I love going through my goals and objectives year after year. It gives me an opportunity to really think about the changes that have occurred over the past year and then in the larger scheme of things the past 9 years of keeping this site active. My first annual goals post was way back in January of 2009. I was one year into what turn into a decade+ career, a newlywed, and childless! It is really easy to blink and see how much has changed! Every year I write mostly specific goals that I can act upon. For me, this works a little bit better than the end ‘goal’ being shared, I also think resolutions are more or less bullshit.
In addition to the mostly specific goals, for the past few years I have given myself a lens that should be applied to all the specific goals/objectives. Last year, I specifically stated that I wanted to keep up the intensity that I built up when I told myself in 2016, good is the enemy of great. This year I want to focus on growth through systematic processes. Specifically, I want to build strong foundations in some of the areas below that will last years, if not decades. This is not to take away from the intentional use of the word, ‘intensity’ but rather, my goal is to focus that energy on building something sustainable.
For the past few years I have separated these posts into the following categories:
- Professional Life
- Blogging World
- Online Income World
- Financial Goals
- Personal Life
I think I’ll continue that structure. These goals are to be additional things that I want to get done to grow, not an end all of my responsibilities.
Professional Life 2018 Goals
This is broken down into two parts: my career and my law practice.
My Career
I am one of those odd people that actually really likes his job. I like being here and I think I am fairly compensated. Do I believe I deserve more? Maybe, but who doesn’t? I believe that there are much more important things when it comes to your job than just the money you earn. I don’t actually get those people who hate their job but do nothing about it. My job allows me the flexibility to almost be at any child’s event and I would (and am to a certain extent) give up a lot of possible dollars for that.
With regard to a goal via growth I think my goal in 2018 will be to at least write every single financial planner to see if we can meet to see how I can further integrate into their practice. We recently took over a large office so this will give me the chance to proactively meet those planners that I haven’t had the opportunity to sit down with yet. I want to complete this twice during 2018 – once in September and Once in October.
My Law Practice
I have a very small law practice based solely on referrals, however, this year I want to actively grow it. After receving an unsoliticed referral from facebook I figured it was about time to get into 2014 and get a quick facebook page up.
My goal will be to share an original third party piece every week in 2018. I also need to create a process going forward about following up with completed clients. For the most part my clients are transactional in nature (either a will or buy sell is created and all parties move on), I need to create calendar entries to make sure I am the attorney they think of if anything in their life changes.
Blogging World
I was not particularly active in the personal finance blogging world, nor the dividend investment blogging world. With time constraints from work, side jobs and family something had to go and interacting on other people’s sites were it. I want that to be different in 2018. I am going to make a systematic effort to discover and comment on other sites. My goal will be to provide a meaningful comment on 5 sites each and every week.
As a secondary goal, I want to fix some on site items:
- 5 Posts a week and make sure they have proper headers, an SEO friendly description, featured image where appropriate.
- Once a month run a smushing plugin to make sure all images are appropriately ‘smushed’
- 5 Images a week to make sure their description is appropriate
- Once a month run a broken link plugin
- Set up adsense once again
Online Income World
In addition to MJTM I own 10 or so great personal finance sites with a business partner. A few years ago one of my goals was to write emails to old advertisers and wow that has worked wonders. My goal this year is to be a little bit more active with trying to find new sites to buy. Every two months I would like to actively try and find new sites to buy by just reaching out to a list of prospective sellers.
Financial Goals
I have four financial goals for this year.
The first would be to continue to try and find a rental property to purchase. I looked at a couple properties this year and nothing has seemed to work out. I don’t want the goal to be “buy a rental property” because I am not looking to buy one just to buy one – it has to mathematically make sense. To be honest, I am not sure it’ll ever work out, but we’ll see.
The second is easy. I’d like to buy a small amount of physical gold every month. I am talking a tiny position of $50 to $100 per month. I haven’t found the right way to do it yet, but when I do I am sure I’ll write about it.
The third is a bit more time consuming and complicated with a lot of sub-goals. My undervalued dividend investment portfolio is easily my favorite part of my financial world. I am intrigued by the idea of one day turning off the dividend reinvestment portion and having an income to live off of (it is like the rental income when the mortgage is paid down). So I want to make sure I purchase $500 – $750 of undervalued dividend stocks every month. I would also like to re-do the way I screen for undervalued stocks, if for no other reason, that I am convinced that the current way, or the past way or the future way of doing it is the correct way. This way if I change it up every 9 to 18 months I may end up with different companies that may be considered undervalued. Within this same account I also sell naked puts, covered calls, and bear put spreads – it is my goal to track and share these sells. I think this will help me find my strengths and weaknesses.
I am not rock solid on the fourth goal but I may just put it out there. I am not immune to the crypto currency mania (and absolute bubble). I think my goal is to set up an account and throw a one time $500 investment split between a few of the smaller but still popular currencies. If one hits it may leap frog and cover the rest of the bet. This is a gamble – I am well aware of it. I absolutely believe there is a bubble happening with crypto currencies, but sitting on the sidelines is killing me, so for $500 what the hell, right?
Personal Life
I have been actively going to my crossfit box for the past 18 or so months, and I absolutely love it. My goal this year would be two-fold. One, I want to track my progress more. The box subscribes to Wodify, and so, I want to use it a bit more intentionally. The second goal, would be to participate in more ‘WODs’ that I suck at. I am very good at lifting up heavy things and putting them down aggressively but I absolutely suck at anything with high reps/high cardio – so my goal would be to do more of that in 2018.
Last, and absolutely the most important thing, is time with my family. I don’t have any goals except to continue to be as involved in my kids life as much as I can. In 2017 I was an assistant coach for my son’s soccer team and I loved it! I hope to do that in the spring and fall again. So my goal and objective is to make sure to be present when I am with them and everything else above takes a back seat to that when they are around.
