How I Will Be Rich

Reviewing Last Month’s Goals

• Post 5 blog posts per week
  I had no problem achieving this goal. I’ve realized my optimum writing time. I have discovered that if I set some time aside at night close to bedtime and I just sit in silence for a little while, I come up with my best ideas. The blog posts just flow naturally. I tend to be insanely busy on the weekends and have a hard time finding the time to blog. By sticking to approximately five posts per week, I get a couple days off and I don’t overload the readers.
  
• Get to 100 subscribers
  It’s kind of funny because my goal before this was to get to fifty subscribers and literally two days after my month’s end deadline, I hit my goal. This month I had my goal set at 100 and by November 30th, I had a total of 93. As of writing this (December 4th), I have broken that 100 subscriber mark. I will consider that a success for the month, despite the fact that my deadline was about 4 days late.
  
• At least 1 carnival per week
  This goal was no problem. I probably averaged about three carnivals per week this month. I love carnivals. They are such a great way to get exposure for your blog.
  
• Break $100 total money made
  I was shooting to make $100 total. That’s not $100 for this month, that was a total of $100 since the conception of this blog. This is the one goal this month that I failed to meet. The blog’s income, since the day it was born, currently stands at $90.14. So in case you are wondering, this blog averages about $0.73 or so per day.
  
• At least 2 guest posts on other (more popular) blogs
  I actually did write a few guest posts this November. I was successful in doing that. They weren’t published in November but I did manage to get them written. One of them was actually featured yesterday over at Brip Blap.
  
• New theme / layout
  As you can see, my blog has a new theme. I like it better than the last one but it still needs work. I’m actually rethinking the whole thing once again. Right now, I think it might be a little too busy. I’m thinking about switching it to something a little more minimalistic. White background, black text… Something like that.

I had a pretty good month as far as achieving goals go. Hopefully I can do even better in December and meet 100% of them.

Goals For December

I’ve realized that I’ve only been sharing my goals related to blogging. I’ve decided that, starting this month, I’m going to get a little more personal with my goals. I will still share my goals concerning this blog but I also feel that it could be beneficial to share my goals concerning my personal finances and my entrepreneurial endeavors. Sharing these goals holds me accountable and I will realize that, this time next month, I will have to share how well I faired on my personal goals as well.

Personal Goals

• Complete all of my Christmas shopping within a budget of $500
  I tend to go a little overboard every year on my Christmas shopping. I dig in to credit cards and pay for Christmas for months. This year I am going to set a strict budget and stick to it. So far, I’ve already spent $40 of my budget on one person… I’ve got about ten more people to go…
• Open up a separate bank account for my side business
  Joe and I have a few internet endeavors in the works. I’ve got a separate Tax ID number already, I just need to find time to get down to the bank and get an account set up.

Blogging Goals

• Post 5 blog posts per week
  For now, I’m going to stick to this schedule. It has worked great. It’s not overwhelming me and I don’t think it’s overloading any readers.
• Get to 200 subscribers
  I’m feeling pretty confident this month. I hit my 100 subscribers, I’ve got guest posts out and about, I’m consistently participating in carnivals and some bigger name blogs are starting to make mention of my blog. I’m confident that in December I can make the subscribers double from what I’ve managed to accomplish in the entire history of this blog. I have decided that, once I hit 150 subscribers, I will publish my subscriber numbers for everyone to see.
• At least 2 carnivals per week
  Carnivals are great. I don’t know if you’ve noticed but I’ve been mentioning them a lot lately. They do great things for blogs that are just starting out. It’s really a great way to get yourself out there. Last month I committed myself to one per week. I am upping my commitment to two per week.
• Break $150 total money made
  Seeing as it has been extremely hard to make much income off this blog, I’m not really shooting for the stars this month… If I can make $60 over the next 25 days I will be extremely happy. That will put my overall blog income at $150.
• At least 2 guest posts on other (more popular) blogs
  So far, only one of my guest posts has been published. That one day, however, I saw a huge boost in hits. I’ve got to continue with this. I’m going to start submitting some of my best stuff to share on other sites. I really think that can be a great tool to help this blog grow.

Some Thank Yous:
These are the ten sites that referred the most traffic to me in November:

1. Lazy Man and Money
2. Brip Blap
3. Consumerism Commentary
4. My Two Dollars
5. No Credit Needed
6. I’ve Paid For This Twice Already
7. Stock Trading To Go
8. The Digerati Life
9. The Simple Dollar
10. Clever Dude and Personal Finance

Thanks so much to all of the blogs that have sent traffic to me and talked about me on their blog. I appreciate it so much. The blogging community has been so great and accepting of new blogs and I think it’s really great to finally to start to feel like part of the community.

Thanks So Much to everyone,
-M

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There’s a new carnival coming to town!
Cash Money Life is starting a new carnival entitled the Carnival of Financial Goals. To start the carnival off right he has asked people to make a financial New Years resolution. He’s giving away some prizes and I really think it’s going to be a great carnival. I really love new carnivals because I think that they are a great way to help newer blogs get their name and their message out there. I believe carnivals are what single-handedly got this blog to where it is so far. With that being said, I support every new carnival that comes my way.

Picking one specific financial goal is difficult.
I have so many things that I hope to accomplish in 2008. By the end of the year I hope to be in so much more of a better position financially than I currently am. My one main goal sounds so cliche I am almost embarrassed. By the end of the year next year I want to be completely free of credit card debt. I have over $11,000 in credit card debt and it’s not even at a good interest rate. I want it gone and I want it gone as soon as possible.

The SMART goal format.

Specific
I am going to pay as much as my monthly budget allows in order to pay down my credit card as fast as possible. This won’t be an easy task. In order to pay it off in a year, I will need to pay an average $1,000 per month. Some months I will have to pay more to make up for the months that I had to pay less.

Measurable
It will be easily measured. By December 31, 2008 I will have a credit card balance of zero. I have amortization charts laid out in Excel so that I can accurately track my progress.

Actionable
It will be difficult for me to achieve this goal but it is very possible. The last few months in a row I have already paid large amounts towards the balance. I am expecting a wage increase in February which will make it even easier to achieve my goal. I will set aside the money at the beginning of each month before purchasing anything else. It will be my number one priority in my monthly budgets.

Realistic
It’s difficult but it is very realistic. Between my expected wage increase in February and the various alternative income streams that I have started generating, it should only get easier and easier.

Timely
One year to eliminate the largest chunk of my debt is a very short time frame. It’s a difficult task on my current income but I am confident that I can do it and come January 2009 I will have one less financial burden keeping me from my goals.

I am really excited about this carnival.
I know it’s going to be a success and I can’t wait to hear about other people’s financial goals. It will help align bloggers with people with similar goals and create even more of a community where people can help each other get on the right path to achieve their goals.

Photo Credit: lemonjenny

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Photo By glindsay65

I’m back and I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving holiday. It’s not often that I get a four day weekend so I took that opportunity to get out of town for a few days. I spent my time camping in the desert and we had a blast. Unfortunately, my blog isn’t to the point where I have guest posters just lining up so my blog just basically shut down for a few days. When I opened Google feedreader this morning I had over 200 posts waiting for me. That was a little overwhelming. Luckily, about half of them were posts wishing the readers a happy thanksgiving so I managed to sift quickly. When I checked my Feedburner stats after the long weekend, I was surprised to learn that my subscribers had jumped significantly. I have no idea what or who I have to thank for that but, as of right now, I’m on track to meet my goals for this month.

I’m sure a lot of people already know this but today has been dubbed “Cyber Monday.” It’s kind of the equivalent of Black Friday but the online version. Today is a day to go to all of the online retailers and get huge discounts on products online. I guess the reason behind this is that everyone is going back to work after the Thanksgiving holiday, sitting down at their desks and are still kind of in that Christmas shopping mood. To tell you the truth, today is the day I plan on doing all of my Christmas shopping. I’ve been doing it online for years now. It beats going to the stores and fighting off soccer moms to get my hands on that tickle me elmo or that last copy of Guitar Hero 3. If the online stores are going to start offering sales on a particular day, that’s the route I’m going take. You get all the discounts of Black Friday with out all of the traffic, crowds and tug-of-war matches for that last item in stock.

I was going to take a whole bunch of time and hunt around the internet for all of the sites that were offering deals for Cyber Monday but before I got to doing that, I found a couple of blogs that have already listed some great places that are offering deals. As you’d probably expect, you can find all sorts of great deals at Amazon but other than that check out these blogs.

Generation X Finance has a list of 11 sites that are currently offering discounts through the end of the day today along with the coupon codes that may be required.

Simply Thrifty has a list of 10 places where you can find deals and coupons for Cyber Monday deals.

Apparently there is also a CyberMonday.Com that lists just tons of places to find deals.

As you can see, there really is no point in me listing all the deals you can find for this Cyber Monday when there are already resources out there that are going to be much more thorough than I can be. Check these sites out and get your Holiday shopping done early and at a discount (without ever leaving your home or office).

-M

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I’m skipping my Top 10 Tuesday today. Believe it or not, those actually take quite a while to do. I’m not skipping it because it takes too long though. I’d just rather do my round up on Friday this week. I’m going out of town tomorrow night and by setting my roundup to post on Friday, I’m getting myself off the hook for a post that day.

I’ve recently started reading Your Money or Your Life. It’s been recommended by so many other personal finance sites and The Simple Dollar even devoted several weeks to this book alone. Joe actually got his hands on a copy of this book and passed it on to me. I’m just barely getting started with it but so far it’s already really starting to grab my interest. A lot of people have told me that they had a hard time because it starts off sort of slow. Somehow, I seem to really be relating to the first part of this book. I don’t want to write a review on it or anything, I just wanted to make note that I have begun reading it and over the next couple weeks I will probably refer to it quite a bit.

The first chapter really focuses on what people consider “making a living”. We go to work, put in forty or more hours, go home, eat, watch t.v. and then go to bed. We then look forward to the weekends because we are going to do something meaningful but when the weekend comes around, what happens? You do housework, make sure the laundry is taken care of, do all the shopping you need to get done and, when all is said and done, have gotten really nothing of real value done.

Why is it that we work so hard for money just so we can go home and do the same old boring routine things that we seem to do day in and day out. Don’t get me wrong, I know that there is the occasional excitement when you go on your vacation for one or two weeks out of the year. Once you get home from your vacation, it’s right back to the daily grind. The vacation just served as tease to let you know that there is fun out there, you only get to see it for one or two weeks out of the year, but it is out there.

Like I said, I’ve barely began to get in to this book. I’m just thinking that if I’m only this far in to the book and it’s already starting to hit home, I’m really going to enjoy this book.

Has anyone else read it that wants to share any thoughts? I’ll be posting plenty of my thoughts on it as I go…

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Do you want to make more money in the job that you are in currently? My recommendation is that you increase your value. Coming from that standpoint of someone who basically runs a business, I have to deal with employee issues every single day. This includes people coming to me on almost a daily basis asking for more money. My stock question to them is always, “What have you done to make yourself worth this increase?” After asking this question, the employee almost always leaps in to listing off all of the things that they do for the company. And more often than not, every single item that they list is exactly what we agreed upon in hiring this person. I want to know what this person has done to go above and beyond their job position. We sat down with this person before we hired them, we discussed what their responsibilities would be and how much we would pay them for following through with these responsibilities. Six months later, when an employee comes and asks for more money, this is what I hear; “I’m doing the job that you asked me to do and making the agreed upon amount of money for doing it, can I have more?”

I’m not quite sure how many people are probably taking the whole idea behind this post. People probably think that we are a bunch of Scrooges or something. That’s not the case at all. We hand out plenty of raises. We do it all of the time. I’m not a believer in giving someone a raise just because they’ve been here for a certain amount of time. I’m a fan of giving out raises when someone does something that increases their value to me. I currently have an office employee who wants more money. The only problem with this person is that they have the attitude that they will not take on any more responsibilities until they make more money. Well my viewpoint is the opposite. Show me that you are willing to add more value to this company and I will reward you with more money. We have sort of a catch 22 here. This person won’t work harder unless they get more money and I won’t give them more money until they start working harder. I tried to train this employee in a new area today. I wanted to add one new task that would consume about five minutes to their daily agenda. This person basically gave me the attitude that they weren’t going to learn it because they don’t make enough. In this particular case, I taught someone else. Little does that person know that if they would have taken the time to learn this small task it would have increased their value to me.

Look at your employment as your employee being your customer. You are providing them with a service and you want to do your absolute best to make sure your customer is happy. The more you do for your customer, the more value your customer is going to see in your service. Go above and beyond what your typical day to day tasks are and your employer will appreciate it. Be eager to learn new things and take on more responsibility. Employers notice this and value it. I said in a previous post that even if I was the guy who cleaned the toilets at McDonalds I’d be the best at it. I would do whatever I had to in order to get noticed and make sure I was recognized for my efforts. The same goes for any position you could put me in. My upbringing and my morals lead me to the mindset that I’m going to be the absolute best at what I do. I do it not only for my employer but for my own pride.

Raise your value to your employer and your employer will see you as more valuable. It just makes sense.

-M

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