Grabbing the Moon AND the Stars, My 2015 Goals

Grabbing the Moon AND the Stars - My 2015 Goals - Super Moon

Finding the right set of goals is difficult. You want to be able to measure your progress, experience the push and stretch of obtaining, all while making sure they are somewhat reasonable. For example, I could tell you that I wanted to earn $25,000 of passive income over this course of this year. Unfortunately, this is far from the realm of possibility given my current income and investments. So after much thought, I’ve put together my goals for this coming year. They are nearly the same as last year in type, but the quantities are different, with a bonus goal or two tossed in for good measure.

Passive Income Goals

In 2014, I was able to generate $3,347.97 of passive income across my two major investment types, peer to peer lending and dividend income. Pretty spectacular if you ask me, however this is but a small step in the direction of financial independence, so even though I missed all of my goals last year, I am going to again set the bar high, as I don’t want there to be any easy goals.

Interest Income: New this year is tracking the interest income my wife and I earn on our savings accounts. While not too serious, after some consideration it deserves its place at the table. My wife and I have very different levels of risk tolerance. Personally, a few thousand bucks buffer in both checking and savings would be good for me, however she is much more conservative. Part of our arrangement when we got married was to find a balance between our two perspectives and maintaining a high cash savings was the finalized agreement. As time goes on, we will likely modify the total number (it’s been modified a couple of times already), but either way, I anticipate us having some substantial cash reserves throughout the course of 2015.

One other reason I expect this to stay high is we are preparing for some serious home renovations in a couple of years, and are building a bigger buffer to pay for these updates.

  • 2015 Interest Income Goal: $325

Peer to Peer Lending (Marketplace Lending): I’ve added the name Marketplace Lending as this is becoming the new title for the industry. As it becomes less peer-driven due to popularity and the vast majority of investment platforms exclusive to high net worth or institutional investors, the regular Joe is less an integral part of the equation. However, that isn’t going to slow me down. I have plans to begin adding some capital to my Lending Club and Prosper accounts regularly. My capital additions will be limited by how fast the money can be invested, but overall I will look to expand my net interest income significantly over this past year’s mark of $1,808.32 combined.

  • 2015 Lending Club Goal: $1,800
  • 2015 Prosper Marketplace Goal: $525
  • Total Marketplace Lending Income: $2,325

Dividend Income: From 2013 to 2014, my dividends received increased by over 53% year over year. Impressive for sure, but this year I’m planning on even bigger gains. Without a doubt, this will likely be the biggest stretch goal of all of the financial goals. Requiring a significant amount of contributions, I am planning on increasing my dividends received over 78% this year over 2014. Let’s see what we can make happen!

  • 2015 Dividends Received Goal: $2,750

As a bonus goal, I am going to also set a target for forward 12-month dividends. This is the first time I’ve added this goal, so we shall see how close I come to hitting the mark.

  • 2015 Forward 12-Month Dividend Goal: $3,000
Passive Income Goals Summarized

If you total up all the financial goals above, you’ll see I’m targeting $5,400 of truly passive income this coming year, or $450 per month. This would pay for the cable bill, utilities, and cell phones with no problem. Not a bad place to be at all, especially when you consider that I only earned $3,347.97 of passive income in 2014. Let that snowball grow!

In my recap of 2014, I mentioned I earned about $1.61 of passive income as an hourly wage. If I’m able to hit the goals set above, this mark will be dangerously close to $2.60 per hour, which is a tremendous increase. To think for every hour I’m earning income at work, I’m getting a bonus wage of potentially $2.60 per hour is fantastic! I am really excited to see if I can make this happen, and am really looking forward to tracking this progress with all of you each month.

Online Endeavor Goals

As I am just a couple of weeks away from my two-year mark here at Write Your Own Reality, it gets scary realizing that I’m almost an ol’ timer in the blogging industry. In just these past couple of years I’ve seen numerous bloggers come and go. While I haven’t been the most consistent blogger with a hiatus in each of the last two years, I am hopeful that this year will be a bit different given my more relaxed posting schedule and better time management.

Blog Pageviews: A somewhat arbitrary goal, and one that can only be controlled by you the readers, I am putting this out there as many folks have responded letting me know how much they enjoy the voyeuristic view of the readership of this blog. During 2014, even given a nearly three-month absence last summer, I was able to reach 63,486 of pageviews, and average of 5,291 per month. This year, I’d like to push the envelope a bit higher and nearly double my readership.

  • 2015 Blog Pageviews Goal: 120,000

Blog Posting Goals: While not as fun to track as pageviews or passive income, this goal is really for me to work hard on ensuring regular content is hitting the site each and every month. My pageview goal will be categorically impossible without this goal getting hit, so ultimately this is the one that is more important. While I’m not setting a particular number of posts that must be published each month, I am mandating that I do post each month. If I’m able to accomplish this goal, I’ll have extended the streak to 18 months, which is a far cry better than what I’ve experienced the last couple months. This will be difficult for me, as I’ve got quite a lot on my plate, at work, grad school, home, and in life in general.

  • 2015 Blog Posting Goal: Publish At Least One Post Every Month of the Year

The Stretch Online Goal: Get off my butt and finish preparing my second online project and actually launch the site. I’ve been slowly, and I mean s-l-o-w-l-y, putting together a second site. I need to get off my butt and finalizing some work on it and get the ball rolling. It is something I’m excited about, but have not really pushed myself to get things launched. There will be more to come on this as things begin to move forward and progress actually gets made.

Aggressively Pursuing Freedom, One Dollar at a Time
Goal Type
Goal
Interest
$325
Lending Club
$1,800
Prosper Marketplace
$525
Dividends Received
$2,750
Forward 12-Month Dividends
$3,000
Blog Pageviews
120,000
Months Posting
All 12!

I’m thrilled with the progress I made this past year, and believe that moving forward things are really going to begin taking off for my wife and I financially. This blog tracks just a portion of our financial house, but boy is it the most exciting portion. I love talking about, tracking, and sharing ideas with this great community, and I couldn’t be more thankful for the support, interaction, and readership all of you provide. Here is to a great 2015, where we nail our goals and continue to aggressively pursue our dreams.

As always, feel free to check out all the relevant pages on this site located at the top. If you’d love to follow along with my progress, and receive notifications of each post, please subscribe below. No spam, no selling, just fresh new content as it hits the site.

Flickr: davejdoe

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Comments

  1. Very realistic goals. Love to idea of peer to peer lending bridging gaps skipping the bank entirely. Waiting on Canadian options to show up!

    Good luck with 2015 and grind on!

    • AG, both realistic, yet also goals that will stretch me to add a bunch of capital to these accounts. As for P2P in Canada, it will happen at some point, just a matter of time.

      Appreciate the well wishes and support.

  2. WYOR,
    I see you’ll be starting to track forward 12-month dividends. That’s primarily what I track now, but this year I’ll be adding monthly investment income tracking, and possibly setting a goal for that too. Good luck this year!
    -RBD

  3. Good looking goals there. I especially like the comment about your wife being less of a risk taker towards investing. My wife is EXACTLY the same way and therefore we also have a decent chunk of savings sitting around collecting interest. I got my wife involved by telling her to go into the bathroom, look at the back of all the products she uses (shampoo, skincare, makeup, cleaning, etc) and see what company makes those products. It was overwhelmingly Proctor & Gamble so the next day, we bought PG. She gets a kick out of it now when I’m blogging and always asks “How’s my stock doing?” and it is amazing. We are also looking to do some remodeling this year and next before we start to have kids so our lives are shocking very similar. I’ll definitely help get you closer towards your blogging goals. Keep up the good work!

    • Funny how you can find people in similar situations and life circumstances. Obviously I can relate to you and your wife as we have similar situations. Over the years our communication regarding investments has matured and evolved, and I’m sure it will for you as well.

      I’m glad to have you as a reader and a fellow blogger. Going to be a great year!

  4. These are great realistic goals you have for 2015. The 12 month forward looking dividend goal is a great idea.

    • The 12-month forward dividend goal is a nice way to balance out the dividends received goal. Same portfolio, one metric being historic and one being forward-looking. Should be a blast working towards these goals this year.

      Thanks for stopping by and reading Tawcan!

  5. Great list of goals for the year. IT will force you t push yourself, but they are all within reach. I am jealous that you are able to engage in P2P lending, as we are prohibited in Ohio. Diversification of income sources is phenomenal, and i am excited that you are focusing on increasing both revenue streams during the year. You will hit $450/month before you know it.

    Just don’t stop pushing yourself. 2015 will fly by and I wish you the best of luck along your journey.

    Bert. One of the Dividend Diplomats

    • Bert, I’d imagine sooner rather than later you’ll have some level of access to P2P Lending. I know I’m happy to be a position to invest and plan on maximizing my opportunity to continue to do so. I’d love to add a strong third stream of income to this, but we shall see what happens.

      Pushing myself is certainly the name of the game. Thanks for sharing your thoughts!

  6. roadmap2retire says:

    Some nice goals there, w2r. Looking forward to following your progress thru the year.

    Best wishes
    R2R

  7. Great goals, w2r! I think they’re stretching but doable — looking forward to following your progress this year! $2.60/hour of extra income would be amazing.

    Take care
    FerdiS

    • Certainly going to be a stretch, but it isn’t fun if we aren’t pushing ourselves. Glad to have you following along on this journey.

      Best of luck on your own goals during this year!

  8. Enjoyed the peek into your world. The focus on the income rather than the capital value will hopefully make stock volatility more bearable. I only wish there were some more favorable valuations in the stock market.

    • Bryce, great to see you still following along! I hope everything is still going well for you at P2P Picks. Valuations have certainly been a challenge, but you buy where you see value and over time things will come in and out of favor allowing one to improve their selections and asset allocations.

      Thanks for commenting!

  9. All nice goals to follow. However, I would have liked to read more about how you plan on reaching these goals. Maybe for another post? ;-)

  10. W2R,

    Great set of goals up there. Encompasses multiple sources of income as increasing your readership will probably also increase your online income. Hitting all the angles. :)

    Best of luck, my friend. I know you’re going to give it 100%!

    Cheers.

    • DM, the more passive income the better, no matter what the source. As for any income from the blog, the main goal is to continually cover my hosting expenses, which I’ve been fortunate to do and then some. Moving forward who knows what will happen, but I’m thankful for the experience and community, which are the real benefits of this endeavor.

      Great to have you stop by, and best of luck to us both in the coming year!

  11. Great list of goals!

    How long have you been blogging for? You mentioned you were able to get around 63,486 page views in 2014. Just trying to get a reference point on how long that took as I am a new blogger as of September of 2014.

    Cheers!

    • I’ve actually been blogging for two years come February, but my blogs growth has been stymied as a result of taking some extended breaks in posting. Needless to say, I’m probably not the best means of comparison. There are tons of ways to market and grow a blog or site, and if you push hard, you’ll certainly see some success. Content and consistency are ultimately the key to growing your readership.

      Best of luck as you continue to write and expand your online presence in 2015.

  12. W2R, congrats on a solid year. That’s some nice dividend income for 2014. All the best for 2015!

  13. Good luck on your 2015 goals W2R! Enjoy the ride!

  14. My boyfriend and I definitely have different risk tolerances as well. I’m curious to hear how you and your wife move forward with combining your finances, as that’s something that I’ve been thinking about lately. Do you plan to fully combine or just your marital earnings combined? Good luck in 2015 – it’s going to be a great year!

    • Leigh, the risk tolerance thing is certainly something that all couples need to work through at one point or another. We have completely combined our finances in essence, but practically, there are still some accounts with just one name on it. We do not view things separately, even pre-martial assets, and our monthly net worth statement includes all of our assets combined. As for our handling of risk tolerances, knowing we were combining things, we sat down and had a few frank conversations (took multiple ones) to hammer out an arrangement that made us both comfortable. As we’ve gone on, there have been changes to the agreed upon structure, but they are required to be agreed upon by both of us and are often initiated by my wife, who is the more risk-adverse of the two of us. It has worked out well. Since we are both fairly frugal by nature, it really was a cash balance and investment allocation conversation as opposed to a spending/not spending issue, which is another animal entirely.

      In your case, you make a tremendous amount of money and depending on the income disparity with your SO, maintaining some separation might provide you a level of comfort. However, this is never a requirement and really something that is specific to the two of you. For us, I handle all the finances, so it just makes sense for everything to be combined.

      Best of luck in 2015 and with your pending nuptials!

  15. Those are some awesome goals! I’m specifically interested in what your second site will be about.

    Of course the dividend and passive income goals are amazing as well. It’s really motivating to see how many different sources of income you will be working on this year.

    Good luck with 2015! I’ll definitely be following along!

    F2R30

    • In due time! Life will be pretty insanely busy these next couple of months, so it will likely be the end of the first quarter or so before things get rolling.

      As for the varied income streams, I can only say the more, the merrier. Diversification is important to me, and types of investments are no different.

      I’m glad you’ve stopped by and best of luck to you as well, F2R30.

  16. Hi W2R,

    Nice goals and good luck for 2015! Anything over 5K+ in dividends is awesome!

    Best,
    PIM

  17. Great set of goals. P2P lending is something that I need to start looking into more closely in order to expand and diversify the passive income options. My dividend received and projected dividends are in the same range as yours. It will be nice to track our progress through the course of the year.

    • Thanks DGJ! We are indeed fairly close in the dividends category, however you’ve been accelerating ahead with some of your more recent capital additions! I will have to work harder to keep up. One thing I’m working on balancing is my capital additions to my P2P lending accounts, as I really want to push the interest received in those accounts up this year. If you have questions as you investigate P2P lending, let me know!

      Thanks for stopping by and sharing your thoughts! We will tackle this year together!

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