Goals

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.

November Income Challenge Update

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My goal for November was to do something every day to make extra money.  I’ve already fallen behind but if I do two or three things some days I’ll be able to make an average of one a day.  Here are some things I’ve done so far to make extra money:

  • Opened checking account for Bank Bonus
  • Online Survey
  • Associated Content article
  • Brokered ING Direct links
  • Added Adsense back to this site
  • Medical Study
  • Opened bank cd
  • Invested in stock

Some of these things will be done on multiple days.  I won’t be doing thirty different things to make extra money.  The rest of the month I’ll be concentrating on writing articles for Associated Content and eHow.  It would be nice if I could estabish these as recurring sources of extra income.

August Goals Update

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Made some progress on my goals last month.  Listed below are the goals I set at the beginning of the year and the progress I’ve made on them.

  1. Don’t acquire any debt other than student loan debt.  I’ve met this goal but I have accumulated more student loan debt.
  2. Lose 20 pounds.  I haven’t done well on this one.  Earlier in the year I gained eight pounds and didn’t get back to my starting weight until July.  I only lost one pound in August.  I’ll have to lose nineteen pounds in the last four months of the year to meet this goal.
  3. Improve my blog.  This is somewhat subjective but I feel I’ve met this goal.  My readership has greatly increased since the beginning of the year.  Last month I installed a new theme and readership went up.  There will always be room to improve more though.

Overall, I’m doing okay on my goals but I need to keep working on them to avoid any setbacks.