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2020 Goals and Resolutions

January 8, 2020 by Lazy Man 5 Comments

New Year's ResolutionsWe’re solidly into 2020 now, most people have their resolutions set and are working on them. Last year, I didn’t get them done until late February. This year I’m already ahead of the game as I have most of them outlined.

Outlined is the operative word. I don’t them fully organized. Hopefully by the end of the month, I can put them into a pretty spreadsheet like Joe from Retire By 40 does. For now, I’m just happy to have several areas to work on and have them broken into months.

Here we go (in no particular order):

Lazy Man and Money Goals

I have a lot of goals with this blog. I need to put more of a priority than I have on it over the last few years. I’m doing so much other stuff that it’s been difficult. I can be more efficient with my time. Here are some things I’m looking at:

Content Audit

With 14 years of blogging now, I’ve got a lot of old articles that frankly aren’t very good. Blogging in 2006 was about expressing an idea quickly. It wasn’t about having a fully polished article that you might read in a magazine. The idea was to get feedback and begin a discussion. Nowadays, this is happening on Twitter and Facebook. Blogging nowadays is about having a full polished article of more than 2000 words. Many of my articles in 2006-2007 were about 300-400 words.

A content audit is when a publisher goes back and looks at the old articles and says, “Is this still useful today? Is it polished? Can I make this better?” I need to do this with all my old articles. It would be very unusual if I didn’t learn anything over the last 14 years, so I should be able to make the articles better. One example of this is my article on investing in condo hotels.

For 2020, I’d like to pick one year each month and do a content audit on it. It’s a very aggressive goal to tackle a whole year of content in just one month, but anything is an improvement. Maybe in 2021, I do it all over again. With only 12 months to the year, I won’t get to the full 14 years of content, but the last year or two of content is modern enough.

Get Active in Social Media

I’m active on Twitter. I’d love to grow my 6,500 followers to 10,000, but I’m not actively researching how to do it. Maybe one month in 2020, I will look up ways to grow your Twitter account. That seems reasonable even if the research doesn’t lead to any action and nothing comes of it.

I’d prefer to learn more about Pinterest. I’ve outsourced my Pinterest account in the past, but it seems impossible to retain anyone. Also, it usually costs hundreds of dollars a month, and I’m not sure I’m able to get a return on that spending. I was hoping to hire someone who could guarantee me results or at least make it a significant part of the payment, but everyone rejected me. It seems that many Pinterest specialists don’t believe in themselves to drive traffic.

I’d also like to do more with Instagram and Facebook. I don’t do much with them now so this would be a low bar to reach.

Since there are about four services, I expect to spend a quarter of the year rotating through them month-to-month with my focus.

Other Lazy Man and Money Stuff

I need to do some design upgrades. I’m not sure how relevant my Feedburner number is considering it was shut down in 2012.

I also need to reach out to more bloggers to collaborate with them. I’ve already started on that with a few. My goal is to do something with 3-5 bloggers a month – hopefully a lot of new ones who I don’t necessarily talk to on social media.

Finally, I’d like to publish 100 articles here this year. That’s two a week, which will be difficult, especially if I’m guest posting on other sites. At Retireby40, Joe uses an academic system, where if he get 85 he’ll give himself a B. I think I’ll adopt the same here, because I don’t think I’ll get an A+ on this due to vacations and other life interruptions.

Health

It wouldn’t be a New Year’s Resolution without something related to health, right?

Diet

This year, I’ve created a spreadsheet of several different healthy activities that I can do or could do. There a diet side with things like intermittent fasting, eat one low/no-carb meal, have one of my super protein shakes, etc. It’s any one thing that’s in my extreme diet. For the last several years I wouldn’t do any of them in a typical day, so if I can get one of them for most days, I’ll be doing well.

Body/Exercise

On the other side of the spreadsheet, I have a list of body/exercise items. They include things like running, weights, push-ups, and even brushing/flossing/flouriding. I count the teeth and the push-ups as half points. That way, even if it’s raining and I can’t make it to the gym, I should still be able to do push-ups and take awesome care of my teeth. Like the diet items above, I hadn’t been the best of doing this in 2019, so tracking and scoring points should motivate to do more.

Overall, I’d like to end 2020 having ran a 5K with a stretch goal of running 5 miles. I’d also like to lose 20-25 pounds to get my BMI in a healthy range. I had ballooned up over the holidays, but so far I’m down 5 pounds. Losing weight is always a difficult one, but hopefully my spreadsheet of diet and exercise keeps me accountable. That will also make it easier to run a 5K.

Declutter

Last year, I aimed to declutter one area of the house each month. I was successful only half the time with this. Half is better than nothing and despite adding more stuff as we always seem to do, things are less cluttered than they were a year ago. That goal is the same this year.

In addition to that, I’m adding two more decluttering plans:

  1. Post 5+ items on Ebay/Craigslist/Facebook Marketplace/etc. a month – My wife has been doing this in the past, but I need to contribute. I don’t know if the things I post will sell, but that’s the goal over time.
  2. Do a browser tab declutter 3x a month – I have been known to keep hundreds of browser tabs open. That’s simply not useful. I need to take a few hours a month and just trim down all the old stuff that I thought would be interesting “one day.”

Productivity

I’m still working on what I want to do for this section. The only thing I do know is that the Pomodoro Technique works well for me, but I struggle to keep using it. I want to measure how many days I can do it each month. If I can do it 20 times a month, it would be almost perfect since I wouldn’t use it on the weekends.

Kids

Usually, I have a bunch of things that I want the kids to learn. This year they are getting old enough to tell me what they want to do… and that they don’t want to do some things. The six year old is usually open to anything, while the 7 year old is starting to become very picky.

One of my goals is to stress more coding toys. I think we must own every robot or kids computer course by now. I think some of it is starting to work, but it’s a little slow going at this age. I was happy to find this Artie 3000 which teaches Logo, perfect for kids this age.

We’ll have to see what else we can do.

Money Goals

Since this website is all about money, you’d think I would have a lot of money goals. Unfortunately, I do not. Our savings are largely tied to the stock and real estate markets. I don’t think it makes sense to create a goal around something you can’t control.

We’ll do the usual saving and investing like we do every year. That’s not much of a goal since it’s been on autopilot for so long.

This year, I’d like to get an estate plan and all the documents that go with it together. I’ve tried to do this in the past, but I ran into blockers that didn’t make it possible. (I’m not going to get into specifics of why.)

One money goal is to make $75,000 working from home. I came close to that in 2019, falling just 10-20% short. Maybe I can find one more freelancing gig or something else that I can monetize. That’s a reasonable goal, right?

Special Projects

Every year, I have a few long term projects of things that I’d like to do. I have quite a few things that I think are interesting, but none that excite me. That means it’s going to be difficult for me to prioritize them. However, here are a few and hopefully, I can put more thought into this by the first report in February.

  • Create a Long-term Bucket List – It seems like bucket lists come natural to other people. They want to swim with dolphins or hike in Australia. I don’t have too many of these things. Maybe it’s because I simply don’t enjoy travel. Maybe it’s because traveling with young kids isn’t easy. I should be able to come up with some things though, right? Maybe there’s a website of crowdsourced bucket lists where I can get ideas.
  • Improve my Japanese – In 2019, I completed around 250 consecutive days of Japanese with Duolingo. As impressive as that sounds, I can’t say much. I need to spend more than 5 minutes a night and it wouldn’t hurt to use other tools like those suggested by Adam at MinaFi. At the same time, I’m not passionate about learning Japanese. The 5 minutes a night may be a good way to make slow, gradual improvements over a long time, which suits me just fine.
  • Create a YouTube Channel – This is the one I’m most passionate about. I want to learn how to film and edit video. (If you have suggestions on how to best do this on Windows, please leave a comment). I have two child actors, age 6 and 7 who would love to put on productions. I like the idea of them getting more comfortable in front of a camera. I don’t think we’ll make a channel that brings in significant money, but learning the skills can only help us all in the future.
  • Self Publish a Book – I have 3 or 4 ideas of books that I think would do really well. I’m not sure if I’m ever going to have the time to put it all together especially with all the work I want to do for Lazy Man and Money. However, it would be good to have a product to sell on the site. It would help with my income goals.

Final Thoughts

There’s a lot here, more than enough to keep me busy for a year. I’m not sure how it’s going to go, but I’m banking on the monthly updates keeping me going.

So far, I’ve done well on most of the health goals this year, but I’ve fallen behind on everything else. I think it may be because I have that part of my spreadsheet set up and little else. The accountability is easy. We haven’t had a day yet this year where someone in the house wasn’t sick, so my schedule has been off.

Filed Under: Goals Tagged With: 2020, financial goals

How To Be A Smart Investor In Any Investment Environment

October 1, 2009 by Lazy Man 5 Comments

[I’ve been a little backed up with my busy schedule of floating in the ocean and hotel pool in Aruba. Oh, and it’s not like the steak here is going to eat itself. So while I get back to that, enjoy this guest post from fellow Money Writer, The Digerati Life.]

Now that the stock market has recovered somewhat, do you feel a bit less satisfied about your high interest savings accounts and your high interest checking accounts? If you were one of many people who’ve decided to shelter your money into cash accounts earning 1% to 2% returns in recent months, you may now be wondering what to do next. Even the best cd rates may no longer be holding the same allure they had a mere few months ago.

While things look much better on the surface, the underlying fundamentals aren’t too rosy just yet. The economy is recovering but its health hasn’t been fully restored. So I thought to weigh in on a few tips for those who are aching to jump back into the market right now.

  1. Watch your debt first – Before you take on the additional risk of investing in the stock market, make sure that you take care of your debts first. In particular, work to pay down your credit card, perhaps by moving your balance into low interest credit cards or by using balance transfer credit cards with low rates. Just make sure you wipe out your debt before the promotional period is over. If you’ve got other debts on your plate such as student loans or a car loan, make sure you can address these obligations first and that you’ve got the cash flow and funds to cover these before you decide to make big moves in the market.
  2. Reevaluate your entire investment portfolio. – During the downturn, a lot of investors were afraid to check with their online stock brokers and mutual fund companies for fear of seeing the damage inflicted upon their investments. I was one of those people who was afraid to look. Well, now is an opportune time to review the status of your investments and to find out if indeed, it makes sense to wade into the market right now. If your asset allocation is out of whack, it would be a decent excuse to rebalance your portfolio to restore its original allocation. Otherwise, I’d be careful to do any market timing moves based solely on an emotional decision.
  3. Reassess your financial goals – Are your investments in the market still helping you stay on target towards your financial goals? Here’s an example when your goals should influence what you should do next: if you’ve got a child who’s ready to go to college soon, and you’ve got his or her college fund in stocks, then I would think about moving those funds out of riskier assets right about now to prevent this from being jeopardized by the volatility in the markets.
  4. Seek long term growth not short term profits – A lot of investors make the mistake of becoming too myopic about their investments. They’re parked by their discount broker, watching their money like a hawk, obsessing about every move their stocks make. I think doing this can only affect your portfolio negatively, since focusing on short term movements can only disturb or excite you, potentially causing you to make rash moves based on emotional decisions you make. By looking ahead at the long term, you’ll keep your mind on investment strategy rather than fall prey to fickle emotions that could only spell trouble for your investments.
  5. Keep track of current events – Knowing what’s going on with our economy and the financial state of affairs of our nation and the rest of the world can help us gauge trends. While it’s a good idea to keep our eye on the long term, it’s also wise to be aware of what’s going on. I keep tabs on the markets to see if there are opportunities that come up that I can participate in. When prices are down and people are glum, there are many opportunities that may present themselves to savvy investors.

Filed Under: Investing Tagged With: Credit, debt, financial goals

2008 Goals: A Look Back

December 31, 2008 by Lazy Man 9 Comments

Yesterday I got a little ahead of myself as I looked at my blogging goals for 2009. I should have realized that with the dwindle hours of 2008, I should be looking back at my goals for 2008, and adjusting from there. I haven’t looked at them in a little while – a really bad sign. If I had to guess, Clubber Lang would hit it on nose with his famous line of, “My prediction?… Pain!”

My 2008 goals were complex. I had just left my full-time job in October of 2007 and was unsure if I was going to take another one, or go all out with the idea of earning online income. As fate would have it, I ended up doing a little bit of both. I didn’t have a full-time job all year, but I did consult at an hourly wage. This consulting slowed down some of the gains I might have had if I went for all-out online income. At the same time, I definitely spent major hours on earning online income. I’m going to use my goals as if I was going all-out for online income – I had enough time even after my consulting to hit those goals.

Goals for 2008

Financial Goals
Net WorthAlternative Income
2008 Predicted2008 Actual2008 Predicted2008 Actual
$250,000$143,176$5,000/mo.$2,235/mo.
Career Goals
Software DevelopmentBusiness Skills
2008 Predicted2008 Actual2008 Predicted2008 Actual
500 hours0 hours2 books each category2 books total
Health
WeightBody Fat
2008 Predicted2008 Actual2008 Predicted2008 Actual
175 lbs.176 lbs.17% body fat19.15% body fat
Websites
Lazy Man and MoneyLazy Man and Health
2008 Predicted2008 Actual2008 Predicted2008 Actual
55,000 mo. visitors/4,000 subscribers~40,000/~310020,000/1,000~7,000/300

Reviewing the Goals

  • Net Worth – I have to give myself a D- on this one. Why not an F when I was so far off? It’s simply that my net worth is largely tied to real estate that I own and stocks that I have invested in for retirement. When 70% of your portfolio loses some 30% of it’s value – it’s going to be pain. I couldn’t have done too much differently other than moving out of stocks to something safer, but I don’t believe in timing the market. For the real estate, I could have sold, but I would have locked in big losses. I’ll continue to break even on a cash flow basis by renting it out and in a short 26 more years, own it outright ;-). A better goal would have been the income which brings us to…
  • Alternative Income – I thought I’d see a lot more growth the income growth my websites. I have to admit that I didn’t do the best to monetize my sites, which is something that I’ve mentioned in the past. The landscape of monetizing websites has changed dramatically in the last year – some things for the better and some for the worse. For that reason, I would probably give myself a D+. I missed my targets by a lot, but with consulting (which is not alternative income), I probably came close.
  • Software Development – I completely underestimated my lack of desire to ever write software programs again. I used to enjoy the challenge and felt great about solving problems, now I just want the problem solved, so that I can move on to the next thing/goal on my list.
  • Business Skills – I was going to personal MBA, but found that almost none of the books were in my local library. If they were carried at all, they were all checked out far in advance. I got a couple via Paperback Swap, but it took so long to get that I lost interest. Plus I had a pile of personal finance books that people sent me to read. I think I did well by reading a few Malcolm Gladwell books (of which I still need to write reviews for). On the flip side, doing the consulting gave me some hands-on business skill experience.
  • Health – My wife isn’t going to believe it, but I’m actually in a little better shape this year using my two metrics. The Wii Fit taunted me last night saying that my BMI was just barely in the “overweight” category. While I didn’t reach my health goals, I feel that I had a pretty good exercise regimen for much of the year. It feel apart with a long trip to Australia, but I’ve since joined a gym and I’ve seen progress over the last month.
  • Website traffic – I actually passed the 55,000 for Lazy Man and Money a few times. I also got to around the 18,000 for Lazy Man and Health a couple of times. I didn’t average those numbers, nor did I finish the year hitting those numbers. (I find December a tough month for Internet traffic with the holidays and people traveling.)

Conclusion: Jimmy Fallon may say that my progress over the last year had something in common with Derek Jeter… I “suck in three very specific ways: so hard, so bad, and wicked bad.” I can explain away a lot of the problems that I had, but it doesn’t make it better. Perhaps my goal setting was poor to begin with. Perhaps, I should have chosen shorter milestones such as a quarter. In that scenario, I would have at least realized that I wasn’t likely to do any software development. There would have also been times when I might have reached my health and website traffic goals. I may have also realized that setting a net worth is extremely difficult when your assets can fluctuate wildly on factors that you can’t control.

These are all lessons I have learned for when I make my 2009 goals

Filed Under: Goals Tagged With: business skills, career goals, clubber lang, financial goals, software development business

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