New Year's Money Resolutions Update through April 2006
At the beginning of the year I committed to several money-related resolutions and promised to track my progress on Free Money Finance. So far, I've posted updates at the end of the following months:
This is my update for the month ending April 2006.
Since I have several resolutions, not every one will need action every month. However, I plan to mention each one every month just to remind myself and all of you what I'm planning to accomplish this year.
Let's get started. Here's my April update:
- Net Worth -- My net worth was up 5.73% from the end of December (on pace to be up 17.3% this year) and 1.41% from last month due primarily to good performance in the stock market. However it did benefit from my regular savings efforts as well as contributions to my 401k as will be the case all year.
- Giving -- We continued our giving to several projects this month per our budget.
- Fully Fund 401k -- It happens automatically every month!
- Investment Review -- I developed a full-year plan for our investments. I sold a few things and allocated the cash to be invested throughout the year.
- Earn Extra Income -- All the extra income I had this month was blog income (which I count but donate to charity). Total extra income earned this month: $1,915. Total for the year: $8,942.
- Retirement Number -- Did lots of research on various methods to estimate our retirement number. You can see some of the options I've been considering at Setting Your Retirement Number.
- Complete Taxes -- Taxes are completed and put to bed. It's just record keeping for the next eight months.
- Get Spouse Up-to-Date on Finances -- No progress made in this area this month.
- Sort Out College Savings -- No progress made in this area this month.
- Update Will -- No progress made in this area this month.
- Credit Check-ups -- No progress made in this area this month.
- Budgeting -- Nothing required until July.
- Insurance Inventory -- Planning on doing this in the summer.
- Blog Goals -- My stats continue to put me on the high end of the goals I set for this year. And I've already reached one of the yearly goals on my high-side estimate -- my comments topped 2,200 for the year due to the Career Intensity giveaway I had going all month. Stats were up in almost every case even while I again (slightly) cut the number of posts I did throughout the month. I'll be making one more round of cuts this month to give me even more time to work on things like site maintenance, alliances, marketing, and the like.
I'll be reporting on my status with these at the end of every month, so stay tuned to see how I do.
Comments