a good idea of how much time I should spend writing for these sites in the future. My other goal is to build two static websites. I’ve had the ideas and the domain names for these websites for several months now but haven’t gotten around to building them. I don’t have time to start another blog but I’m hoping that once these sites are up they will produce a little income and rarely need to be updated. I’ll probably add to these goals before the month is over but I need to do these at the very least.