2013 Goals

Since another year is in the books, its time to make new goals for 2013.  I've had some of these in the back of my mind for a while now, so I wanted to get them down here.  As last year, I'm sure they'll sort of change and evolve as the year goes on, as the market can change dramatically over time.  I'm obviously not going to let these goals get in the way of good financial sense, but I will do my best to accomplish them.

1.  Buy a House.  This isn't exactly new; I've been looking for a place since September.  I guess the goal here is to buy something that makes financial sense without going overboard, but still getting a good place to live.  I live in the North East in a pretty expensive area; money doesn't go very far when buying a home.  I have a pretty sizable down payment saved up, I'd like what I have saved to cover at least 20% of the cost of the house.  At the same time, I don't really want a place that's going to require me to put in a lot of money to make it livable.  Hopefully I'll be able to get this done sometime in the first half of the year.

2.  Contribute to my roth IRA.  I plan on doing this as early as next week.  Unfortunately, its not as easy as writing a check and dropping it off at the broker's office; I think my adjusted gross income is over the limit for a 2012 roth contribution.  In a nutshell, I plan on contributing to a non-deductible IRA and then converting it to a roth.  I'll post here on how it goes.  As far as what I'll invest it in, I will probably go with monthly paying, higher yielding dividend stocks.  As I receive and accumulate these dividends, I plan on using those to purchase fairly priced, lower risk dividend growth stocks (PG, T, INTC, etc.).

3. Plans for my taxable dividend investing:
a.  Diversify.  If you look at all of my 2012 purchases, most of them (especially in the beginning of the year) were in the same few stocks (LINE, CLMT, ERH).  This isn't to say that I regret my decisions to buy those stocks, its just that I certainly realize the risk I'm taking with only having a few stocks.  I think only owning a few things is fine when first starting out, but now I've been taking this seriously for a while, and its time to branch out some.
b.  March/June/September/December dividends.  Keeping with the diversification trend, I would like to try and focus on investing in companies that pay in the months I have listed here, as those months are my smallest payouts.  Again, I'm not going to invest in companies just because they pay in these months, nor am I going to invest in companies that pay in these months in favor of a better-valued stock that pays in another month, it would just be something I'd like to do if possible.  By the end of the year, I would like to be receiving $700 a month in dividends in these months by March 2014.
c.  Total dividends.  As of right now, I am projected to make $22,234.17 in non-roth IRA dividends for 2013.  By this time next year, my goal is that I am projected to be making $26,000 in non-dividend income.  I realize that this is an extremely aggressive goal, but I am confident that in addition to the money I'm going to put into my account to invest each month that my dividends will continue to grow.  Last year I set a goal to make 2K more in dividends than I did in 2011 (from 18K to 20K) and I blew that number out of the water by May.  This goal will be a lot tougher than the one I set last year, but I'm confident that I'll be able to hit it.

Well, those are my financial goals for 2013.  Wish me luck!  I'll be interested in reading everyone else's 2013 goals.

Goals for 2012

Merry Christmas to all!

2011 was a tough year for me.  I went through a pretty rough patch in the spring/summer which I'm still paying for both emotionally and financially, but things are calming down now.  Then, a few months later, I took a pay cut at work, making life even more difficult.  Because of these things, its been easy to look forward to 2012 and try to figure out what I want to do so that I'm much better off in 12 months time.  Without further ado, my personal financial goals for 2012:

1.  Get a new job.  Fingers crossed, I think I'm pretty close to fixing this one, but nothing is set in stone.  I had a great onsite interview on December 19th that I'm waiting to hear back on, and I have another onsite interview at a different company some time in early January.  I think either of these jobs would be a better fit for me than my current one, and the compensation will be better than my current one as well.  Hopefully I'll have a more clear idea of what is going on by the end of January.

2.  Move into a less expensive apartment.  I'm hoping this one won't be too hard either.  My lease is up at the end of March, and the apartment I'm currently in is one of the last artifacts of my failed engagement.  Its way too big for just one person, so I'm looking forward to downsizing some, and its also pretty far from where I work, so a move closer to work would be nice too.

3.  Start maxing out my 401k.  This one is sort of related to goal 1, as I should be able to do this as soon as I get a new job.  Doing this makes it easier to contribute to a roth IRA, as contributions to 401ks dont count towards one's MAGI. Speaking of roth IRA's:

4.  Contribute as much as possible to my roth IRA.   If I get a new job it might be really tough to contribute to this anymore, so I at least need to make sure that I contribute all I can for 2011.  I'll probably have to wait to do my 2012 taxes to contribute again, just to see where I'm at income wise.

5.  Increase my dividend income by $2000 next year.  I currently make around $18k a year in dividends.  I think 20k a year is a doable goal, especially if goals 1 and 2 get accomplished (and if I can't do #4).


Well there it is.  It will be fun to look back on this list throughout the year to see how I'm doing.  What are some of your goals?  What do you think of these?  Too aggressive/not aggressive enough?