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I finally finished my first goal for 2009. I’ve made some strides towards some of my other goals as well. I’m extremely happy with my progress towards completing my goals by the end of the year. On to the goals update.
Personal Finance Goals
- Fully fund 2008 Individual 401k ($8,207.00/$8,207.00) – I did exactly as I promised last month. I received my tax return, which was a large amount due to the first time home buyer credit, and fully funded my 2008 Individual 401k. It feels so good to have completed my first goal of 2009. Now I just have to move on down the checklist.
- Fully fund 2008 Roth IRA ($0/$5,000) – Now that I’ve fully funded my individual 401k, I now plan to fully fund my Roth IRA for 2008. I have the cash to fully fund this account and will do so prior to April 15th, which is the deadline to contribute for 2008. There is no reason why this won’t be completed by the next goal update.
- Fully fund 2009 Individual 401k ($0/$1,872.00) – Within the next week or two, I will have fully funded my retirement accounts with 2008 contributions. I will then turn my focus towards investing my 2009 contributions. I will try to keep up with the individual 401k contributions as the income is earned. My Individual 401k account target goal for 2009 will increase every month as I make more money from tutoring (and hopefully many online ventures).
- Fully fund 2009 Roth IRA ($0/$5,000) – As soon as I finish funding my Roth IRA with my 2008 contributions, I will try to fund this account as soon as possible. The goal is to invest as much as possible while the stock market is still depressed.
Alternative Income Goals
- Turn blogging into a source of income – My free money page is up and running. It has a lot of great opportunities to earn some free money. I have used each and every one of the accounts/services on my free money page. I have not put any affiliate ads on my site, but I hope to do so this week. I also want to get some PPC ads on my site within the month. As of right now, I have to generate about $35 to cover my first year of hosting and the domain name. I also purchased a laptop, which cost $530. I’m hoping to generate enough income from blogging to cover this cost.
- Increase monthly page views and subscribers – At the end of last month I had a daily high for page views of 42 and only 17 subscribers. In March, my high for page views was 111 and I now have 41 subscribers (thank you everyone for subscribing, I hope to generate a community feeling at this blog so don’t be afraid to comment). My monthly page views increased from 475 to 941. I have to increase my consistency with regards to submitting to carnivals. A few weeks this month I forgot to submit to carnivals and my weekly page views suffered. I also only wrote one guest post this month. I have found guest posting to be the best way to get page view spikes and new subscribers. Search traffic is definitely picking up after increasing the number of income links and my search engine rankings. 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. I failed to email my old professors about tutoring, but I hope to do so in the near future. 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. I do have a tentative weekend for a trip to Atlanta to see my Braves dominate the Phillies and Mets in September.
- Get in shape – I’ve lost about 3 pounds since the beginning of the year. I will most likely have to start eating healthier at lunch if I want to get my weight down to a good running weight. The weather is starting to warm up and I really wish I would be able to run, but my knee is still bothering me. I suppose I’ll have to begin swimming more frequently to take some of the pressure off of my knee. I should be able to start biking on weekends this month.
I’m still on target for meeting all of my goals for 2009. Last month I predicted March Madness would prevent me from getting ahead of the game with regards to my 2009 goals. And I was right. I’m completely done with all of my fantasy baseball drafts, so that should free up some more time. April 5th marks the beginning of the baseball season though, so I’m sure I will be spending a lot of time watching baseball. Baseball is one of those sports that you can multitask while watching. I hope to be very productive in April.
Go Bravos!
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