Goals Update for End of October 2009

October was a very interesting month. I began traveling some for work and while I haven’t been traveling, I’ve been swamped at the office. I’m definitely not complaining about being busy at work because it makes the days go by so much faster, but it leaves less time for me to work on my goals. I wasn’t able to move my non-retirement assets into my retirement accounts, but it will be accomplished within the next week or two. n to the update towards my goals 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 ($2,583.62/$5,264.00) -Previously I decided to keep my emergency fund at $10,000 because of my increased mortgage payment. I had a surplus of cash above the emergency fund level to put towards my retirement funds for 2009, but I made a few major purchases in October, which will be paid for in November. After paying for these purchases, I’ll be lucky to be at $10,000 for my emergency fund. When I sell my Target stock, I will fund my Roth IRA first and then put whatever is leftover in this account. The reason for this is I don’t know exactly how much I will be able to invest into this account. At the end of the year I will calculate the final value. My Individual 401k account goal for 2009 may increase every month as I realize more self-employed income.
• Fully fund 2009 Roth IRA ($0/$5,000) – At the end of November I will have fully funded this account with funds from my Target stock. I will not incur a lot of capital gains taxes because the stock price today is not much higher than the value of the stock when it was gifted to me. Also, since it will be the first year I deduct mortgage interest and property taxes, I should be fine.

Alternative Income Goals

• Turn blogging into a source of income – In October, I earned $2.48 from Microsoft Pubcenter, $10.50 from LinkWorth and $00 from Commission Junction. My total in October was $12.98. I have to work harder to make my income from this blog more consistent. So far I have earned a total of $269.03 through affiliate marketing and text ads, 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 – My traffic has definitely plateaued, if not decreased, since I started working harder on my self-employed income. To combat this I will set a goal of writing 5 articles that will rank highly in the search engines and point towards my site. This month I will also develop a plan for improving the traffic. I want to develop at least 5 keywords that I think I can rank highly for that will drive good personal finance traffic. My monthly page views decreased from 856 to 734. I hosted a carnival for the first time during October and unfortunately did not see the spike in traffic that I was expecting.
• Replace tutoring income through a company with my own personal clients – If tutoring opportunities come my way I will not turn them down. For now I will focus my efforts on developing ebooks for specific subject tests to provide references for when I do start tutoring. For now this is a dead goal unfortunately.

General Goals

• Travel to two cities I’ve never been to – Unfortunately I will have to rely on my work travel to fulfill this goal. In the past month I traveled to Madison, Indianapolis and Tampa. I should be traveling through the rest of the year. I’m also holding out hope that I will make it to Nebraska to visit my cousin.
• Get in shape – I’ve been maintaining my weight while trying to pick up running again. It’s become too cold to bike, which leaves running and swimming. I will do some swimming, but what I really want to do is get my running going again, pain free. I decided to go see a physical therapist for my plethora of injuries, which will cost a pretty penny, but if I am running with no pain in the near future it will be worth it. Unfortunately I don’t think I will reach my weight goal, but if I can continue running it won’t be long into 2010 before I hit my goal.

Only two months left and I’m striving to meet as many goals as possible. Pretty soon I will have to plan my goals for 2010. Hopefully I do a better job than this year as at least one of my goals is dead due to a switch in priorities. How are you all doing on your goals for 2009?