Goals Update for End of May 2009

May saw my career goals change rather dramatically. I am attempting to develop a strong enough self employed income while moonlighting to quit my job. I am intrigued by the freedom that self employed income provides. I didn’t make strong progress towards my goals for 2009, mostly because of my mortgage refinance. I want to get my refinance out of the way so I can focus on my retirement accounts for 2009.

Personal Finance Goals

• Fully fund 2008 Individual 401k ($8,207.00/$8,207.00) – Completed in March.
  
• Fully fund 2008 Roth IRA ($5,000/$5,000) – Completed in April.
• Fully fund 2009 Individual 401k ($0/$4,752.00) – My 2008 retirement accounts are completely funded, which opens up my 2009 retirement accounts as the next targets. I am waiting until I close on my mortgage refinance to start funding my 2009 retirement accounts. I will fund my Individual 401k before my Roth IRA as I have to pay taxes on that money if it isn’t invested in the account. I also might try to build up a buffer of $5,000 or $10,000 before I fund my retirement accounts. I have nearly a full year to fund these accounts, so my only hurry would be to try to invest while the market is still depressed. My Individual 401k account goal for 2009 will increase every month as I earn more self-employed income.
• Fully fund 2009 Roth IRA ($0/$5,000) – Funding this account is secondary to funding the Individual 401k, however, I believe I will be able to fund both.

Alternative Income Goals

• Turn blogging into a source of income – I’ve finally made a little progress towards monetizing this blog. I was approved as part of Microsoft’s Pubcenter Beta testing. I added the ads that you can see in the primary side column and have already made $5.33. I hope to add some affiliate ads soon. So far I have earned a total of $105.33 through affiliate marketing and PPC, which is already enough to cover the $35 for my first year of hosting and the domain name. My overall goal is $565, which also covers my new laptop.
• Increase monthly page views and subscribers – I haven’t done a very good job promoting my blog this month and I’ve also slacked off in the number of posts. The slacking will be explained in the next goal. My monthly page views increased from 1,089 to 1,304. In the next month or two I want to spend more time getting my blog to rank higher for specific keywords. I also want to host a carnival by the end of the year.
• Replace tutoring income through a company with my own personal clients – I’ve decided to spend most of my free time developing niche marketing campaigns and working on projects with my dad. For this reason, my blogging here will probably be effected, but in the long run this is better. I hope to develop enough income to quit my job. At that point I will have more time to pursue blogging. I may still tutor on my own, but I will not consider doing so until the beginning of the next school year.

General Goals

• Travel to two cities I’ve never been to – I am definitely going to Atlanta to watch some Braves games and visit a few college friends. The second city might be DC, Cleveland or somewhere in Mexico.
• Get in shape – Getting in shape has been very up and down. I have been biking a good amount. I run every now and then. I rollerblade once or twice a week. I’ve been lifting 2-3 times a week. There are two problems. The first problem is that tutoring makes it difficult to find a consistent workout schedule. The other problem is I eat crap for lunch. I will work on consistency and changing my eating habits in the upcoming months.

Now that I have shifted my career focus towards developing self employed income in numerous ways, my goals for 2009 may suffer. However, if I’m super successful with my self employed ventures, the goals could be accomplished faster. I will share all of my successes and failures on this blog.