Every year I create Goals and Objectives for myself. In January of 2013 my goals and objectives were split into a few different categories:
- Personal Life
- Professional Life
- Blogging World
- Online Income World
- Financial Goals
How did I do with my Goals for My Personal Life
2013 is going to be a year of change for my family and I. We should be closing on our new home in the next few weeks.
Mission accomplished. In early January of 2013 we closed on our new home. I’ll have set numbers in a few weeks, but I am pretty sure I paid down more principal in the 11 months I have been at this home versus the 5 years in the other home (30 year 3.375% vs 40 year 5.75% mortgages.)
I need to lose some freaking weight. It really bothers me that I completely failed over the years with regard to this goal. I think what bothers me is that I have the tools and knowledge how to overcome the failure.
For the first time in a few years I think I actually accomplished this goal…kinda. My weight is the same or close to it but the clothes are getting looser (and who doesn’t like hearing the compliments from people that notice).
In my goals and objectives post I talk a lot about going hard with Krav Maga, however, I underestimated the distance from the new home to the school I was attending. But I discovered CrossFit in June and like most who get into it, I love it! I am only 6 or 7 months deeps, so I am well aware my infatuation with it can/will diminish, right now I love it.
My eating habits got a little bit. I go out of my way to avoid grains when I can – not “paleo” but cleaner (I’ll be honest it goes to complete shit after 3 drinks lol). My sleeping habits still suck.
How did I do with my Goals for My Professional Life
I split this into two categories – Career and Law Practice
Career
I do want to increase my knowledge on retirement account options (412is, Defined benefits, etc) so I will make it my goal to read up more on the topic.
Fail.
Law Practice
My first goal for the new year is to get a standard website up there. I know enough about the internet where I don’t have grand illusions that the site will bring in clients, but the first thing anyone does when they leave a consultation meeting is google you – there is no excuse not to have a site up and running.
Fail.
It really bothers me that I failed on 2 pretty specific (and easy) professional goals. Pretty unacceptable since I am the one being depended on for the most part for my family’s well being. My goals and objectives for 2014 are going to have step it up for 2013’s shitty performance.
How did I do with my Goals for Blogging
I have been publishing too many guest posts recently. My goal is to make sure that with all the guest posts that come through I match the content with at least 3 or 4 new posts a week.
I haven’t done the math but I think I am in that 2 and a half to 3 posts a week. This past year it seems my posts have mainly been about updating readers with my situation and investments. So while I didn’t him my goal I am comfortable with what I have done.
Going to ignore [under the hood maintenance] on MyJourneytoMillions for the upcoming time.
Fail, but that’s alright. I should have known that I like toying with the back end of the site. It is something I am pretty sure I’ll never stop.
How did I do with my Goals for My Online Income World
My Wife’s personal blog has some great metrics and I have recently started to monetize it (without her full consent lol). This year my goal is to help clean up under the hood.
eh, give myself a B. I have helped out her site a lot but it isn’t making the traction it should. I’ll save it for my goals post but I think I need to refocus on this.
In addition, I have two sites (PregnancyPool and Manceptional) that are sort of floundering out there with no real love going to either. I have to either decide to get them both going or just drop them so I don’t even think about them. So my goal is either to get behind each one of them with both time and resources or just cut the fat.
Manceptional I just carved out recently. PregnancyPool is still out there. I teamed up with uber computer website genius Jesse, but the partnership was less than fruitful. I can’t fault Jesse since he had an opportunity that he just couldn’t turn down but I got moved way back in terms of priority and I was left with a site built in a language that would take me 3 years to reverse engineer lol.
How did I do with my Financial Goals
When I wrote the post I was 18 days from closing. My financial world was going to change hardcore, but I have myself the following goals:
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Working with The Wife come up with a number that represents approximately 6 months of our needs for an emergency fund which stays in cash and does not grow
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Increase dividend investment lot purchases to $500+ multiple times a month
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Go back to 2008 Evan and reevaluate all our ongoing monthly bills to look for inefficiencies and holes
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Increase our life insurance death benefits – I , and The Wife, are woefully underinsured given our new home purchase.
Good Job Evan!
- The Wife and I came up with a new cash goal – and with my bonus the other day we met that goal.
- Increase Dividend Portfolio Purchases – Check! While I didn’t increase to multiple $500 lots, what I have been doing is buying more of the stocks I choose ($750 to $1,250 lots every month).
- I started to look at cash flow inefficiencies but haven’t found inefficiencies like I used to. In my opinion, I just spend too much on certain categories. Not better just a different problem.
- I updated the amount and kind of insurance The Wife and I have.
Pretty happy that i hit my main goals. I also gave myself a reach goal
My reach goal is to purchase an investment property. I am working with a partner (or two) on this one so I am not sure if I’ll be able to get this one done. I would have preferred not to work with a partner but I won’t have the liquidity necessary (given goal number 1 above) to purchase a property around me.
This one I failed on but I am not that upset about it. Instead of focusing in on the investment property I have been loving the investment club I started with my 2 brothers and some buddies! Granted it is 1/1000th of the risk and reward, but it is also 1/1000th the stress lol. So things just change but I am not upset that this one didn’t work out.
my goal is grow my net worth by 40%. This goal and objective is not all that important to me, as it really doesn’t provide for an actual plan to accomplish but rather just a number I’d like to hit.
I will have a final number in a few days (and I’ll update this post then) but holy hell did I fail on this one! I will be happy when I calculate if I am up 10% lol. In 2013 my net worth only increased 8.32%! Ouch. All my investment accounts have increased a crazy amount (from contributions and the market flying high), but my debt/spending increased (closing costs were $20k+ and $10K or so in renovations/furniture). Looking back in a few years if I had to guess this will have been my worst year for the net worth but that’s alright since housing is done for a long time to come!
How did you do with your year?
Even though you missed on quite a few goals I still think 2013 was success for you. I’ve got several goals myself that are flat out embarrassing that I failed on because they were easy to hit. My focus kept slipping towards other things. 2013 was a big year of change for you with the house purchase at the beginning of the year, ours came in September and the expenses have changed dramatically. I’m still working out the kinks on how those are going to work, but another month or two and I’ll be able to have some good data to look through for some inefficiencies. It’ll get a lot better once we get the debt for some furniture/appliances paid off later in 2014.
2013 did have some big changes for my family! You seem pretty focused on your blog, what was distracting you? Any surprises with your home purchase?
You had a lot of changes to go through this year so it’s hard to meet all your goals. I’m sure you’ll do better next year. A 50% increase in net worth is hard to maintain. I don’t know if the market can continue this pace in 2014. I’m paring down my expectation for 2014.
Happy New Year!
Think the goal was 40% but I only hit 8.32%. Hurts, but understandable considering the changes. The market/savings is the only thing that kept me in the positive world.
Sucks, but is what it is.
Well, 2013 was not all THAT bad! 😉 Hope 2014 is swimmingly successful.
If you’d like a draft of the how-i-lost-30-pounds-in-6-months-without-hardly-trying cookbook (and its how-to-do-it preface), drop me a line. Am preoccupied with clients and a different project of my own just now so it’ll be while before said magnum opus hits amazon.
Your weight loss updates have been fantastic. Very motivating! Like most things in life it isn’t the planning it is the execution
Buying a house can definitely put a hit to any goal of increasing net worth. 40% increase seems pretty ambitious, though. Even increasing net worth by 10% is pretty good and better than most.
40% was very ambitious and may have been a bit easier if side businesses didn’t take a HUGE hit (and I didn’t buy a house lol)
Congrats on achieving the goals you hit. It’s pretty hard to nail everything in a given year, but it looks like you made good progress. Best for 2014
Thanks! How did you do?