Review of 2018 Goals

It's official! 2018 is in the books and 2019 has arrived. With that said, I thought I'd take the opportunity to reflect on the past year of goals and how I fared on my mission to achieve them.

Goal #1: Collect $350+ in dividends

Overall, I ended up collecting achieving my goal of collecting at least $350 in dividends, collecting $360.92 in dividends in 2018. Of the $360.90, I received $314.76 or 87.2% from my Robinhood portfolio. $46.16 or 12.7% originated from my retirement account, paid by my mutual fund (CAIBX). The remaining $0.96 came from my M1 Finance account that I opened in September 2018. I also ended the year with just over $470 of forward annual dividends heading into 2019. That is compared to the $186 heading into 2018, which represents a 152.9% YOY increase in forward annual dividends.

Goal #2: Reach $11,000 portfolio

Overall, my portfolio reached a peak value of roughly $10,550 for the year on December 2. This was well short of my goal, but a December that was on track for the worst December since the Great Depression until the last week or so of the trading year certainly wasn't helpful to achieving this particular goal, as I finished the year with investments worth just over $10,000. However, the great news that came out of this was that I was able to average down on my Altria position twice and recently add to my Iron Mountain position, further solidifying my forward dividend income of $470 to end 2018 and begin 2019.

Conclusion:

My goals for 2018 were fairly non-existent as I started this blog in July and honestly didn't really hold myself accountable with specific or actionable financial goals before starting this blog, aside from simply graduating college with no debt. I believe I set my goals realistically. Rather than being overly aggressive or not aggressive enough, I just barely achieved my first goal of collecting $350 in dividends. Although I fell short of achieving $11,000 in portfolio value, this was in large part because of the worst December since the Great Depression. My mindset is that if you're achieving all your goals, you aren't setting the bar high enough. Similarly, if you're achieving none of your goals, you're probably setting them too high. I have also been planning my goals for 2019 the past week, which will be the topic of next week's article.

Discussion:

What were your goals for 2018? Did you achieve them all? If so, did they end up being too easy to achieve or did you have to give it your all to achieve them?