Updated Personal & Financial Goals for 2020

Given that fall is barely a week away at the time that I'm writing this blog post, I thought it would be an appropriate time to reexamine my personal and financial goals for 2020 as it has been nearly 9 months since I initially set my goals for 2020.

There have been a few developments in my life over the past 9 months that have necessitated reevaluating my goals for the remainder of the year.   

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Below are my updated financial goals for the year:

1. Collect $1,200+ in dividends for the year

2. End 2020 with $1,450 in annual forward dividends

3. Amass $35,000 in investments/end 2020 with a net worth of $45,000

Given that I have prioritized paying off various small debts over the past several months, this year hasn't quite been as favorable to me in terms of dividend income as I expected it would be when I set my goals 9 months ago.

Adding to the headwinds in terms of dividend income, is the fact that my portfolio has endured multiple dividend cuts and a dividend suspension this year primarily as a result of COVID-19.

It's for that reason I am revising my goal down from collecting $1,500 in dividends during the year to $1,200.

As it stands now, I am on track to collect about $1,125 in dividend income this year, so I believe that $1,200 is a realistic goal in that I will have to push myself a bit to achieve the goal given my continued deleveraging of my personal balance sheet.

As far as my second goal, I have revised my goal down from ending the year with $2,000 in annual forward dividend income to $1,450 for the same reasons that I outlined above.

I estimate that by late October, I will be entirely debt-free aside from $1,000 in interest free margin within my Robinhood portfolio, so I'll have two months to boost my annual forward income from about $1,300 by that point to $1,450 with dividend increases/dividend reinvestment/fresh capital contributions.

I'm also revising my investment/net worth target down significantly from $45,000/$60,000 to $35,000/$45,000, which I believe I will be able to barely meet in a base-case scenario.

Now that I've outlined my updated financial goals for the few months remaining in this year, I'll be discussing my updated personal goals for 2020.

1. Continue to publish at least one blog post each week

2. Publish at least one article a week on Seeking Alpha and reach 5,500 followers

Starting with my goal to publish at least one blog post each week, I feel that one blog post each week strikes a nice balance my personal life and pushing myself to produce content that I enjoy producing. 

Therefore, this goal remains the same as I outlined in my previous post when I set my goals.

Next, I am significantly reducing my goal of Seeking Alpha articles for 2020, and my follower goal as a result.

Initially, I was shooting for 100 articles this year, which would have been a pace of nearly 2 articles a week. 

I have actually been publishing an article each week on Seeking Alpha this entire year rather than the 2 that I used to publish, and despite the roughly 40% reduction in content production, my earnings from Seeking Alpha are slated to be only about 20% lower than last year.

I was compromising the joy that I got out of my Seeking Alpha side hustle for the sake of making only a bit more money, so I have been very pleased with my decision to cut back on Seeking Alpha and to make more downtime for myself on weekends.

One other time commitment that I mutually parted from was my agreement to write for I Prefer Income and to provide my input on the program.

The rationale behind this decision on my part was that I didn't feel I was an appropriate partner for I Prefer Income and I also wanted to prioritize my health to minimize the impact of burnout similar to my decision regarding cutting back on Seeking Alpha content production.

Concluding Thoughts:

While my goals were very attainable in 2019 and I achieved them with relative ease, I appear to have overcompensated with my goals this year in an effort to challenge myself.

Now that I have adjusted my goals to account for my overcompensation from too easily achieving last year's goals, I believe that I can realistically achieve this year's goals as long as I continue to remain disciplined and committed to accomplishing them.

I'm looking forward to these last few months of the year to exit this year with an even stronger foundation than when I entered this year.

Discussion:

Do you put pen to proverbial paper to make note of your goals or do you just note them mentally?

Have you set any goals that you felt were realistic at the time you set them only to realize they weren't attainable for the given time frame?

As always, I appreciate your readership and look forward to reading your comments in the comment section below!