Our Financial Goals and Resolutions for 2008: #1 Fund A Web Startup, #2 Retire

A stretch? Of course I’m pulling your leg with this post title, but if you read on, you may find some semblance of truth somewhere in there…

This is the time when everyone declares what their goals are for the coming year, so I figure I’ll join the crowd on this one.

Last year, I set forth some goals that I hoped to achieve at some point within the year. Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like we did all too well with meeting them spot on, though some progress was made to some degree. But if I were to give ourselves a grade on these matters, it would be around a B-.

All the stuff I write about here is something we expect to address and hopefully complete by year’s end. And when I describe these as “our” goals, I’m referring to the fact that my spouse and I look upon these matters as a joint effort. So how did we fare with last year’s goals and what do we have in store for 2008?

Business

What we thought would take a year to complete has taken over a year and a half to do. It took my spouse and his business partner from August of 2006 through December of 2007 to get their new web site up and running. It took the loss of their stable, relatively well-paying full-time corporate jobs to do it. It also took a good chunk of shared savings (between two households: ours and the business partner’s) to fund and complete.

So far, this web site hasn’t officially launched yet but the url is live. The guys are taking their time doing a lot behind the scenes and planning their next move, which is to raise some sort of outside funding. More tweaking, site design work and user tests are on the way so they’re not quite ready to promote nor market the site at present.

As any start up adventurer will let you know, the journey takes a while to unfold — sometimes taking half a decade to transpire. And as any such entrepreneur in the Bay Area will tell you, success in a start up can go three ways:

1. being able to launch your start up as profitable in its own right
2. getting lucky enough to be bought out by a bigger company
3. or going public

But for now, these outcomes are but distant aspirations for the immediate goal at this time is to work on securing the funds to keep not just the business afloat but the family as well! We’ll be hoping, praying and striving to make it through the year without going too far underwater.

As for me, I had plans to launch a couple more web projects including the development of a Cafepress store and another blog. But due to my perennial excuse of having limited time and energy at this time, I have for now moved these ideas to the back burner. The good news though is that I have been pleasantly surprised by the growth of this site in the past year, and am inspired by other bloggers’ stories to further improve its monetization prospects. What I plan for The Digerati Life is to double its average daily traffic by the end of the year and to double the income it’s made in the past year (to several thousand dollars a month). It would be nice to see subscription numbers go up to 4,000 and for total visitor traffic to hit 1,000,000.

Finance

Our emphasis in the coming year is to improve our income prospects since 2007 saw us with limited cash flow. Our consulting gigs yielded reasonable returns but I’d love to learn new skills in order to take on additional paying projects. It remains to be seen if I will have the bandwidth to pick up Ruby on Rails (the latest “it” technology).

Meanwhile, our investments have fared better than expected and have held on to some gains for the year. We successfully hedged our holdings by building up our international position — it was not as risky a maneuver as we initially planned to do (which was to buy into currencies) and we’re fairly satisfied with the results. For the coming year, we’d be happy to grow our investments in line with market returns. A stretch goal is for us to grow our investments to the point that it offsets the deficits in our savings; since our combined household employment income cannot currently cover our annual expenses, it would be simply wonderful if our investments could grow enough to eke out additional gains beyond just covering those expenses.

In the realm of expenses, budgeting and frugal living, we’ve done much better. Our expenses are lower by around 20% compared to the previous years. We’re much more ultra conscious about our spending and we’re more self-sufficient than we used to be. For example, last year, we relied less on hiring outside help to do home repair work: we ended up doing the jobs ourselves. Plus, we’ve decided to defer many big ticket expenses further into the future such as:

• replacing one of our cars
• getting a new couch
• and taking on various home projects

In 2008, we plan to keep our expenses along the same lines. I doubt we’ll be able to cut any more fat from our budget so I’d be happy if we kept at similar expense levels.

Still to be done because we didn’t make much progress in these areas: IRA and 401K rollovers and account consolidation, estate plan updates and additional life and disability insurance policies. On top of this, further changes in my corporate status will entail changes to our health insurance situation as well. I’m also going to be decluttering our house extensively by selling our stuff to consignment or donating our items, particularly our baby and child specific materials. Lastly, I’m planning to overhaul our money management and bill paying systems. I aim to start using more standard financial software to run our household finances and investments going forward.

Job

Well, one of my biggest goals for the year is something I’ve discussed ad nauseum here: retire from my job. But this is completely dependent on my spouse getting his startup funding that would then pay his salary. Once he gets the salary and the health insurance for the family, then I’m good to go!

Personal

Okay, I failed to meet my goal last year to lose 15 lbs. In fact, I may have gained an additional number of pounds which I refuse to acknowledge by standing on a scale. I had some health issues that prevented me from pursuing a regular exercise schedule and I understand that this is but a lame excuse so I’ll go ahead and just insist that I’ll be doing better this year. I’m sure that when I quit my job, I’ll have more time to focus on my health, emphasize and develop a healthier lifestyle, improve my diet and follow a more rigorous exercise program. Then I expect that 15+ lbs. to magically melt away.

In short, I’d love to end 2008 the same way most people would like it to end: with a healthier physique, a healthier bank account, a less stressful lifestyle and a happy household.

What else is everyone else saying? Here are more goal setting exercises and end of year stories around the web:

• Making Financial New Year’s Resolutions @ Alpha Consumer (thank you Kim for including my resolutions in your writeup!)
• Setting Financial Goals For 2008 @ Five Cent Nickel
• Flexo’s Financial Goals and Resolutions for 2008 @ Consumerism Commentary
• Thanks for 2007 and goals for 2008 @ Mighty Bargain Hunter
• 1st Carnival of Financial Goals: 2008 Resolutions Edition @ Cash Money Life
• Single Ma’s Goals for 2008 @ Single Ma’s Fabulous Financials
• RateLadder 2008 Goals @ Rate Ladder
• Goals for 2008 @ Frank the Financially Savvy Atheist (The F.S.A.)
• 2008 Financial Goals @ Personal Finance Moron
• Financial Resolutions for 2008, Part II @ Queercents
• 10 Goals for 2008 @ Gather Little By Little

 
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