Personal Finance Goals (2009) – version 4

Setting personal finance goals provides an opportunity to document and track the status of your finances. They can also help guide you to setting larger personal finance goals that can get you out of debt, create alternative income streams, and much more! Early on this year I laid out my personal finance goals that I wanted to achieve. Most of these goals are centered around my passive income streams that I am working to build as well as goals for PFI. I think it is important to highlight these goals every month so that they are achievable by the end of the year. This set of goals is a working document that I add to each month.

Here is the status of my 2009 goals as of the end of March.

• Monthly Passive Income
  • Goal – Make $1,000 per month by the end of the year.
  • Status – For the first three months of the year I have reported around $250 in passive income earnings each month. This is obviously a long way off as I am only 25% of the way there. However, I still believe that I can reach this goal as I am working hard on several passive income opportunities that have the possibility of paying off several months down the line.
• 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 27 eHow articles during March. Unfortunately two of my articles were deleted from eHow as they didn’t meet the content standards laid out by the organization. I actually disagree with eHow’s decision to purge my articles as I truly felt they were adequate. However, I also understand that they want quality content and no spam on their site which helps the reputation and success of the company. As of March, I am 8 articles off my goal for the year.
• RSS Count
  • Goal – 500 subscribed readers to PFI by the end of 2009 – add 35 per month.
  • Status – As of March 31, 2009, I had 207 subscribed readers which meant I added 14 new subscribers to PFI over the month. I let down some of my efforts for attracting new subscibers which put me well below my goal of 35.
• eBook
  • Goal – I plan to write 2 eBooks over the course of 2009.
  • Status – Unfortunately my planned eBook on Trading Options for Beginners was put on hold during March. Too many things to do and so little time. It is still in the works but I have focused a lot of my time in other areas.
• Carnivals
  • Goal – I plan to host at least 2 personal finance carnivals this year.
  • Status – I will be hosting my first ever carnival – Money Hacks Carnival on May 27, 2009!
• New Income Streams
  • Goal – Create at least 5 new passive income streams in 2009.
  • Status – My first real niche blog went live during March and I am very excited about the potential of this passive income stream. I spent over 20 hours working on getting it up and running and actually have seen some income generated from the site already through AdSense. I have also started creating Squidoo lenses using the One Week Marketing plan created by PotPieGirl.
• Comments
  • Goal – Respond within 48 hours to most non-spam comments on my site.
  • Status – I will be honest that this is not going very well. I really need to get better at this.
• 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 – Nothing new to report – still not using social networking to promote PFI.
• Optimization
  • Goal – Optimize PFI – Average 250 page views per day.
  • Status – I averaged 170 page views per day in March which was a (%10) drop 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 – Not much new to report during March. Look for more on this goal in the coming months.

At this point I am focusing a lot of time and effort on building new passive income streams through One Week Marketing campaigns, niche blogs, and Bum Marketing techniques. In fact, I am combining all three of these strategies into an overall passive income strategy that I believe will pay off down the road. I am in a period of time where a lot of work is going on behind the scenes but I am not seeing any tangible results. I plan to keep using my personal motivation techniques to keep moving towards my long term goals.

How are your personal finance goals coming along for 2009?.

Tagged as: goals