Every year since I started this blog I have created Goals and Objectives for myself, and since I write down those goals and objectives it is only appropriate to actually review and grade myself. I find the process to be a little different than simply giving myself an easy to ignore new year’s resolution. I start with an overarching theme and then apply that theme to different aspects of my life. Last year in my Goals and Objectives post, I wrote that,
[In 2018] 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…my goal is to focus that energy on building something sustainable.
If I am being honest with myself (and if I can’t be honest on my anonymous blog, where can I be?), I’d have to give myself a “C+” for 2018 when it comes to the overarching theme that I tried to instill. As I sit here on December 18, 2018 I don’t feel like I have created any type of systematic processes. Nothing was built in 2018 that can last decades. Yes, there was growth as outlined below, but not in a way that I can give myself a better grade.
Reviewing my Goals and Objectives for 2018
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
Professional Life 2018 Goals
This is broken down into two parts: my career and my law practice.
My Career
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.
Wow did I fail. What’s worse is that I have failed in this goal for a number of years! Hopefully, when I prepare my 2019 goals and objectives I can finally say I have succeeded.
My Law Practice
I have a very small law practice based solely on referrals, however, this year I want to actively grow it. After receiving an unsolicited referral from facebook I figured it was about time to get into 2014 and get a quick facebook page up.
Success. I created a facebook page.
My goal will be to share an original third party piece every week in 2018.
Fail. It just wasn’t done. I shared something here or there, but not in any type of systematic way.
I also need to create a process going forward about following up with completed clients. For the most part my clients are transnational 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.
Fail.
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.
Fail. I would say more often than not, I failed to make comments. Yes, there were a string of successful weeks but it was not systematic by anyone’s definition.
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
Partial Success. More often than not, I would work on multiple posts to make sure they meet current SEO check marks. Could I have done a better job? Of course, but I am going to give this one to me.
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.
Still a success
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.
Success. Once every other quarter my partner and I actively tried to purchase more sites. We often didn’t end up buying anything, but the very fact that we actually emailed sites is a success in my book. While we passed way more often than we bought, we were still able to pick up 1 or 2 sites that didn’t work out and one that was wildly successful.
Financial Goals
I came into 2018 with 4 financial goals:
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.
Absolute Success. My goal was to look for rentals, and I absolutely succeeded in doing so. In fact, this year I was able to share my experience finding a rental home and then ultimately how it did not work out.
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.
Absolute Success. For the first part of the year I was buying small 2.5g bars every month or every 6 weeks, and then I realized I was getting ripped off on buying smaller amounts of gold. From that point on I decided to just save the amount I would have otherwise been spending and then today I purchased one larger 10g bar for my final purchase of the year.
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.
Absolute Success.
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.
Absolute Success. About half way through the year I had the pleasure of reading Acquirer’s Multiple and Magic Formula which looked at the idea of undervalued a bit differently than I had in the past. I have been using that method for the second half of 2018, and will continue to do so through 2019 wherein I’ll take a different view on the topic.
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.
Success. I took a different view on these updates changing them from monthly to quarterly or even semi-annually, but I have been tracking and sharing.
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?
Success but mostly Failure. I followed through with goal but it almost seems like I bought at the exact top of the market! Since buying my tiny, tiny piece of the bitcoin mania it is down 80% or so. I only lost a few hundred dollars so I am not complaining, but it is more the anger I have with myself succumbing to the mania.
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.
Failure.
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.
Success. I have actively chosen work outs that I know I’ll be terrible at.
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.
Absolute Success. I get home almost every night in time for dinner and homework. After that we have a fantastic routine until both kids go to bed. I am well aware that one day they are going to turn their nose up at hanging out with dad, so until that happens I feel like it is my responsibility to be there!
Overall View of 2018
2018 was an amazing year, but expensive year. I was able to travel to Mexico with the kids for what seems to be our annual vacation (Disney, ugh, is next year), Ireland with just The Wife for our 10 year anniversary, and then Atlanta with my kids for a falcons game. Throw in the usual one or two day trips and we had a packed year! But I wouldn’t trade it for money (actually, I clearly didn’t trade it for more money in the bank).
I know it is a cliche statement, but the year really did fly by!
After completing this post, I am pretty pumped to start writing my 2019 Goals and Objectives!
