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 2015. They are nearly the same as 2014 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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