Related: 2019 goals & Q1 update
Related: 2019 goals & Q2 update
Related: 2019 goals & Q3 update

At the start of 2018 I set a variety of goals for myself and posted quarterly updates on my progress. The rationale was that making my goals and progress public would keep me both motivated and accountable.

This did not turn out to be the case. I ended up failing to achieve almost all of my goals.

After some time to reflect, I believe this is because my goals were a bit too aspirational. I probably bit off more than I could chew. Some of the goals were just too difficult to achieve and some goals were more or less mutually exclusive. Looking back at my goal setting process in 2018 I realize that I was setting goals that were too ambitious, with the hope (dream?) that somehow writing my goals down would help them to manifest. Clearly this was not the case.

So, while I have many faults, one thing I can say about myself is that I learn from my mistakes, and I’ve definitely learned from my poor goal setting in 2018. My goals for 2019 are more achievable, better aligned with how I’d like my life to look, and better coordinated.

Without further ado, here’s the update on how I did on my goals for 2019.

Let’s break down the goals:

Financial

Goal 1: Generate passive income of more than $85,000 for the year

Last year the goal was to hit $70k in passive income (which we BARELY missed), so this is a 21.4% increase over last year. While that sounds like a huge increase, at the beginning of 2019 I believed it was achievable for a few reasons.

First, we’ve put some of our cash to work. We bought two additional rental properties (great for cash flow) and in June I bought a bit over $200k in stocks. These investments should really start paying off in the second half of the year.

Second, I expect to get a 6-7% return from organic growth – rental increases and dividend raises.

Third, our rental income was absolutely miserable last year. One of our properties was vacant for a few months AND needed thousands of dollars in repairs and upgrades to make it rentable. We’ve not experienced poor performance like that since we bought our first rental properties in 2012. A reversion to the mean would give us somewhere between $3k-$5k by itself.

Fourth, I expect that we’ll continue to save and invest money that I earn. If we are able to save $50k and receive a reasonable 3% yield we’ll pick up another $1,500 in passive income.

Q1 goal: $21,000
Q1 actual: $20,834

Q2 goal: $42,000
Q2 actual: $47,119

Q3 goal: $63,500
Q3 actual: $71,680

Q4 goal: $85,000
Q4 actual: $99,265

We crushed our passive income goal for 2019! A bit part of that was the addition of 2 new rental properties that we purchased in Q2. In addition, as alluded to above, we were fortunate that our existing rental properties performed much better in 2019 than they did in 2018.

All of this was accomplished WITHOUT putting any of our cash to use. We are currently sitting on about $400k in cash. At a reasonable 3% dividend, that represents the potential for ~$12k in dividend income if/when are able to put that money to use.

This is the goal I’m most excited about hitting, as it’s a good metric to assess our progress towards financial independence.

Status: SUCCESS!

Goal 2: Net worth of $5.64M

Our long-term goal is to grow our net worth by an average of 8% per year, with the expectation of being financially independent when our net worth hits $10M. We started 2019 with a net worth of $5.22, which means we are projected to hit our $10M goal in just under 9 years (sometime in 2028).

To create the quarterly “check points” I just assumed a simple (non-compounding) 2% growth per quarter.

Q1 goal: $5.32M
Q1 actual: $5.64M

Q2 goal: $5.43M
Q2 actual: $5.76M

Q3 goal: $5.53M
Q3 actual: $5.875M

Q4 goal: $5.53M
Q4 actual: $6.250M

We absolutely crushed our goal for 2019, but I’m surprisingly not that excited about that fact. I think it’s because at this point, there’s not too much I can do to affect our net worth. The increase or decrease of our net worth is affected much more by the state of the stock market than the amount of money we save or how we deploy it.

That said…although I don’t feel a lot of ownership in the growth of our net worth, I’m VERY happy that we hit $6.25M!

Status: SUCCESS

Goal 3: Investigate additional real estate investment(s)

This is a goal I’d set for 2018 and completely failed on. I identified 2 properties in Texas and we closed on both of them in April. So far they’ve both been performing as expected and have been a welcome source of steady cash flow.

Q1 goal: Start research
Q1 actual: Research complete, rental properties identified

Q2 goal: Complete
Q2 actual: Complete

Status: SUCCESS

Work

Goal 4: Income > $300,000

This is a reasonable goal, as our income (excluding the single large commission check I’ve received every 5 years) averages about $300,000/year. So, I just need to have an average year in 2019 to achieve this goal.

I’ve set the quarterly goals to be simple linear progression – I plan to earn 25% of my yearly income each quarter.

Q1 goal: $75,000
Q1 actual: $96,400

Q2 goal: $150,000
Q2 actual: $182,000

Q3 goal: $225,000
Q3 actual: $264,700

Q4 goal: $300,000
Q4 actual: $324,000

The first 3 months of the year were great for our income, and we were for track to make $385,000 for the year. Things obviously slowed down quite a bit over the course of the rest of the year, but we still hit our goal.

Status: SUCCESS

Personal

Goal 5: Read 1.5 books per month

My goal in 2018 was to read 1 book per month, and I failed pretty miserably (I only read 4 books all year). Given that failure, why did I INCREASE my goal for 2019?

Simple – I read some great books at the end of 2018 and I remembered just how much I love sitting down and getting into a really good book. For the last few years I’ve kept a list on my phone of all the books that I wanted to read. Anytime I got a book recommendation from a friend I’d add it to the list. If I stumbled across a really positive book review I’d add that book to my list.

Unfortunately, I was adding books to my list but never reading any of them. So in early April I pulled up the webpage for our local library and went through the 65 books on my list to see which were available at the library. I was pleasantly surprised to learn that just over 40 of them could be checked out through the local library cooperative. I added all of those to a watch list at the library (making it dead easy to request any of the books).

So I put some books on hold, picked them up, put them on my nightstand, and something magical happened. At night, after the kids have been bathed/read to/put to bed, after the dishes are done, and after the mail has been sorted, I suddenly have a desire to sit down for a few hours and read rather than watch a movie or play on my iPad.

Looking at the list of books, about 80% of them are non-fiction (mostly books about finance/investing), and 20% are fiction or stories inspired by real life events.

Q1 goal: 5
Q1 actual: 0

Q2 goal: 9
Q2 actual: 8

Q3 goal: 14
Q3 actual: 21

Q4 goal: 18
Q4 actual: 32

Related: Book reviews and recommendations – Q2 2019
Related: Book reviews and recommendations – Q3 2019
Related: Book reviews and recommendations – Q4 2019

I crushed my goal here and I feel like I’m a better person as a result.

For 2020 I hope to average a book a week.

Status: SUCCESS

Goal 6: Perform a muscle up

If you don’t know what a muscle up is, it’s basically a gymnastics movement that’s a combination of a pull-up with a dip. They can be performed on either a bar or using gymnastics rings. Here’s what a muscle up on a bar looks like:

And here’s what a muscle up on the rings look like:

Both of the above qualify as “strict” muscle ups. That is, there’s no body swing (or kip) used. Here’s an example of a kipping muscle up:

As you can probably guess, the kipping pull-ups are much easier than strict muscle ups.

For this goal I’m going to count any of the above muscle ups as a success.

I selected this goal because it’s a bodyweight exercise (which I’m generally good at because I’m on the skinny side), it looks impressive, and doing muscle ups is a great workout. In addition, it coordinates well with my goal of getting down to 10% body fat by the end of the year (lower body fat makes bodyweight exercises easier).

I expect that achieving this goal will require both strength work as well as skill work. You obviously need quite a bit of strength to perform a strict muscle up, whereas the kipping muscle up is much more about timing, coordination, and skill.

My plan to achieve this goal is to work on strength for the first half of the year, then start adding weekly muscle-up practice sessions for the second half of the year.

Q1 goal: Complete a pullup with bodyweight + 45 lbs
Q1 actual: Complete

Q2 goal: Complete a pullup with bodyweight + 90 lbs
Q2 actual: Complete a pullup with bodyweight + 75 lbs

Q3 goal:15 pull-ups + 15 ring dips
Q3 actual: 12 pull-ups + 6 ring dips

Q4 goal: 1 muscle up
Q4 actual: FAIL

The first step was easier than I thought it would be, but getting to an actual muscle up has been hard.

In Q4 I spent about 10 minutes 1-2x/week practicing the bar muscle-up. I realized that part of my issue is that I’m not really sure what a muscle-up “feels” like. That is, I don’t know how my body is supposed to go around the bar.

So, to practice, I’ve been hanging from the bar and using a bit of a jump to get myself going. I think this is probably less assistance than I’d get from a good kip.

Using this assistance I’m able to get up and over the bar, and from there I have no problem completing what’s essentially a bar dip.

So, although I haven’t completed a muscle-up yet, I’m awfully close, and I think I’ll get it in the next few months.

Status: FAIL

Goal 7: Do yoga once per week

Most of my workouts are either weightlifting or some sort of weightlifting/cardio combo (Crossfit-style workouts). While these workouts have kept me in pretty good shape, I still have some areas I need to work on.

Over the last 3-6 months I’ve been trying to get some more variety into my workout routine, so in December I hit a few yoga classes at our gym. The results were eye opening for me. After just 1 class it was clear to me that I have some major deficiencies in both flexibility and balance. I was clearly one of the least flexible people in the class, and any pose that required us to balance on one foot was very difficult for me.

To address these problems I’m going to try to get to a yoga class at least once a week, starting in Q2.

Q2 goal: 12
Q2 actual: 3

I was so far behind on this goal that I gave up.

Status: FAIL

Goal 8: Body fat of 10%

As I mentioned above, I’ve been pretty thin my whole life. When I was on the wrestling team as a freshman in high school I was 6’0″ and I wrested in the 119 lb weight class. Now I’m 6’4″ and bounce around between 185-190 lbs.

While I’m thin, I’m not super lean. Mostly that’s because for the last ~30 years of my life I’ve been trying to GAIN weight. It’s amazing what weightlifting combined with constantly easting past the point of being full can do – I’m 65 lbs heaver than I was in high school.

However, this constant push to gain weight means I’ve never really “dieted” or tried to get really lean. Last year I had the goal of getting down to 10% body fat, but I realized it was at odds with my strength goals so I effectively gave up on this goal and concentrated on the strength goal.

I started the year at 12.7% body fat, so I only need to drop 2.7% of my bodyweight in fat. Given a weight of 185 lbs, that’s almost exactly 5 lbs of fat.

Q1 goal: 12%
Q1 actual: 12.9%

Q2 goal: 11%
Q2 actual: 11.8%

Q3 goal: 10.5%
Q3 actual: 12.5%

Q4 goal: 10.5%
Q4 actual: 11.2%

I changed things up in Q4 and made a bunch of progress towards my goal. I think I can get down to 10% by the middle of 2020.

Status: FAIL

Goal 9: Row 2,000 meters in 7 minutes and 20 seconds

In my opinion, rowing is the most awesome/awful cardio in the world. It works pretty much every muscle in your body, and it does so with no impact on your joints. I have a Concept 2, Model D, which uses a fan to provide resistance. This means that the harder you row, the more resistance you get. This makes the rowing machine perfect for sprints and interval work.

The Concept 2 Model D

Because rowing is such a good workout, and because it’s an exercise that fits well with my body type (I’m 6’4″, and being tall is a big advantage in rowing/crew), I’ve decided that I’m going to spend more time on the rowing machine this year. Of course, “more time” isn’t quantifiable, and I want to row with a specific but achievable goal in mind, so I’ve decided that I’m going to try to knock 20 seconds off my 2k rowing time (the 2k is the “standard” test for rowing).

I haven’t done a 2k time trial in a while, and my previous best was 7:47. That time is ok, but nothing special. My goal is to knock 27 seconds off that time and get down to 7:20 (with the possible goal of getting to 7:00 in 2020).

I like this goal because it dovetails nicely with some of the other physical goals (reducing body fat and being able to perform a muscle up).

Q1 goal: 7:38
Q1 actual: 7:35

Q2 goal: 7:30
Q2 actual: 7:28

Q3 goal: 7:25
Q3 actual: 7:25

Q4 goal: 7:20
Q4 actual: 7:20

I did virtually no rowing in Q3 or Q4 but managed to get my 2K time down to 7:20 by the end of the year. I’m not sure if you’ve ever tried a maximum effort 2,000 meter row, but it’s absolutely brutal. When I was done I basically rolled off the rower and laid on the ground for about 5 minutes before I could move.

Also, for the sake of transparency, my actual time was 7:20.8, which I rounded down to 7:20. I think that’s reasonable. After all, if the rowing machine didn’t track or display tenths of a second then I’d just see 7:20 and wouldn’t know or care if I actually rowed 7:20.0 or 7:20.9

Status: SUCCESS

Blog goals

Goal 10: Post 1.5x/week

In 2018 I’d set the goal of posting 2x/week and I didn’t even get close to achieving that goal. I just don’t have the time to write 2 quality blog posts per week.

In addition, my inspiration seems to come in waves. I’ll go through a period where I’m getting lots of good ideas (usually from conversations with clients or due to something I’ve read). I tend to work on lots of different articles at once (right now I have something like 30 articles in some stage of being written, from just a title to an outline to nearly done), but I don’t always do a good job of pushing any given article all the way to being complete.

So, my goal for 2019 is to work harder on staying motivated and carving out 30-60 minutes per day to work on an article. If I can do that, I think it’s reasonable to be able to publish 6 interesting articles per month.

Q1 goal: 18 articles
Q1 actual: 6 article

Q2 goal: 36 articles
Q2 actual: 15 articles

Q3 goal: 54 articles
Q3 actual: 25 articles

Q4 goal: 72 articles
Q4 actual: FAIL

I’ve just spent much less time creating new content that I expected, and this goal quickly became unattainable. The real problem was setting this goal in the first place, as I don’t have a ton of time left over after my main job, my second job as a financial planner, and spending time with family and friends.

Status: FAIL

Conclusion

I was successful on 6 of my 10 goals. I managed to hit all of my financial goal, my one work goal, 2 of the 5 personal goals, and failed on my one blog related goal.

Overall I’m content with my progress. I’ll tweak things for 2020 and give myself some new (and hopefully attainable) goals for the coming year.