Update on Goals

It seemed like I was waiting for January to pass and before I knew it, it's almost the middle of February.

First, I want to say thank you to Well-Heeled for giving me the code for the progress side bars. As you can see, I only have 2 side bars, but if you remember, I had 3 goals for the year. I'm not really sure how to track my fitness goal of running. Maybe I'll put up a progress bar for 13 miles and as progress, I'll put up the farthest I've run without stopping (as of this writing, it's only been 2.5 miles and it's taken me a long time to build up to that length).

For my goal of earning $2000 of online income, I only had a dismal $25.99 for January. I need to spend some time on this blog to put it in a position to earn at least a little bit and start selling some stuff online.

For my goal of obtaining $25,000 in my early retirement goal, I wasn't able to amass the amount I needed and I was hurt by the stock market fluctuations since I have the majority of that money invested in the S&P 500. I'm planning on doing some research on alternate investment ideas and thinking about adopting Millionaire Mommy Next Door's investment strategy. I was able to add $890 to this fund. But since I realized that I would still need to add $1212 a month if I had 9% returns and I had negative returns in this month, I'm going to need to make up for the shortfall. One way I'm going to try and make up for the shortfall is I'm going to add my complete per diem meal allowance gained when traveling minus expenses to my retirement account. This will probably add another $100-$200 per month. On the side bars, I have tracked this as a goal of $16,000 rather than $25,000 since I started out with $9,000 at the beginning of the year.

Also I wanted to say thanks to Brip Blap for including me in the Carnival of Financial Goals III. Check out the carnival to see what other goals people have!

Carnival of Personal Finance #134

Mrs. Micah did a wonderful job with the most recent edition of the Carnival of Personal Finance posted here. I was honored to be included and I found a huge spike in my subscriptions that day. If you're a new reader who found me through the carnival, welcome!

For those of you who are new to the world of blogging, a carnival is collection of blog posts by different authors. It's a good place to discover new blogs.

I've had this blog for almost 2 years now, but I've taken a few hiatuses. I could bring you to an old intro page about me, but so much has changed, like getting married. I've also experienced a HUGE salary increase in the last year and became the breadwinner. I forgot to blog about how my husband regained the title from me late last year. :) Right now everything I put on here really is a jumble of thoughts, but there's a lot more I want to share. I plan to post more about career and salary since that's one area where I've been able to succeed in the past year (after some time of being very dissatisfied with both career and salary)

Well welcome to my new subscribers/readers and please visit Mrs. Micah's to look for other interesting posts!

If you want to subscribe, please click here

Carnival of Personal Finance #119

Thanks to Blunt Money for hosting the 119th Carnival of Personal Finance. I remember when I first started reading personal finance blogs I didn't understand what I carnival was. I remember I would skip all of the carnival articles on Bostongal's Open Wallet. At that time I didn't realize that carnivals were a good chance to read posts by different writers and to discover new blogs. This was the first carnival I participated in since I began blogging again. I submitted my post detailed what I did with my 18% raise.

Other posts I enjoyed:
My Two Dollars on Do You Ever Spend Money on Anything?
The Financial Blogger on 6 Things to Do Before You Quit Your Job
One Frugal Girl on Can You Resist a Bargain?
Moolanomy on The True Earning Power and the Real Cost of Luxuries

I'll be honest, I didn't read all of the articles, but these are just a handful that I enjoyed. I hope you enjoy the carnival as much as I did!