Wishing you a Heavy New Year! A look at 2020 Goals

Hey! What’s up, members of the Heavy Metal Money Militia! Welcome to a new year and welcome to 2020. A new beginning. The new year is always a good time to review how things went in the past year, and what we’d like to do in the year ahead. While many people talk about resolutions, I tend to think of terms of goals. In the last couple of weeks, I had reviewed my goals from 2019, and what I had accomplished. I had recently asked a friend what their 2020 goals were, and they had responded, “why would I need goals?” This did kinda shock me a little bit. I feel that setting and writing down some goals are essential for continuing to grow as a person.  I did fulfill a few of my 2019 major goals. Here are the ones that were completed in 2019.

1.  Lose twenty pounds. This was done and maintained by living a low-carb lifestyle
2. Reduce fried food by 1/2. This was done by cutting out many of carb-rich foods like French Fries, and chicken fingers
3. Paid a total of $36k towards my Commerical Debt. By using rental income, and personal funds I took a big chunk out of this new portfolio loan.
4. Reduced my grocery budget to $300/mo. Made a list, stuck to it. Stop impulse grocery spending. It helped that I no longer was buying chips and carb-loaded snacks.
5. Reduced my Dining budget to $300/mo. My eating out was OUT OF CONTROL! I literally switched to a cash envelope system. No Cash? You don’t eat out.
6. Generated $5k in side-hustle income. Sold goods on Mercari, eBay, Wrapped my Vehicle with an advertisement, and Donated Plasma.
7. Contributed 3% of my gross income to personal development (training, books, etc). I set this and forgot about it. I opened a new Checking account, set the auto transfer. And whenever I spent on training, a book, or a class, etc, I transfer this amount back to my main checking account. For example, my entire trip to FinCon2019 was cash flowed using my personal development account.

Now there were many goals that I didn’t meet, and I’m going to review and modify for 2020. Here are a few goals that I didn’t achieve:

1.  Be in bed/sleep by 10 pm/11 pm
2.  Reduce Cholesterol by 20 points
3.  Journal every night
4. Read 1 hour every morning
5. Generate an additional $1k in monthly passive income
6. Walk for 20-30 minutes 3X a week

Goals are hard! I totally get it. It’s wicked-hard to stay on track, and if you slip up to give up completely.

I’m looking at separating my goals into health goals, personal development goals, financial goals and blogging goals as well.

Let’s dig in! Here is a break down of a few of my goals for 2020, and how I plan to achieve them. Let’s go!

Journal/Write 3nights a week – Post to the Heavy Metal Money Blog weekly

I’ll have a more consistent posting cadence to HMM! Yay! You’ll get a new post following a divorced single dad’s journey to financial independence EVERY WEEK! We have some exciting things lined up from guests, and interviews with colleagues and friends with their approach to life and money! We learn some really interesting stuff! I’m going to habit stack this into my nightly routine. Combined with be being in bed by 10 pm, I’ll journal/write for an hour until lights out at 11 pm. Win-Win!

Spend one hour a day, two days a week on Personal Development

I have purchased many training courses, books, and online classes for many things. From Project Management to IT Network Infrastructure, and Cybersecurity Best Practices and Programming Micro-controllers and Cloud Computing Architecture. I always have the best intentions with these classes. However, I typically spend the first few hours and then never look at it again. GRRRR! This makes me so PISSTHED! I get so mad at myself. So I’ve decided to devote allocated time during specific days of the week to spend at least an hour covering the material. If I had only done this from the beginning, I may have had several professional certifications in my current, and additional fields. This may have led to greater success with my customers, perhaps higher salary, and most importantly happier and more fulfilled in my career.

Earn an additional $1,000/mo in Passive Income

I’m approaching these few different ways. I currently have a handful of Investment Rental Properties. A total of 6 units. I’m working towards continually improving my operational excellence over my investment portfolio. Staying competitive with market rents. For example, I have one single-family home that market rents have skyrocketed to about $2200/mo, in which I’m currently still at $1700 based on the current lease. I’ll work closely with my management company to eliminate waste, increase efficiency, and having my management company stay in constant and consistent communication with my tenants. My management company has hired experienced people to help in this effort. Keeping them up to date on utilities, maintenance, and avoiding late charges, and eliminate fees.

Another way to approach this is that I have some other projects I’m continuing to invest in, such as fulfillment by Amazon, where I have some tee-shirts for sale, and I’m currently working with suppliers in China to manufacture some novelty items to sell via Amazon and Facebook as well.

The really cool thing is there are some goals that have now become the new normal. These are things that have started as goals, and have transformed into habits and are now part of my everyday life. Like my low-carb lifestyle. I started as a goal and now I don’t even have to think about it. It’s just something I do. Easy Peasy! Some of my financial goals like maxing my 401k, and HSA contribution limits. This was wicked-challenging at first. How on earth could people afford to do such a thing!? Well, once I started to track, reduce, and be smart and frugal about my money. It has become another normal thing. I’ve learned to live on what is left over after those contributions.

Thanks again for following my journey, and reading the Heavy Metal Money Blog. Horns Up, my friends! Here’s to a wonderful 2020. 🤘🤘