The Money Commando

2017 goals – Q4/year end update

TheMoneyCommando

At the beginning of the year I posted my 2017 goals and resolutions

At the end of Q1 I posted my 2017 goals and resolutions – Q1 update

At the end of Q2 I posted my 2017 goals and resolutions – Q2 update

At the end of Q3 I posted…nothing

And now here we are, with 2017 firmly in the rear-view window, and I’m looking forward to doing a comprehensive review of how the year went (and how many of my goals I managed to achieve).

 

Financial Goals

Goal 1 – Increase net worth to $4M

This was undoubtedly the biggest and most important goal I set for 2017. We started the year at $3.36M. As I’ve noted before, success towards this goal was completely dependent on closing a single large deal at work.

I’m happy to report that I closed the deal and, as reported in my Net worth report for June, 2017, our net worth crossed the $4M mark.

And, even better, we managed to barely hit my stretch goal of $5M (see our Net worth report for December, 2017 for more info).

Here’s what our net worth looked like throughout the year:

 

 

 

Assets were up, liabilities were down, and overall we increased our net worth by $1.6M (from $3.37M to $5.05M, for an insane 49.89% increase). Even after using the MCTWI to adjust for the stock market’s insane valuation we still saw an increase of $1.2M (41.48%) increases our net worth.

I’m trying to appreciate the ride for as long as possible, because I know that I’ll almost certainly never make that much money in one year again.

Result: SUCCESS!

 

Goal 2 – Pay off second mortgage

Since I feel that the market is at pretty insane valuations, I’m allocating more money to reducing debt rather that invest at high valuations.

In early Q3 we paid off our entire second mortgage (approximately $180k balance) on our primary residence.

Result: SUCCESS!

 

Goal 3 – Generate passive income of >$60k

I wasn’t sure if we were going to hit this one, especially since I made virtually no new investments in 2017, but we did, in fact, accomplish our goal. As I calculated in our Investment income – December, 2017 report, we made a total of $62,862.80 in 2017. This was due to a combination of improved rental income and a variety of dividend raises from our existing investments.

Result: SUCCESS!

 

Goal 4 – Research another real estate investment

I ended up deciding to abandon this goal entirely. The concerns I had in mid-2017 are still the same – I’m not convinced that the business models from many of these real-estate FinTech companies will survive the next recession.  Of course, I can’t say anything for sure until I’ve taken the time to dig into how they work, what the business models are, etc.

For now I’m happy to hold cash and wait for more interesting opportunities to present themselves.

 

Result: FAIL

 

Physical Goals

Goal 5 – Deadlift 400 lbs

Goal 6 – Get body fat down to 10%

Complete and utter failure on both counts. My body fat percentage is unchanged and I didn’t do much deadlifting in 2017. I could blame this on work travel and other family issues, but these are just excuses. I’m still in pretty good shape, but I didn’t commit enough to hit either of these goals.

I need to rethink my physical goals and commit to hitting them.

Result: FAIL

Personal Goals

Goal 7 – Take and pass the CFP exam

I took and passed the CFP exam in June!

This was probably the second most important goal I had for the year (after Goal 1). This was a huge accomplishment for me and the culmination of about 3 years of work.

Result: SUCCESS!

Goal 8 – Close largest deal in company history

The deal ended up being broken into two pieces, but I managed to close the deal by the end of April. I got paid on half the deal by the end of Q2 and the second half in July, 2017.

Result – SUCCESS

Conclusion

As I said at the beginning of this article, this has been a mixed bag. The good news is that I’ve either completed or am on track to accomplish the most important goals I’d set. The bad news is that the other goals have been total failures. Here are the goals:

Completed:

Failed:

Although I failed 3 of my 8 goals (37.5% failure rate) I still feel pretty good about my results. The 5 goals I completed were the most important goals. About halfway through the year I realized I’d reached the point where Goals 5 & 6 were mutually exclusive and I didn’t have enough time to hit them both.

I’m currently working on finalizing my goals for 2018. I’m hoping to once again have a mix of financial, physical, and personal enrichment goals.

Questions for you

How did you end up doing on your goals for 2017? Have you learned from your 2017 goals when setting 2018 goals?