• Professional Life
  • Blogging World
  • Online Income World
  • Financial Goals
  • Personal Life

Professional Life

I break this down into two categories: Career and Law Practice

Career

My actual responsibilities are currently morphing as estate planning for high net worth individuals morph due to legislative changes, so it is hard to provide myself with a goal.  My job isn’t in danger of becoming obsolete, rather it just changing.  My goal this year is to have at least one or two conversations with all, regardless of how big or small, insurance agents and financial planners to discuss how I could help them with their practice.

When I wrote the above statement, I couldn’t have imagined just how right I’d be.  After I wrote that in early January, the company I have been with for 10+ years merged with another financial planning firm.  They had an equivalent of my role and we have been working together to determine who is handling what cases.  I think thus far it has gone well.  The writing on the wall seems to be there for the estate tax, which makes me a bit less valuable here, so that has been weighing on me.

Notwithstanding the above, I failed in approaching each and every planner asking them how I could help them.  I did, however, embrace the new planners we took on trying to get ingrained in each one of their practices.  I am going to give myself a solid B on this one.

Law Practice

I like my small practice, but I have strayed from my estate and business succession planning niche in certain cases, and I have regretted it each time.  I am not set up to be properly compensated.  My two goals for my small practice are:

  • Actively turn down and refer out business I do not want.  I will not feel guilty for turning down business regardless of my relationship with the requester.
  • Actively ask every new client for referrals.  I need to come up with a system to use when it is appropriate.

While I was busier this year, I did not do a great job with my two listed goals.  While the tiny 1 person firm is doing well in terms of growth and income if I am being honest with myself I failed  on my two listed goals.  I took on cases I shouldn’t have because of timing, and I completely failed on my referral idea.

Blogging World

I just had a blog audit done by Grant at MillennialMoney.  My goal this year is to keep writing a few times a month plus get through that audit report fixing my litany of back-end problems.

I don’t think I pushed myself enough with this goal but I absolutely completed it.  I should have done a lot more writing and a lot more commenting.

Online Income World

A year or two ago I wrote in this type of post,

  • In the last quarter I made a push with old advertisers, and you know what? It worked! This year my goal is to go through 3 months of old emails the first week of every month.  I know that may not mean a lot to those reading the blog, but it basically means I reach out to old advertisers and reintroduce myself.

Specifically, I’d like to hit up a month or two of emails every other week.

100% Completed this goal.   Every week for the past year I would get my emails out.  I would say this was a major factor in my income increasing this past year.

Financial Goals

Same as last year, I want to continue my $500/mo to my dividend investment fund.  I also want to average $200/mo of investment income (dividends plus selling naked put and covered call option contracts).

Mostly failed.  In the end I probably put in a total of a few hundred dollars per month (in a very non-regular way).  The other half went to a revolving debt repayment.  I also slowed way down on my purchases this past year, only re-picking it up this past quarter.  I did, however, get to an average of $200/mo of investment income using the stated ways.

Personal Life

This is the only place where I don’t have any measurable goals is with my personal life.  I don’t talk about it much on this site, so even if I did I don’t think it would be all that detailed.  But generally, things are pretty great at home.  My goal is to get my ass home most days at a normal time (before 6pm).  That gives me an hour or two with the kids.  I recently started getting back into Crossfit, so if I had to give myself a personal goal it would be an average of 2 to 3 lunches at the gym.

A+ success!  I stayed active with Crossfit going at least 2 to 3 times a week.  I like to think I spend more night time hours with my children than most, and they appreciate it (even if they don’t they appreciate it yet).