2010 Financial And Business Goals

2009 January 1

by Kyle

from → Personal Finance

I’ve often heard it said “a goal without a time limit is not a goal.” To that end, last year I made a concrete list of goals for 2009 (you can see the results here). While I didn’t accomplish every single one of my goals last year and I don’t expect I will this year either, it’s always good to have something to work towards. What’s more, recent evidence suggests the simple act of writing a goal down, especially in public, makes it far more likely you’ll actual accomplish it. Why? Being kept accountable. If nobody knows your goal, you won’t catch any flack when you fail. If you publicly announce it, however, you’ll be far more motivated if only to avoid embarrassing yourself. Check out Robert Cialdini’s Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion for a fascinating look at how and why this works. He devotes an entire chapter to it.

Personal Finance Goals

Goal: Grow my net worth by 50%, again
I managed to pull this one off in 2009. It will be much more difficult this year simply because 50% of a larger number is a larger number.

Goal: Earn $120,000 in pre-tax net income
This includes income from my job and online businesses but excludes portfolio income, since I reinvest all dividends anyway. Since I’m unlikely to get a massive raise at work anytime soon and I’m not already earning 6 figures (contrary to popular belief), almost 100% of this burden will be borne by my business activities. I’ll need to have a big year to meet this goal. P.S. you can help me out with this one by linking here often

Goal: Get at least a 10% raise at work
A drop in the bucket, but every bit helps.

Goal: Generate a monthly income sufficiently large to quit my job if I wanted
If I accomplish goal #1 above, this one is pretty much automatic. I’m not saying I would quit my job at that point (I probably wouldn’t, at least not right away), but it would be a nice start. Quitting my day job, of course, is also tied to my next goal:

Goal: Grow my emergency fund to at least $50,000
This is a long shot, since I’ll be investing heavily back into my business. But if my income grows quickly enough, I’d like to divert some of it towards my emergency fund. I wouldn’t dream of quitting my day job without at least $50,000 cash in the bank, which is where I got the number from.

Business Goals

Last year I gave specific traffic numbers and growth rates. Since I’ve proven completely incapable of estimating traffic numbers, I won’t try. Furthermore, the income generated from that traffic is more relevant than the number of visitors or RSS subscribers, and since income seems to be far more stable, I feel more comfortable setting income goals than traffic goals.

Amateur Asset Allocator

Goal: Generate $5,000 in monthly revenue by the end of the year
I feel pretty confident in my ability to reach this goal provided I remain focused. If I slack off like the middle of last year, there’s no way I’ll come anywhere close.

Learn Spanish On Your Own

Goal: Generate $750 in monthly revenue by the end of the year
If I work at it, this goal is easily obtainable. Thing is, this blog is currently my lowest priority. I’m not sure I will be able to devote the amount of attention to it that it deserves. Big question mark here.

Early Retirement Blog

I haven’t officially launched Early Retirement Blog yet (well, I guess I have now) and it currently only has 2 posts on it and gets zero traffic. Still, I have high hopes for it. I envision it being a bit more community-oriented than this blog, complete with a forum and all. We’ll see how it goes.

Goal: Generate $1,000 in monthly revenue by the end of the year
Again, this should be very obtainable provided I’m able to devote enough energy to the task. I can leverage the traffic and authority I already have on the web to kick-start things a bit. All in all, I expect to be able to grow it at least as quickly as I was able to grow this blog.