Personal Finance Goals (2009) – version 3

photo credit: Kamal H.

I decided early on in 2009 to define some high level personal finance goals that I wanted to accomplish during the year. Most of these goals are to improve and build my passive income streams with a focus on my site – Passive Family Income. I have a goal to become financially independent in the next 5 – 10 years and these yearly goals will help me reach that longer range goal. I think it is very important to document your goals so that you can stay focused on your long range mission. I also think it is important to update my readers of my status so that I am held accountable for what I publish on this site.

Now that we are into March, I wanted to provide an update on my personal finance goals for 2009. Here is my status as of February 28, 2009.

• Monthly Passive Income
  • Goal – Make $1,000 per month by the end of the year.
  • Status – I recently reported passive income earnings of $243.99 for the month of January. I am close to 25% of my long range goal which is a decent start and a baseline to work from. I still have a lot of work do to in the next several months. I will also be tasked with fighting against a worsening economy which will put downward pressure on my passive income streams.
• eHow Articles
  • Goal – Write 25 eHow articles per month to reach my goal of over 300 articles by the end of 2009.
  • Status – I wrote 21 eHow articles during February – so I fell 4 behind for the month and 7 (wrote 22 articles in January) for the year. I plan to start making up these articles in March by writing 1 article per day to make up 6 articles which is a manageable goal.
• RSS Count
  • Goal – 500 subscribed readers to PFI by the end of 2009 – add 35 per month.
  • Status – As of February 28, 2009, I had 193 subscribed readers which meant I added 56 new subscribers to PFI last month!
• eBook
  • Goal – I plan to write 2 eBooks over the course of 2009.
  • Status – I started my mind map a few weeks ago for an eBook on Trading Options for beginners. I also have created the outline I plan on using and have started writing different sections of the eBook.
• Carnivals
  • Goal – I plan to host at least 2 personal finance carnivals this year.
  • Status – I plan to host my first carnival in the May timeframe.
• New Income Streams
  • Goal – Create at least 5 new passive income streams in 2009.
  • Status – I started writing articles on Today.com this week as a way to build links to my other sites as well as earning some passive income along the way. I also am busy working on going live with a niche blog by the end of March.
• Comments
  • Goal – Respond within 48 hours to most non-spam comments on my site.
  • Status – I tend to respond to comments on PFI during the weekends when I have more time. I still need to make sure I respond sooner and engage my readers.
• Visit Other Sites
  • Goal – Visit at least one new personal finance site per week.
  • Status – I have continued to promote other personal finance sites on my weekly updates post.
• Social Networking
  • Goal – Use Social Networking sites to promote PFI.
  • Status – I have not had a lot of time to promote PFI on these sites but need to start.
• Optimization
  • Goal – Optimize PFI – Average 250 page views per day.
  • Status – I averaged 196 page views per day in February which was a 12% increase compared to the previous month.
• Blog Network
  • Goal – Work with other personal finance bloggers in developing a blog network that focuses on passive income.
  • Status – The group was formed in January/February and we are working to define our goals. I am very excited about this opportunity and can’t wait to share it with everyone.

Please understand that I may add or remove certain goals throughout the year depending on priorities and obviously the worsening economic climate.

How are your personal finance goals coming along for 2009? Has the sour economy forced you to alter your goals for this year?

Tagged as: goals