New Year's Money Resolutions Update through February 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:

• January 2006

This is my update for the month ending February 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 February update:

• Net Worth -- My net worth was up 3.3% from the end of December and 0.7% 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. If I keep this pace up, my net worth should be up 20% in 2006 (I'd take it!!!!).
• Giving -- We continued our giving to several projects this month per our budget and even committed to one additional charity.
• Fully Fund 401k -- It happens automatically every month!
• Investment Review -- I have a set of funds I need to sell to get myself down even more after the great progress I made last month. I'll do that in March. One issue I'm facing -- some of the funds I'm in aren't the best, but they still have large capital gains attached to them if I sell, so I'm weighing those issues. (BTW, I've already made $589 on my DIS stock.) ;-)
• Earn Extra Income -- In addition to blog income (which I count but donate to charity), I got paid for some consulting services. Total extra income earned this month: $1,587 Total for the year: $2,966.
• Retirement Number -- No progress made in this area this month.
• Complete Taxes -- Everything was assembled and sent off to my CPA.
• 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 continued to put me mostly on the high end of the goals I set for this year. However I still need to keep growing to hit them (BTW, Site Meter lost my data for one day -- where I had almost 2,000 visitors -- so February took a bit of a hit). ;-(

I'll be reporting on my status with these at the end of every month, so stay tuned to see how I do.

Comments

[John M]

FMF

I enjoy all of your posts about how you got over a quarter million visitors. What motivates you to work so hard to update and maintain this site? I would think there are more profitable ways ( yes I know all profits go to charity) to spend your time if you broke it down to an hourly rate.

[FMF]

John --

What keeps me blogging is probably a post all by itself!!! Keep watching -- I'll try to cover it in the next week or so.