Goals Update for End of November 2009

For most of 2009 I was completely healthy. In November I managed to get sick two separate times. That combined with an excess of work to do at work and a job interview, and my blogging has definitely slacked. On the bright side, I’ve made significant progress on my personal finance 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 ($4,583.62/$5,264.00) - I have enough cash above my emergency fund level of $10,000, but I will wait until I calculated the exact dollar value that will need to go into my individual 401k. As of right now I consider this goal completely funded. I was able to make so much progress this month because I sold my Target stock. I wanted to take my taxable investments and turn them into tax sheltered investments.
• Fully fund 2009 Roth IRA ($5,000/$5,000) – Completed in November. My Target stock allowed me to complete this goal. I sold my Target stock at a level that was not much higher than the value when it was gifted to me, which ends up being my cost basis. The taxes I will have to pay on the minimal gain should be covered by my extra deductions for a full year of interest on mortgage payments.

Alternative Income Goals

• Turn blogging into a source of income – In November, I earned $0.00 from Microsoft Pubcenter, $00.00 from LinkWorth and $00 from Commission Junction. My total in October was $00.00. As the year is wrapping up and I am finally being given more and more work to do at my 9 to 5, I have surprisingly less motivation to work on my blogging income. I will continue to post my monthly updates and any personal finance related information that I find interesting, but I will no longer be focused on monetizing this blog. If I earn a commission every now and then I will be happy. So far I have earned a total of $269.03 through affiliate marketing and text ads.
• Increase monthly page views and subscribers – For now I will not be focusing on growing my blog. I will continue blogging about topics that I enjoy and posting my monthly updates. In the future, I do want to finish blogging about asset allocation as I change my current investments from target retirement funds, into a researched and tailered allocation. I suppose I will have to consider this goal a failure for 2009, but my interests have just changed since the beginning of the year.
• 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 – There are no new trips scheduled for this year. For work I should be traveling to Europe and/or Japan in the beginning of 2010, which should more than make up for the less than interesting cities I’ve visited in 2009.
• Get in shape – The colds have hampered my running for the past few weeks, but I before the colds I had a nice workout schedule. I hope to get back to that schedule. I also hope to add in some swimming. Get in shape is such an arbitrary goal. I know I set a specific weight goal that I would have liked to get to in 2009. I will attempt to get to that weight in 2010. I also might set a goal to do a triathlon, which should really put me in great shape.

I can’t believe how quickly my interests have changed over the past month or two. I just haven’t had the time or motivation to accomplish everything that I wanted to. I am extremely happy with my personal finance goals, which were the most important in my mind. I will have to think long and hard about my goals for 2010 to avoid these dead goals that I have no motivation to fulfill.