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HomePersonal SituationReviewing How I Did on My 2011 Goals and Objectives

Reviewing How I Did on My 2011 Goals and Objectives

I can’t believe it has been almost a year since I published my goals and objectives for 2011 (December 31, 2011 at 12:45am) and as we come to the end of the year I thought it be about time to review that post and see how I did.   I have done this for the past:

I had split my goals and objectives into four categories:

  1. Personal Life
  2. Professional Life
  3. Blogging World
  4. Financial Goals

Personal Life 2011 Goals and Objectives

I am attempting to find that balance between what I believed to be my self-identity and my new found fatherhood.

That sentence was written about 3 weeks after he was born, at this point I am not sure there has to be two separate identities.  I am just the same guy with someone who I am responsible for…not much has changed except some of my priorities.  For example, coming home for lunch is so much more important to me now because it is more than just saving money, it is about seeing the boy for an hour or so.  Additionally, I try to make plans around that special time I get to play with after work but before he goes to bed.  I feel almost bad for buddies who don’t get home till after their kid goes to bed, and I hate when that happens to me (luckily that doesn’t happen that often).  At the same time, if you read my tweets (and you should because I am awesome) you’d know I still get to go out a whole bunch lol.

For whatever reason my health has taken a complete and utter back seat.  My goal is to get underneath that 200lb mark.  I am only 5’7 so to be carrying all this weight is just unhealthy.  I joined a gym last week and am signing up to compete in my first racquetball league! I have played with co-workers for about 18 months and I absolutely love the sport, however, it is sporadic in terms of consistency and intensity.

Complete and 100% failure.  I am still as unhealthy as I was one year ago and that just sucks.  However, I am making a change!  Before I started this blog and before I got married I practiced Krav Maga for about a year (made it to Level 2), well after some deliberation about how much is too much to pay for a hobby, I re-joined.   My goal is to go twice to three times a week.  If I do that and clean up my eating habits a bit I am bound to lose some weight. I also have a goal of participating in one leg of a triathlon, but this has less to do with health as it does shutting up a really good buddy.

I need to sleep and read more.   To do so I need to balance my time much better.  I work a lot.

FAIL.  Not qualms about it this was a FAIL.

Professional Life 2011 Goals and Objectives

So my goal is to follow up on the things [my bosses and I] discussed which includes being more proactive in determining which financial planners need my help by actually asking them. Amazing Idea, huh?

My next goal is to take my small law practice much more seriously. The income potential is there, I am very good at the small niche I fulfill and I enjoy it so much.

I haven’t met with my bosses for the annual review yet (I am hoping in the next couple days, but we’ll see when they call me in), so it is hard to say if I have succeeded or failed.

As far as the law office, it has taken a back burner to a project I have been working on that I have kept sort of quiet but is an offshoot of this blog.  Why would I focus on an online venture versus a law office? While the law office would be much more profitable it is a lot more time consuming and probably in direct conflict with my personal goals.  This is something a lot of people in my life don’t understand, but the online venture provides a really good income with zero stress and zero time taken away from my family.  I will talk about how to handle this in the year to come in my goals and objectives for 2012 post.

Blogging World 2011 Goals and Objectives

To continue My Journey to Millions’ growth I am going to continue writing as I have been.  I feel like I provide a mixture financial planning, estate planning, insurance planning, with a heavy sprinkle of my life.  However, I know there are things I can improve on.  I have to figure out a process to make sure I submit to Personal Finance Carnivals, I also want to figure out “affiliate marketing” but both of those are back end blogging stuff that most people don’t care bout.   I also want to set up a corporation or LLC that will own my site, The Wife’s site and a few other online ventures.

I am very proud of myself having implemented a carnival submission system for most of the year!  Really it has just been to outsource it lol.  Is it something I could do myself? Yup, but I haven’t and I have talked about it for years…so now it is someone else’s problem and I just have to pay them.  Along those same lines I have upgraded the back-end of my site pretty hard, using a Virtual Private Server as opposed to the shared hosting that most bloggers use.   I have yet to figure out an adequate solution to affiliate marketing, but I have an idea which I will go through during my 2012 goals and objectives.

Lastly, this year I set up an S-Corporation wholly owned by The Wife which owns this site and a few other assets.  That should help around tax time.

Financial Goals and Objectives of 2011

  • Pay off Auto Loan
  • Cut Student Loan #1 in half (I have over $65,000 in student loans and Student loan #1 is currently at $6,500ish)
  • Increase liquid savings!  I am currently at 66% of my moving target.
  • Continue to Max out my 401(k) to employer contribution.  This is not maxing it out completely, but if and only if, I hit the other goals will I set up a secondary retirement account
  • Continue to contribute to my Dividend Fund (between $150 and $300/month)

In January of 2011 I started to keep track of my net worth, so I am confident in saying that The Wife and I destroyed it in 2011.  I’ll edit this post when I am closer to the end of the banking year (still waiting for some stuff to clear), but as far as the goals:

Debt

While I Paid off my Auto Loan Completely, I did not do as well with the student loan goal, but that is only because of my goals and objectives changed with regard to my liquid savings goal (discussed below).  In total The Wife and I paid off approximately $14,000 in long term debt.  I should probably mention that I don’t have any credit card debt.

Savings & Investments

I blew by that moving target in September and am at 120% of that original target! I will keep saving cash for our eventual house upgrade.  I will talk about it more in my 2012 goals and objectives post, but my goal is to put 25 to 30% down on our new house to keep our monthly nut low.

I was so angry to learn that I was not maxing out my 401(k) up to my employer’s contribution due to raises and bonuses, but that has been fixed! I will keep just shoving money into it despite being worth about the same as it was in January of last year WITH A YEAR OF CONTRIBUTIONS! We will see if this changes when the new 401(k) law comes into place and I finally figure out what kind of expenses are associated with the account.

I killed it on the dividend fund front! Being forced to leave my discount broker of choice was the best thing that could have happened to this account.  Since there was a higher purchasing fee I was forced to save enough for both a solid purchase of one stock plus the purchase-price free ETFs for diversification, so instead of investing $150 to $300 a month it has been more along the lines of $400 and $550.  Nice work, Evan.

Overall I would say that 2011 has been an amazing year, both personally and financially! Even though my son was born in 2010 he was more or less a “pet rock” until march or so of 2011 so the last 2/3 of the year was nuts watching him grow and change, all while making some (and saving/investing/paying down debt) fantastic and stress free cash.

 

How was your 2011? If you have a similar post PLEASE feel free to link to it.

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26 COMMENTS

  1. Congrats for your amazing year Evan! I like how you said your online endeavors have provided ZERO stress. I wish I could say the same.

    I just edited my own review post, and will highlight a 50/50 split of wins and losses.

    Best, Sam

    • I shouldn’t say they don’t provide zero stress but the stress level feels very very light when compared to preparing someone’s estate documents.

  2. Nice work this year evan. On your goals for 2012, you need to put “Meet jeff of sustainable life blog for a beer” or something along those lines. I’ve got most of my goals written up and will post mine sometime soon as well.

    • 100%! I love meeting up with online buddies. It is always awkward because something personal is inevitably referenced and I always respond the same way, “How the hell did you know that? Oh yeah my site” lol

  3. Great job Evan! It’s tough balancing everything when you have a baby. I think you are really doing great and if you can get back into shape, you’ll achieve most of your goals. Good luck in 2012! I didn’t do all that well on my goals and will write a post on it soon.

  4. It’s been a good year. Congratulations on milestones reached. Here’s hoisting a stein to 2012!

  5. Great year! I, on the other hand, was at least a 75% failure in 2011… I even failed to complete my goals list… Sad, I know.

    • Nick, that is freaking TERRIBLE. In my opinion you are setting yourself up to fail. Your goals seem to be so huge they are almost impossible to tackle…like going from 60 to 0 in 2 feet.

      Why not make more, but smaller goals?

      • I know, isn’t it crazy! I think I did a better job setting my goals for 2012. (I do have a few HUGE ones, but I have about a dozen smaller ones that I’m sure I’ll nail out of the park – mostly things I’ve been procrastinating with for a while.)

        Happy New Year everyone!

  6. Hey, overall it looks like you did rather well! Great job. Tell me how your Krav Maga turns out! Merry Christmas!

    • Merry Christmas! I hope it was fantastic and drama free for you and your family.

      2 weeks of Krav Maga has kicked my butt. I am excited to get back into hard next year. I’ll be a machine come May!

  7. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, Evan!

    Wait…what? One of your goals a year ago, right around the time the babe was born, was “I need to sleep and read more.” Heh heh heh heh…Really??? 😀

    Otherwise, overall awesome success.

    • Merry Christmas!

      Yeah, you know that was a stupid goal, but my baby is so awesome he sleeps (and has slept since month 3 or so) 10 to 12 hours a night most nights. Plus The Wife takes care of most of the heavy lifting as she works from home and I have to head to an office daily.

      I just don’t sleep. At night my mind RACES with ideas and it takes a while for me to calm down the old brain.

  8. Wow, congrats. What a year for you. I think you have done great. Very interesting about re-realizing your identity. I think any major change in life puts us on this path. Best of luck in 2012.

    • Thanks for the well wishes. I am not sure if it was re-realizing my identity as much as my fear of losing it. Doesn’t seem to happen and I really believe writing on this blog is part of it.

  9. REad every word! Awesome accomplishments. Excited to hear about new (less lucrative?) on line initiative. Now you can stop teasing me about selling myself short!

  10. Thank you for sharing your wins and losses. I lost on the health front as well…but financially we did well! Still, without health what is there really?

  11. Congrats Evan. Setting goals on the internet raises the stakes. It puts more effort on our goals. I posted all that I achieved in 2011 yesterday.

    Jai

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