Goals Update for End of January 2009

After only one month, I am as confident as ever that I can accomplish my goals for 2009. I’ve made some good progress towards most of my goals, however, there are some goals that I haven’t started yet. It has only been one month, but it feels good to be making progress or at least setting the groundwork to make progress in the near future.

Personal Finance Goals

• Fully fund 2008 Individual 401k ($0/$10,427.33) – I have until April 15th to fund this account. By the end of February, at the bare minimum, I want to set up my Vanguard Small Business Online account so that I am able to fund this account. If this is an extremely productive month, I want to have the funded value not be $0 as it has been for months now!
  
• Fully fund 2008 Roth IRA ($0/$5,000) – I have yet to fund this account, but I have until April 15th to do so. I will not fund this account until my Individual 401k is funded.
• Fully fund 2009 Individual 401k ($0/$1,056.00) – I will not begin funding this account until after the 2008 tax filing deadline. My Individual 401k account target goal for 2009 will increase every month as I make more money from tutoring (and hopefully blogging).
• Fully fund 2009 Roth IRA ($0/$5,000) – I will not begin funding this account until after the 2008 tax filing deadline.

Alternative Income Goals

• Turn blogging into a source of income – I officially switched over to a self-hosted domain, which will allow me to monetize this blog through advertising. I’m also hoping to generate some income from referrals. I will be putting ads in this month and I’m planning a free money page that has all kinds of ways for my readers to generate some free money (with a few of them providing referral dollars for myself). As of right now, I have to generate about $35 to cover my first year of hosting and the domain name, although I’m looking into the purchase of a laptop that isn’t 8 lbs and I’m hoping my blog income will cover the cost.
• Increase monthly page views and subscribers – I did not foresee starting from scratch with my new domain name. My daily high for page views is 22 and I only have 9 subscribers. I submitted posts for three carnivals and plan to submit to carnivals on a weekly basis. I am also considering guest posting a bit to drive traffic to my site. Currently, I’m not getting any search traffic, which will change in the near future. By the end of the year I will try to host a carnival or two as well.
• Replace tutoring income through a company with my own personal clients – I have made no attempts at tutoring on my own. At the very least I want to shoot out some emails to old professors to gauge potential interest in tutoring for their students. I still have high hopes for gaining personal clients. I previously blogged about expanding my tutoring business and outlined a good path for doing so.

General Goals

• Travel to two cities I’ve never been to – I don’t currently have any plans set in stone for traveling to two new cities, but it is still early.
• Get in shape – I began swimming pretty regularly to get in shape. I’ve been swimming 4 days a week, at least until I got sick this past week. I haven’t lost any weight, which is probably due to my eating habits. I will most likely have to start watching what I eat if I don’t start losing weight from strictly exercising by the end of February. I have done some stair workouts as well towards the end of January. These stair workouts are great ways to get a workout in really quickly, but they make it hard to sit down for a few days.

I am very happy with my progress. Switching over to a self-hosted domain was much more time-consuming than I thought. I should have more time in February to start working on transferring funds into my retirement accounts for 2008. I feel as though I am on course to achieve all of my goals for 2009 and am happy with my progress towards financial independence.

A few personal notes that are on my mind. Why did every pass not go to Larry Fitzgerald? I understand that he was double covered most every play, but I watched him make unbelievable catches while double covered for the entire playoffs. Why only one pass to him in three quarters? Also, I don’t want to spoil anything for you 24 fans out there so I’ll just say that this season is shaping up to be amazing. It might even start rivaling season 3 as my favorite.