November Goals Update

Happy December!

Wow I can’t believe this is the second to last goal update for 2018! The year end is coming so quickly that I can’t even…just can’t even. I’m in full blown 2019 goal planning mode right now and can’t wait to share our next round of goals.

First things first though, here is the November Goals update.

2018 Financial Goals:

Goal #1   Make an extra $15,001 to remain the primary wage earner.   Since November was a sweet, sweet, sweet 3 pay period month for me, I was able to pull ahead of Joe in the race to win the year.  So far, I’ve made $1,091.96 more than him in 2018.  However, since he makes about $1300 more than me per month, I will still need to make several hundred extra dollars in side income to be crowned breadwinner.

Goal #2   Save 50% of our gross household income from March through December.  In November we saved 26.21% of our pre-tax income.  We had several big expenses hit this month; our Sandals resort charge for $2700, half of our annual property tax for $1180 and Auto insurance for $1142.  However, we are still running at a savings rate of 57.37% March through November so I expect to achieve this goal of 50% savings rate.

I have read that a lot of people calculate their savings rate based on their take home pay.  This is alright since taxes are likely a small portion of their expenses but since taxes are our biggest expense I include them in our spending total.

Here are our savings rates by month:

March 58.97%

April 64.94%

May 53.90%

June 74.28%

July 58.64%

August 68.01%

September 64.61%

October 46.79%

November 26.21%

March to date rate: 57.37%

Goal #3   Max out everything.  We set our percentages at the beginning of the year so we are on track to max out our 401Ks, 1 HSA and our Traditional IRAs.

Goal #4   Improve our asset allocation. Traditionally, this term “asset allocation” is used to define the mix of investments in a portfolio (example: 90% stocks, 10% bonds) but I’m using it here to describe the percent of assets that are generating income (401Ks, CDs, taxable brokerage accounts, etc) compared to assets that do not produce income (vehicles, cash and our house).
Starting asset allocation:
17% Income producing assets
83% Non-Income producing assets

Goal asset allocation by 12/31/18:
30% Income producing assets
70% Non-Income producing assets

Current asset allocation:
30.59% Income producing assets
69.41% Non-Income producing assets

Achieved!!! I am happy to report that we have accomplished this goal! We are now at the 30/70 split that I was hoping for.   The purpose behind this goal is to make sure that we are using assets to build wealth instead of buying assets that do little or nothing for our portfolio.  For example, I want to make sure we don’t have too much money “invested” in our cars since cars go down in value rapidly (deprecation) and don’t produce any income (we don’t drive for Lyft or anything).  I am still learning and getting comfortable with investing so it takes a while to get money invested and tends to build up our cash reserve which is just sitting in a savings account, not earning much interest.

Goal #5   Spend 100 hours providing financial coaching.  I did 11 hours in November and have 19 hours left to go.  This goal ended up being more difficult to achieve than I anticipated. Connecting with people through social media, collaborating on content and delivering presentations, while challenging and time intensive, have been the top ways that I was able to find clients to work with.  Thankfully, it turns out that people do care about their financial situation and there are people out there that are looking for ways to improve their finances.  Networking is certainly an area that I could improve in, which I think will help me find more of these people that are interested in finance and motivated to grow.

Goal #6   Set financial boundaries and communicate them to family members.  I did quite a bit of research on this goal in November.  Listened to several podcasts, read some articles and watched some YouTube videos.  So far, I’ve found Dave Ramsey’s content about financial boundaries and Patrick Doyle’s YouTube content about boundaries in general to be the most useful.

Goal #7   Monthly net worth updates. Since the market dipped I haven’t been updating our net worth quite as often but am still updating it on a weekly basis.  Joe and I have been reviewing it during our Weekly Household/Budget Meeting.

Cheers to December!