Blogging and Personal Goal Setting for the 2012 New Year

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With this being a new year and all, I’ve decided to lay out some personal goals for my life in general and blogging goals for My Personal Finance Journey during 2012. I have also added a reminder on my Outlook calendar to track our progress pertaining to these goals each month (or as often as I have time for anyway!).

As I experienced in 2011, (click the following link to view my 2011 blogging goals and year-end progress updates) by tracking these goals each month, it provides us with more accountability and visibility to what we are doing and where we want to go with this community/blog and in my life.


As is the case with many things in life (including my 2012 financial goals which I laid out recently), a good portion of my blogging goals are long-term commitments requiring attention in each passing year. As such, you might see many similar goals that I was trying to or did achieve in 2011 listed for 2012. I am perfectly fine with having some of the same goals year-to-year, provided that I believe in the causes they represent (which I ponder each year, and all of the ones listed below definitely do meet that criteria!). Nevertheless, I’ve tried to call attention to completely new blogging goals for 2012 by highlighting them in bold red text for easier reading. 

In addition, my personal goals for 2012 are as follows:

1. Get to bed at midnight and wake up earlier, instead of staying up until 2 am working on various projects.
2. Take 1 day off per week (Saturday or Sunday) completely from doing work on my blog or from my graduate research job to keep my mind feeling more “fresh.”
3. Become better at following the Getting Things Done email/workflow management system to focus my time and energy on high value projects first and avoid distractions. 

• Towards the end of 2011, I started getting between 100-200 emails total per day relating to blogging and communications from my graduate research job. 
• When I used to have a full time engineering job, I had a totally separate computer and email account that would not even allow me to access my home email (which I saw as a very good thing). However, with the way my current job is set up, I use the same computer for blogging and my full time job. 
• So, unless I am careful, it is easy to be disturbed during the day by blogging emails since there are more requests coming my way than I have time to respond to. 
• To help with this, the Getting Things Done system dictates that you only download/look at your email 1-2 times per day so that your focus remains in tact. 
• It’s actually a really fascinating “occurrence” because up to now in my life, my responsibilities/involvement have been limited enough that I could generally accomplish everything that was coming at me to get done in a day. However, now, for the first time in my life, I have to pro-actively prioritize what I get involved in and be aware of what I am/am not able to do (even though I would like to do it if I had more time). I’m not sure if this makes sense, but since it’s one of my goals for 2012, I figured it merited a little explanation.

How about you all? What blogging/personal/professional goals have you set for yourself in 2012? 


Share your experiences by commenting below!

***Photo courtesy of http://i.images.cdn.fotopedia.com/flickr-3922312417-hd/Argentina/Sport/Football/Lionel_Messi/Joan_Gamper_Trophy.jpg

What Would Be The Best and Worst Jobs in the World?

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This post was written by me and published originally 3 months ago at Family Money Values as part of the 12th “Yakezie blog swap” where members of the Yakezie Personal Finance Blogging Network pair up and exchange guest postings on a common topic. The topic of this blog swap was to discuss what each of us thinks would be the best AND worst jobs in the world.

In my opinion, the most “awesome/coolest” job in the world would be to work as a travel writer for Lonely Planet (or any of the other major travel guide companies such as Frommers, Eye Witness, Fodors, etc for that matter).

What does this job entail exactly?

Well, these guidebook writers (or authors as they term them on the Lonely Planet job description website) are the ones that review, describe, rate, and recommend/not recommend all of the travel, lodging, restaurant, and entertainment venues in each and every city listed in the guidebooks we all depend greatly upon when traveling abroad. I remember that when I was studying abroad in Spain in 2008, I had my travel guidebook within arm’s reach at all times, almost like it was my security blanket!

What makes this job sound so awesome to me?

For most of my life, I’ve had a strong desire and affinity for traveling to new places and seeing how different cultures live. Indeed, this job would offer the chance to be paid for doing something I love – traveling and seeing new places. Also, since you’re representing a review agency and/or guidebook that could offer huge publicity for any business included in your final write-up, I’d imagine that the majority of the places you go would pay for you to experience the best of which they have to offer, be it food, hotel accommodations, or drinks. While you’d have to remember to remain objective during this, it’d be an added perk nonetheless!

So, as you can imagine, there’d be some very attractive attributes appealing to me in this job. However, there are also some precautions that need to be taken for anyone thinking of going in to this profession.

• First, because of the “allure” of being a travel guidebook writer, there is a great deal of competition. In the last round of writer selection with Lonely Planet, only 8 applicants were selected out of 500 total. And, from what I’ve seen, the writers selected have to be VERY qualified both with previous professional writing experience as well as knowledge of a specific area of the world where they would review. 
• I just read the author biographies of a Lonely Planet Southwest USA guidebook, and all of the writers had authored over 30 books previously. Wow! Looks like there’s a high barrier to entry! 
• Second, in reading several interviews of past and present Lonely Planet travel writers, Simon Sellars and David Else, the job, while probably very interesting, is VERY busy and exhausting. In these interviews, it is mentioned that guidebook writers typically burnout within 5 years or less from working 16 hour days with very little rest while “on the road.” They are also away from their family for a majority of the time as well. 
• It makes absolute sense why this burnout happens though, right? Just think about it. For example, a travel writer in Mexico City is on the road (probably alone) and is responsible for every detail in the guidebook of a city with what, 25 million people! Talk about a daunting task! They even have to make sure that the distances from the street intersections to the restaurants on the maps are correct. 

What Would be the Worst Job in the Planet?

Before beginning my explanation of my pick for the worst job in the world, I just want to make it clear that I’m in no way demeaning or belittling people that work in this type of job. Quite the contrary actually, as I have much respect for you doing what you do. The point of this writing is just to explain why I personally wouldn’t want to do the job. With that out of the way, let’s proceed…


For me, the worst job in the world would be to work as a ticket agent at a major airline in the United States. And, since I often travel through Charlotte, North Carolina on US Airways, and that airport has had extremely terrible delays in the past 2 years or so, I’ll go out on a limb and say that being a ticketing agent for US Airways would be the worst job in the world for me. 


When thinking about my choice for worst job, I almost choose being a TSA Security Agent at a major US airport. You know the sort – these are the airports with the 45 minute security lines where you are being yelled at the entire time by the TSA agents to take off your belt, shoes, laptop, liquids, etc, and then you get to the security scanner to find that people didn’t listen to the agent, which further upsets the agent. However, I ultimately decided to forgo the TSA agent choice because the passengers are not actually upset at the agents (relatively) when they go through security. The honor of having to deal with truly ticked off passengers falls upon the ticketing agents. Bless their hearts. Read below to find out more!

What does this job involve? 

Well, I think we all probably have some sort of experience in airports and are familiar with ticketing agents helping to check passengers in at the gate and main terminal ticketing counter, handle baggage, load passengers for take-off, and help passengers change their flight plans when plane cancellations or delays occur.   

Why This Job Would Be Detrimental to My Health (Both Physical and Mental)?

If we lived in a perfect world where everyone’s flights were on time and each and every passenger floated through the airport in a state of happiness, I think that being an airline ticketing agent wouldn’t be all that bad. After all, you’d get to interact with a lot of different (potentially interesting) people and contribute to the business and vacations trips that make the world work. 


However, as we all know, the world is not quite perfect, and significant flight delays or cancellations are commonplace, especially after the airline cutbacks since 2001. The result? Many VERY UPSET passengers! For example, as a ticketing agent, you have to be the one to tell a 45 year old dad trying to get home from a business trip to Detroit that he’ll have to miss his son’s baseball game because there are no flights leaving Charlotte to go to his destination until tomorrow night. 


Again, doing this type of job wouldn’t be so bad if people were able to understand the situation and not lash out at you almost as if you were personally responsible for the delay. However, my experiences have shown that since angry passengers cannot take out their frustration on the airline itself, they often turn to the nearest ticketing agent! 


Since I am, by nature, not very good at confrontations such as these, being a ticketing agent would be very hard for me. When I am faced with interpersonal confrontations, I typically don’t have a problem dealing with them in the moment that they happen, but I’m unable to simply let it “bounce off me” after it occurs. Often times, I’ll think about it in some form for several days afterwards. Dealing with confrontations gets me much more physically tired at the end of the day as well. 


In performing a brief Internet search for interviews and experiences of airline ticketing agents, I was somewhat surprised to find out that there were not that many negative remarks mentioned about the job by the people that actually do them (far less negative remarks than by the travel guidebook writers interviewed above! haha). Most of them simply acknowledge that yes, the job has it’s downfalls in dealing with unhappy customers, but the travel, health, and retirement benefits and other responsibilities of the job outweigh the negatives. Knowing this makes me feel better about the people that do this type of job. However, I still think that this role would be one job that I would simply not fit well in. 


How about you all? In your opinion, what would be the best and worst job in the world and why? 


Share your experiences by commenting below!

***Photo courtesy of http://www.flickr.com/photos/ellenm1/3541851180/sizes/l/in/photostream/

Back to the Basics: Control Your Spending

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Click here to enter my free $196 giveaway for a chance to win 5% of My Personal Finance Journey blog income and give another 5% to a charity of your choosing! Deadline to enter is January 31st, 2012.

The following is a guest post written by Wayne at Young Family Finance, where he helps young families understand the importance of everyday finances like the cost of owning a dog.

What makes a person successful with their finances? Is it making a lot of money? Investing it wisely? Or, properly managing it? While there may be a variety of legitimate responses, this question seems to highlight another important question that I have when it comes to managing my finances: What is the most important aspect of successfully managing your finances?

In other words, if you had to narrow it down to one thing, what would it be and why? I want to suggest that the most important aspect is found in finances 101. In fact, one of the most basic lessons is the most vital thing to being responsible with your finances. Here’s why.

Why Going Back to the Basics is Important

If you have been responsible for your finances for years, you may think that you have your bases covered. You are probably more concerned about getting a large bonus from your employer or maximizing your investments for retirement as opposed to budgeting or reducing your expenses. Anyone who has experience with managing their finances is likely to think this way.

The more experienced individuals have been around the block more than a couple times and know everything about getting good deals on this item or this or that. Yet, the problem with thinking this way is that it assumes that once you learn something about finances, you don’t need to cover it again. This view sees finances as knowing a list of items, that immediately leads them on to the next more exciting thing. What tends to happen, however, is that these individuals start to forget some of the basics. For example, some start spending more than they should. They forget the importance of budgeting and then hit a downward spiral.

More experienced individuals tend to forget that managing your finances takes discipline and consistency. Finances is all about staying in control of your finances. It requires continuous work and attention. It isn’t something that you can ignore without consequences. Being reminded of financial basics prevents even the most experienced financial expert from failing.

Going Back to the Basics

As I hinted above, the most frequent mistake of the people that have a lot of experience managing their finances is getting a complacent and starting to spend too much money. This often results from earning too much money and feeling entitled. Another term for this is lifestyle inflation. As you earn more money, you naturally tend to increase your spending because you feel that you deserve to treat yourself. I have seen this happen in both of my older brothers as they get raises or better-paying jobs. Instead of putting more money towards retirement or their investments, it often leads toward more expensive cars or more expensive gadgets. Getting back to the basics of financial management will help both the experienced and beginner control this urge.

Perhaps more important than controlling your expenses, specifically, spending less than you earn is a fundamental element of any financial advice. Here are several reasons why it is one of the most important aspect of managing your finances.

• If you are spending more money than you are earning, not only will you fail to save money for retirement, but you will also be going in to debt.
• It doesn’t matter how much money you make – if you can’t control your spending, you will always fall short.
• No matter how great you are at investing, if you are spending more than you make, you won’t have any money to invest.

Another way of communicating the importance of controlling your spending is to compare your finances to a stream of water. You can think of your job as the source or the spring of water. From here, the water runs to the areas that it is directed: mortgage, car payments, utilities, insurance, retirement investments, etc. You need money coming in in order to allocate it towards certain expenses or funds.  If you are spending more money than you earn, you are essentially re-directing water away from the necessary paths that need water (like retirement). People often go into debt and spend more money than they actually have because they fail to understand the limited amount of money that they have or the later repercussions that they will face.

How to Spend Less than You Earn

Spending less than you make is easier said than done, right? If you find that you are spending too much money and want to get a handle on your finances, here are a couple ways that my wife and I use to keep our spending in check.

• First, we live by the ‘is it necessary’ rule of thumb. In other words, for every purchase, we force ourselves to ask whether it is absolutely necessary. Just by asking this question, I have found that we can avoid many major purchases. 
• Second, we limit the number of times we dine out to once per month. While it is hard at times, this little step goes a long ways to keeping us from going overboard on food. I find that food is one of the easiest ways for busy individuals or families to overspend. While these strategies work for my family, you will need to find what works for you.

When it comes to successfully managing your finances, it starts with controlling your spending. There are more things that are involved in being completely responsible with your finances (like saving first), but without this first step, you will have a difficult time getting anywhere in life. If you are looking to get a grasp on your finances, start by getting control of your spending. Stay diligent with this as you progress to more complicated issues because it is something that you have to keep in check.

How about you all? Do you have trouble managing your spending? What are some ways that you have limited your spending?


Share your experiences by commenting below!


Jacob’s Thoughts – Listed below are my random thoughts as I was reading this article.

• Great post here Wayne! Thanks so much for sharing it with us today! 
• @ What makes a person successful with their finances?
• Let’s see…This is a tough question. But, if I had to say what the one thing was that defines a person’s success in their finances, it would be that they are able to use their finances in order to live out their life dreams and life values. In other words, they are able to use their money to accomplish what they want to achieve in life at a core values level.  
• @ What is the first and most important aspect of successfully managing your finances?
• I would also have to agree with Wayne on this in that I believe controlling your spending is probably the most important aspect of managing your finances. 
• I believe in this because until a person starts to control their spending, more sophisticated goals cannot be realized. 
• For example, until you stop overspending, you cannot pay off debt, save for retirement, save for putting your children through college, or save for the awesome vacation you want to take. You are essentially stuck in the mud, and won’t be able to go anywhere fast. 
• So, even if you don’t make a lot of money, the first step to getting on track financially is to stop overspending.
• @ The importance of reviewing the basics from time to time – 
• This is a very important reminder here Wayne, as it was something I was reminded about the other day. 
• As a personal finance blogger, I sometimes have the tendency to thoroughly research a topic once, write a post about it, and then simply take for granted that I don’t need to learn anything else about it because I have “already learned it before.” This can get me in to trouble since I would potentially miss out on hearing about specifics I missed before or new developments that pop up. 
• A good example of this occurring happened the other day when I was responding to a comment about Roth IRAs. I had thought that I knew pretty much all their was to know about Roth’s – the contribution limits, withdrawal rules, tax treatment, and penalties.
• However, what I found out was that when I initially learned about Roth IRAs in 2009 or so, I was thinking that withdrawals of contributions and investment earnings were treated the same. As it turns out, there is a huge difference! 
• Anyhow, the point of all this is that once you learn something once, keep an open mind to learning about new details any chance you get.
• @ The best way I know of to make controlling your spending sustainable – 
• As Wayne mentions above, a person can learn a TON about managing their personal finances well. But, if they don’t keep up these effective habits, any progress that was made can be reversed quickly. 
• As such, the best way I’ve found to keep up the habit of controlling your spending is to make frugal living a lifestyle, not just something you practice from time to time. 
• If you can get yourself to the point where controlling your spending is second nature (ie you derive no added satisfaction in life from spending excessively), the practice will truly become sustainable.
• Unfortunately, adopting frugality at a lifestyle values level is not something that comes quickly or easily. The best ways I’ve found to encourage people to begin adopting this type of lifestyle is to 1) do it gradually by scaling back your spending in stages and 2) to adopt savings/investing as a hobby. 
• This would actually be a good topic for a future post since it is a pretty involved topic. 
• @ The best way I’ve found to control spending – 
• For me personally, the best way I’ve found to control my spending is to limit the amount that I buy food from restaurants to about 1 time per week. This includes breakfast, lunch during the work day, and dinner. 
• Furthermore, when I cook at home, I try to buy generic brand items to save some money as well. 

***Photo courtesy of http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4049/4258961182_376cf29b36.jpg

Financial Goal Setting for the 2012 New Year

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Click here to enter my free $196 giveaway for a chance to win 5% of My Personal Finance Journey blog income and give another 5% to a charity of your choosing! Deadline to enter is January 31st, 2012.


Happy New Year Everyone! It is that time again. That’s right – time to set my financial goals for 2012.

I do this once every year as part of my goal to create what author David Bach calls a Purpose Focused Financial Plan. The goal of this system is to employ money in your life in a way that matches your life values and dreams. It is a very cool idea!

You can read more about my journey to create this system and some examples of goals at the following links – Creating a Purposed Focused Financial Plan & My Personal Finance Journey’s Investment Strategy.


As is the case with many things in life, a good portion of financial goals are long-term commitments requiring attention in each passing year. As such, you might see many similar goals that I was trying to or did achieve in 2011 listed for 2012. I am perfectly fine with having some of the same goals year-to-year, provided that I believe in the causes they represent (which I ponder each year, and all of the ones listed below definitely do meet that criteria!). Nevertheless, I’ve tried to call attention to completely new financial goals for 2012 by highlighting them in bold red text for easier reading. 


So, here goes, the unveiling of Jacob’s 2012 financial goals. Enjoy, and I look forward to reading any comments you all have!  

How about you all? What goals have you laid out for yourself in 2012? What technique do you find is most effective in holding yourself accountable for your goals you set?  


Share your experiences by commenting below!

***Photo courtesy of http://farm1.static.flickr.com/138/341866875_a0e8c69f1e.jpg

Blogging Goals Update – 2011 Year End Review and Wrap Up

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Welcome to My Personal Finance Journey! If you are new here, please read the “About” or “First-Time Visitor” pages to find out more about us. If you would like to receive free updates on articles like this by email, then sign up here or you can subscribe to the RSS feed. Also, check us out on Twitter or Facebook. Thanks for visiting! Keep on learning!
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Click here to enter my free $196 giveaway for a chance to win 5% of My Personal Finance Journey blog income and give another 5% to a charity of your choosing! Deadline to enter is January 31st, 2012.

In January of 2011, I wrote a post detailing some of my blogging goals, targets, and dreams for the year of 2011. When I did this, I also added a reminder on my Outlook calendar to track our progress pertaining to these goals each month.

I have been sort of bad in that while I have been tracking these goals offline, I have not published an update on my blog in several months (only so many hours in the day, right?!).

My goal for today’s post is to rectify this!

By tracking blogging goals, I am hoping that it provides us with more accountability and visibility to what we are doing and where we want to go with this community/blog.


This post marks the last wrap up of the 2011 year that I’ll do. From here, it’s on to sharing my financial, personal, and blogging goals for the 2012 year! Should be a fun time!

So, here goes! The blog goals for 2011 were as follows, with progress updates given in bold type, current as of the end of December, 2011.

How about you all? What blogging/personal/professional goals did you set for 2011? Overall, how did you progress in achieving them?

Share your experiences by commenting below!

***Photo courtesy of http://www.dvq.com/main/4010icon.jpg

$196 Giveaway – Community and Charity 10% Monthly Blog Income Give Back # 4 – January 2012 Edition + 2 Year Blog Birthday Celebration

• 1) The readers – Obviously, without you here to read my articles and interact with my ideas, there would be no blog in the first place (let alone blog income). As such, it is only fitting that you receive a portion of any blog income.
• 2) Charitable organizations – If you’ve read my blog before, you know that I’m a big believer in donating a portion of my money to charity. Each year, I donate between 5-10% of my income to the National Multiple Sclerosis Society as part of the Bike for MS fundraiser that I do. Beyond the good that is done by donating your money, getting used to contributing to charity is also a good practice to emulate the actions of affluent individuals (T. Harv Eker discusses this in his book, Secrets of the Millionaire Mind, which I would definitely recommend reading if you have a few hours).

Like last month, I’ve decided to use the new RaffleCopter giveaway management tool to handle sign-up facilitation for the January giveaway, so simply go through the steps listed in the widget below to enter the running for the prize and accumulate entry points.

There is no limit to the amount of points you can earn. If you refer 10 subscribers – your name will have accumulated 170 entry points! Or, if you link to the giveaway more than once, you can accumulate those 7 entry points multiple times. You can also retweet the giveaway once per day. In the event of a tie, I will be using a random number generator to select the winner.

Important instructions: After you complete an entry method, make sure to click and fill out the “I Did This” or “Enter” button in the widget so that I have a record of your points.

Remember, the deadline for entries will end at midnight on January 31st, 2012 (a little over 3 weeks from today – the start of the give back). Good luck to you all! Please contact me if you have any questions. After the deadline for entries passes, the winner (one with the most points accumulated) will be contacted via email to receive their prize and select this month’s charity organization for the donation.

***Photo courtesy of http://stefanmarkov.com/family/images/yana_3yrs_1.jpg

Green Energy Makes Green Money

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The following is a guest post. Enjoy! 

With the cost of energy prices rising each year, many of us are tightening our wallets and looking for better ways to save money. One simple way you can save money is by choosing a green energy supplier today.Generating green energy can be extremely beneficial for the environment and a great way of saving money. There are many low-carbon technologies like wind turbines and solar panels available that use renewable sources of energy. This, in return, uses less fossil fuel and therefore helps to lower carbon emissions. Renewable energy is great for the environment, and the government is currently funding many financial incentives that will allow you to help reduce carbon emissions and increase your savings.

1. Reduce your carbon footprint

The planet is becoming increasingly polluted and you can help put a stop to this by using greener energy alternatives at home.

2. Solar energy

Solar energy can be captured by solar panels. Solar panels absorb the energy from the sun and transfer it to heat water. This may be expensive to begin with but in the long term it will save you a small fortune.

3. How big is your green energy venture?

Many families are generating their own energy at home. Based on your financial budgets, you can do this or go through commercial generation. Research about this topic today and see what energy deal is financially right for you.

4. Spread the green word!

Green energy benefits everyone and a great way of spreading the word is by getting the whole community involved. The local community can hugely benefit from renewable energy by reducing their utility bills and generating local employment.

5. Be a part of something special

Switching to green energy is extremely easy and quick and can minimize your carbon footprint by up to 33%. Go for a greener energy alternative today and help both your bank account and the planet you live in.

Green energy is the only way the planet can operate if it is to survive the threat of carbon emissions. The more we as a nation use renewable energy, the more we all benefit the eco-system, reinforce our energy security, create more local jobs, and help to better our economy.

My Year-End Current Asset Allocation and Net Worth Growth – November-December, 2011

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I have to apologize slightly in advance for this week being a little heavy in “progress” posts, as it has has been my “catch up” week in evaluating my financial goals (published Tuesday), net worth progress (this post), and blogging goals for 2011 (on the way soon). Also, on the way soon will be my 2012 goal setting posts. However, since I haven’t reported on these points in about 3 months, there’s definitely much to discuss! So, let’s get started.

As I’ve mentioned before, the goal of this running net worth progress series is twofold– 1) to share how I (as a fairly normal non-financial professional) approach various financial issues that come at me throughout life so that you can use my learnings to assist you in your financial decision making and 2) to make me more accountable in sticking to my various financial goals that I set forth by periodically evaluating my status and making adjustments. As always, if you have any questions, please ask!

Overall, the 2nd half of 2011 went pretty well. On one hand, I made a lot of progress towards my personal, professional, and blogging goals, but because of the lack of a strong stock market, my net worth really hasn’t moved much. In fact, in performing a quick 30,000 foot view of my net worth spreadsheet, it appears that it hasn’t moved at all from June to the end of December 2011!

As for November and December specifically, these were busy months with getting ready for the holidays, traveling, and also beginning to build a personal finance speaking service. More details to come about that project! However, they were also very fun months, filled with running races and seeing family/friends. 

As far as the overall stock market goes, the situation was looking fairly disappointing during the beginning of the 2nd half of 2011. However, since the last net worth update in October, the market has started to recover and is now in a more “neutral” position for performance in the 2H2011.  

With all of the up and down that has occurred, let’s take a look and see how it affected my net worth progress…shall we?

How about you all? How did you progress with your net worth in November-December 2011? What are your thoughts about the strength of the market right now? 


Do you think I should prioritize Roth IRA or Individual 401k contributions for the first few months of 2012 (see details listed above)?

Share your experiences by commenting below!

***Photo courtesy of http://s0.geograph.org.uk/photos/02/20/022053_8548f29f.jpg

2011 Year-End Financial Goals Review and Progress Update

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Welcome to My Personal Finance Journey! If you are new here, please read the “About” or “First-Time Visitor” pages to find out more about us. If you would like to receive free updates on articles like this by email, then sign up here or you can subscribe to the RSS feed. Also, check us out on Twitter or Facebook. Thanks for visiting! Keep on learning!
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Along with signifying a new beginning, the time around Christmas and New Year’s each year represents a very special, almost sacred, occasion for me. It is a time when I put my normal life on hold and make the “pilgrimage” to my home-land of Arkansas to relax with my family for 1-2 weeks.

On this trip, aside from relaxing and having a good time with my family, I make sure to set aside time to tune out the normal distractions in everyday life – computers, laptops, cell phones (sometimes at the risk of annoying the girlfriend in not responding to her messages – oops!) – and reflect on the year that has just passed. I think about my accomplishments, my progress on my life goals, and how both of these things relate to what I want to achieve. These periods of deep thought often occur while I am sitting around the fireplace at my parents house (see picture below for an example of me relaxing with my cat, Cream).

And, since I am lucky enough to be quite a finance nerd, what usually materializes out of these reflection periods is a good list of financial goals for the coming year. 

However, I can’t start listing out new financial goals for 2012 (keep an eye out for that post soon!) before summarizing my progress on my 2011 ones first!

I’ve gotten pretty behind on these financial goal updates with the year-end craziness (the last one I gave was on October 18th!). As such, this post/update will serve to reflect new progress that has been made in the November-December 2011 time-frame. Enjoy! I look forward to hearing your comments, thoughts, and progress on your own goals.

To quickly review, back in January of 2011, I laid out my short term, mid-term, and long term goals for the 2011 year. I do this once every year as part of my goal to create what author David Bach calls a Purpose Focused Financial Plan. The goal of this system is to employ money in your life in a way that matches your life values and dreams. You can read more about my journey to create this system at the following links – Creating a Purpose Focused Financial Plan & My Personal Finance Journey’s Investment Strategy.

Overall, I’ve been very lucky in the regard that my progress in 2011, for the most part, met or exceeded the expectations I originally laid out at the beginning of the year. 


Short Term (< 1 year) Goals:

• Contribute $5000 (or $420 per month) to my Roth IRA with Vanguard this year (maximum allowed) – Complete. Have now contributed $5,000 so far this year. 
• Because my graduate school employment doesn’t include the perk of a 401k, I had thought that my tax-deferred investing options for 2011 were exhausted when I maxed out my IRA contributions earlier this year. 
• Because of this, during the summer time-frame, I began pouring any extra money at the end of each month towards my condo home loan. I made some great progress in building up equity in that investment. 
• However, in December, I was able to open up and fund a self employed individual 401k with Vanguard. I then contributed $3000 to this account (pre-tax. Nice!). This helped immensely in reducing my tax liability for 2011.
• Reach net worth target for this year (not displayed here) – Not obtained – the equity markets didn’t seem to want to cooperate in allowing me to achieve this goal, as it requires an ~20% increase in net worth. However, all in all, I can’t complain too much. 
• Maintain target 6-9 months of expenses in cash reserve fund in Dollar Savings Direct account –Complete – currently carrying ~9 months worth of expenses in cash in my emergency fund account.
• Rebalance mutual fund portfolio to meet asset allocation target %’s (75% equity, 25% fixed income overall) – Kept correct throughout whole year. Only rebalanced 1 time I believe. 
• Obtain 15% ownership / equity in condominium – Complete – currently, I have 18.17% equity in my condo. Almost time to be eligible to remove the private mortgage insurance when I reach 20%!
• Put together a will and have it reviewed by a lawyer – Will completed. Not yet reviewed by lawyer.
• Continue to save money for trip to Grand Canyon – Savings ongoing – need to continue to evaluate when to take this. 
• Currently, I have $470 saved up for this trip. I increased the monthly savings to $50 starting in October, and that has helped accelerate the savings nicely.
• Upgrade condominium with investment in stacked washer/dryer combo – $1000 for unit, $1000 for labor/installation – Decided to cancel this upgrade for storage space saving reasons.
• As of September, I officially had accumulated 1% of my home value in my home maintenance savings account. From then on, I began accumulating the $2000 that it would have cost to get the washer/dryer in my condo.
• However, I have since decided to hold off getting this washer/dryer since closet storage space will be at a minimum since my girlfriend and I have decided to move in to my condo starting in June 2012. 
• Invest $500 in MicroloansComplete! It was fun doing this in 2011!
• Donate $1,300 to Multiple Sclerosis Foundation in 2011 (5% of income) – Done. In the 2011 Tour de Vine event, I raised approximately $5625 to support finding a cure for this disease (with the help of company matches). My bike ride happened on June 11-12, 2011 and was a huge success.
• Save 3% of take home pay each month (after taxes) for Dream Account. On target – Have an automatic transfer each month from my Bank of America checking account to my ING Direct high yield savings account.
• $30 per month save for doing running races as part of health life values account – On target.
• $20 per month save for buying fresh vegetables as part of health life values account – On target.  If I don’t do this automatic savings, I can forget to buy fresh veggies and only buy canned ones! haha
• Save ~33% of blogging income (if any) in a high yield online savings account in preparation for 2011 taxes. Done – 4th quarter quarterly estimated tax payment sent in. 
• I’ll be sure to put together a future post on estimated taxes, as it is something that crept up on me without knowing almost in 2011. I did a good job estimating/saving for my blogging income taxes, but I did a VERY bad job of saving money for estimated taxes on my day-job research fellowship income. 
• Because of this, I had to pay about $1,500 more in estimated taxes for 2011 than I was planning for. Lesson learned!
• Implement dollar value averaging for my 2012 Roth IRA contributions. Canceled. 
• I’ve decided that dollar value averaging, even though it will produce a slightly higher return on investment, is not well suited for me in the long term. Explaining why this decision was made will be part of a future post.

Mid-Term (3-5 years out) Goals:

• Continue contributing $5000 to Roth IRA each year and using dollar cost averaging.
• Reach intermediate net worth target (not displayed here, but is 2X my current net worth)
• Own a rental property by 2016.

Long-Term (>5 years out) Goals:

• Obtain a net worth of $1,000,000
• Own a home free of mortgage payments
• Own a vacation home in the mountains somewhere remote
• Accumulate enough funds not have to work, but will probably anyways because I would get bored. 

How about you all? How have the months of November and December been for achieving your goals? What are your next milestones? Have you set financial goals for 2012 yet? 

How about you all? Share your experiences by commenting below!

Chaikin Power Gauge Stock Rating Widget – 3 Month Effectiveness Check-in and Performance Comparison

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Three months ago, I investigated and reviewed a stock rating tool called the Chaikin Power Gauge Stock Rating Widget. At the end of the review, I concluded that even though the widget seemed to be very streamlined and easy to use, I didn’t have enough information at the current time to determine whether or not the Chaikin Widget was effective at predicting the movement of stock prices (in order for it to be used as the sole source of information in executing buying and selling stock actions).

As such, the purpose of today’s post will be to check-in on the performance over the past 3 months of 10 stocks I selected from the Dow Jones Industrial Average and compare that performance to the movement predicted by the Chaikin Widget overall stock potential rating 3 months ago. By doing this, I hope to get a feel for if this rating tool seems to accurately predict price movements of common stocks.

A Quick Review of How the Chaikin Rating Widget Works

Once you enter a stock ticker symbol in to the widget and hit the “enter” button, the following qualitative and quantitative details will be generated automatically for you on the widget. 

• The current trading price per share of the common stock.
• The Chaikin Power Gauge rating – “This rating is based on market expert Marc Chaikin’s back-tested 20 factor model, which has been proven successful at identifying a stock’s potential over the next 3-6 months.” I personally didn’t yet look in to the details about what 20 factors this widget takes in to consideration.
• Along with the overall Power Gauge rating, the widget displays the bullish or bearish levels of the following company details.
• Financial metrics.
• Earnings performance.
• Price/volume activity.
• Expert opinions.

When a stock was rated as “neutral,” the stock experienced significant gains (above 20%). When a stock was rated “neutral, trend down,” the stock gained a minimum of 1.55%, with double-digit gains often realized. A similar result from seen with the stocks rated as “bearish.”

Overall, the average % price change for the 10 stocks over the past 3 months was 15.46%. This trumped the % increase of 11.48% of the Vanguard Total Stock Market ETF (VTI) pretty nicely. However, the widget didn’t predict that a single one of the 10 stocks had the potential to go up in the next 3-6 months.

Conclusions

From this analysis of the performance of 10 of the 30 Dow Jones stocks over the past 3 months to the price movements predicted by the Chaikin Stock Rating Widget, we saw that the widget did not accurately predict the performance of any of the 10 stocks, and seemingly could not predict the movement of the overall market either since none of the predictions were directionally correct.


While I realize that a study of 10 Dow Jones stocks is by no means exhaustive (the widget may work better for other stocks in certain sectors, etc), because of these results obtained over 3 months, I would still not be comfortable making buying and selling decisions solely based on the results from the Chaikin Stock Rating Widget. Additionally, the low % of accurately predicted price movements gives me cause for concern. 


To me, these results also reinforce why I avoid individual stock selection for the bulk of my retirement assets, using a passive investing strategy of index mutual funds instead. If a model based on 20 factors developed by an expert that has spent years in the industry cannot accurately predict price movements of individual stocks, what would make me think that I could have more success?


Lastly, since the Chaikin Stock Rating is “proven successful at identifying a stock’s potential over the next 3-6 months,” I have placed a reminder on my calendar to check the performance again 3 months down the line. It is possible that the results will be a different story then!


How about you all? Have you ever used the Chaikin Stock Rating widget or any other similar tool for analyzing stocks? If so, which ones? How well have you found that they work? 


Share your experiences by commenting below!

***Photo courtesy of http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3487/3897338431_579b5556e6.jpg