In order to stay on top of my goals and remind myself where I’m going, I am revisiting my 2012 goals and taking a look at my progress so far.
After getting married in Q2, things have slowed down significantly. Our home has come together a bit, there have been fewer unexpected expenses, and I’m getting a slightly clearer pictures of where I’ll be at the end of the year.
Here are my goals and my progress.
1. Start Two New Side Ventures
Last quarter, I reported that I had 1/2 of a side venture built, but was still looking to fine-tune it to see if it would be sustainable.
Well, this has had some ups and downs. I was able to make several hundred from it, but then it fell flat on it’s face. I could envision it ramping back up again, but I do not think it’s sustainable. Still, there’s nothing wrong with a side venture that pulls in a couple hundred dollars every couple of months! It’s out of my control in the short-term, I simply don’t have the time to do all the testing I need. Maybe I should hire someone to do it for me?
Definitely going to fail this one. But it was probably a lot to ask for, I’m glad that I keep trying things with little investment.
2. Double My Side Income from 2011
This was totally crazy. No complaints, but there’s no way this is going to happen. If I’m lucky I’ll reach where I was last year, but it seems like things have slowed down a lot over the past few months and the opportunities I counted on earlier in the year simply aren’t there. There are many external factors, but the last week or two have shown promise, so maybe the fourth quarter will be kinder to me.
3. Save 60% of My Post-Tax Income
Things started to even out, for the quarter I saved 48% of post-tax income, which isn’t bad, and I think can reach our goal if we try hard. We paid off a lot of our student loans, but I don’t consider that spending, really it’s just savings with a different name. The money was either going to sit in our checking account or be used to pay off the debt.
In the 4th quarter, we’ll be going on our honeymoon, so that’s a big expense that’s easily foreseeable. There’s not much else we have planned, so I think we have a chance of hitting that 60% number for the quarter, and possibly overall, which would be great!
4. Double My Net Worth
I added a ton of student debt (Lauren is now included in these calculations) in the 2nd Quarter, all the way down to -75% from where I was at the beginning of the year.
The good news is that we’re up 26% over the past few months. The bad news is we’re still down 42% overall. So a long long ways to go before we reach the goal, but at the same time, we seem to be making great progress.
Looking forward, the only goal that I may actually hit is saving 60% of our post-tax income. I’m not upset about the prospect of missing the others, I think some of them were not realistic at all and there’s not much that I could have done to control the others, so we’ll just keep plugging away at it!
Readers, How are you doing on your yearly goals? What do you think of mine?
Daniel, Let me say that you are way ahead of the crowd in achieving your goals. Just by tracking your goals, you are constantly reminding yourself of what you want and thinking what is working and what is not. Way to go.
I got a new job which was my number one goal so I would say I have done pretty well for myself. Seems like you are doing awesome given the circumstances.
Great work on the saving of post-tax income. That is a great job for sure.
I do the same things sometimes, where I set lofty goals and then get a little discouraged if something happens to make them unachievable (case in point, adding your wife’s student loan debt, so not being able to double the net worth). Just have to keep in mind, you are moving in the right direction there, and re-assess for next year.