I hereby join the ranks of the millions who share their New Years goals, resolutions, hopes, dreams and aspirations here in the first day of 2019.
Quick disclaimer: I have been a huge proponent of New Year resolutions for many years, having written them on post-it notes that I carried in my wallet throughout the year. Years ago, I wrote major things on it like "get married," "start a family," "buy a house" and "get a better job."
I had originally intended to write a series of New Year resolution oriented posts but, alas, I have been too busy including having traveled for a week to the desert to visit my father-in-law and his wife in Arizona.
Having thought about what my goals and resolutions should be for this upcoming year, I realized that some of them are fairly trite and nearly on automatic, thus the "bar too low" aspect of it.
While extremely important, remaining gainfully employed is something that I would strive to do regardless of new year or not, resolutions and goals or not. Another resolution that I set out for last year as documented in the now-defunct Middle Class Guy blog, was to pay for all of our son's college expenses. Put a check mark next to that one. Exciting if you are early on in your college savings journey but not so exciting when you are shelling out the dough and enduring thirty thousand points of pain like I am.
After only having made it as far as Wisconsin from my home state of Illinois in 2017 (pitiful, isn't it?), I resolved to travel more in 2018, and did. Yours truly made it to New Orleans for a week over my son's spring break and had one of the best times of my life with him. Two months later, I traveled to Vegas for the ICSC ReCon convention (and am booked to return in five months), rented a farm house near the Wisconsin Dells for three days in July, and recently returned from our family's Chicago to Vegas to Lake Havasu City back to Vegas back to Chicago back to the burbs vacation.
By the way, that not-quite five day jaunt cost us nearly four grand!
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| I spent four thousand in less than a week for our vacation. |
I resolved to net minus at least fifty books from my hoard this year, which I did not. I did move along at least fifty this month alone, but that hardly makes up for the hundred or so that I purchased throughout the year. I know, there's a word for my affliction.
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| A few of my thousands of books. |
I have no delusions of becoming an exercising mensch, but I hereby do declare that I will weigh 200 once again or possibly less when I report my weight to whoever reads my post on my self-hosted blog, TheMoneyMensch.com.
Speaking of self-hosting, I purchased that domain since so few eyeballs besides Russian bots like to scan blogger.com posts. I purchased the domain about six months ago, but have not yet developed the site.
Thus my first SMART* goal for 2019, which is to develop my own self-hosted site. It will be the same mensch writing the same type of posts, but they will likely be more SEO-friendly, will push some products at you and will hopefully earn me some much needed additional income. I hesitate to label it passive income since I put so much time and effort into it. I suppose if people click on ads or buy things from old posts months or years after they have been written, then I will consider it passive.
Which brings me to my next SMART goal. Having reported that this month's $8,725 in income is more unearned than passive, it is my goal to make a comparable amount in passive income this year.
Last year, I had "resolved" to generate at least five hundred bucks in a single month and am ashamed to admit that I never even made it halfway there. In my best passive income earning month in 2018, early in the summer, I made around two hundred or so, mostly from Amazon Prime customers reading my long-ago self-published eBook, The P.O.
Mind you, I did not sell one freakin' single copy of this book all year. However, many thousands of pages of it were read and I would assume the entire 800-plus pages of it by a few hundred readers, all through their membership and ability to read it "free of charge" along with being members, like I am.
Amazon has some algorithm that pays you based on number of pages read, thus I collected a few hundred bucks this year. However they read it, I would consider the dollars paid to me by Amazon extremely passive, since I have not even looked at the book for the past five years or so.
So I'm Setting the Bar Too Low
I am not resolving to get a new house, new car, new job or even a flat screen TV. I am not resolving to fix everything that is wrong with our house and my life. I do not imagine myself being a well-organized neatnik with all my things in the right place and without piles of books and saved articles.
About the books and saved articles, I certainly do intend to decrease the piles and, at the very least, not to add to them.
I do not envision becoming a... how do I say it? Someone who vigorously does what a young virile husband often does. I was that vigorous young husband, but am more of a beaten down middle aged husband at present. I do, however, resolve to do what a younger, more energetic husband does more often than I did this year. I started last year off well, right on the first of January, but fell way, way off that pace. Enough about that.
I resolve every single year to be a better father, son, brother, friend, neighbor, nephew, son-in-law and whatever I am to anybody. Most important to me is to be a great father, and despite my efforts, I could still do better in that regard.
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| Sometimes I set the bar too low. |
I used to resolve to be a better employee, but no longer do. I am a damned fine employee and just need to continue doing what I do at my day job. Where I need to set the bar far higher is with everything else.
Considering that the average American household only has around $16,000 in savings according to U.S.A. Today, resolving to save seventeen grand this year is not too shabby. However, for a mensch like me who dreams of attaining FatFire 55, and readers like you who want more out of life than being an average American, seventeen grand is not as impressive.
It is not really my business to share, so please excuse my brevity, but I will report that my brother made about half a mil this year. Not every year, but he had his best year ever in terms of his law firm and settling some large cases. I do not harbor the idea, although it is nice to dream and fantasize about it, of making that kind of money. But it does put saving seventeen grand into perspective. He makes six figure payments when purchasing a home, paying off debt or stashing some money into his three children's savings accounts. He pays for his new hybrid vehicles by stroking a check rather than financing it for years, like I do and you may also do.
Me, I have to grind away slowly and steadily to amass enough to put our two children through college and perhaps "retire" someday.
Although Paying Ourselves $17,000 First is "only" $1,250 short of what I would consider a good amount for me to invest on my family's behalf, or $18,250, which equates to $50 per day, it seems like setting the bar too low.
Should one of my primary "setting the bar too high" goals become a reality, I would invest that $18,250 this coming year, $18,300 in 2020 (a leap year) and increase that amount as much as I possibly could.
Coming up on fifty years of age sooner than I care to admit, I would feel great if I could write about saving a hundred bucks per day this coming year, or $36,500.
The seventeen grand that I intend to invest at a minimum this year is very simple: six grand into my wife's Roth IRA and six grand into mine. The remaining five grand will likely be invested into the T. Rowe Price Dividend Growth fund into what they call my Payment Upon Death account. I will invest in that in lieu of sending more into our daughter's 529 account. Disclaimer: the funds will still be earmarked for her college expenses, but it will be in my name. She currently has over six figures between her two college accounts, one of which paid capital gains and dividends of over three grand this month.
Too Low Vacation
A year ago, I had cited Project: Time Off and its studies about Americans not taking enough vacation. I had resolved to take at least eighteen vacation days this year, which I kind of almost did but not really.
I would be lying, and it would not behoove me to do so, that I had intended to take eighteen "vacation" days, not counting what my employer terms "personal" days. When I thought about taking those eighteen days, I had intended for that to be above and beyond however many personal days I took in 2018.
The final total for 2018 was fourteen-and-a-half vacation days and three personal days, for a total of seventeen and a half paid days off when I was elsewhere besides work. The "half" vacation day is also somewhat misleading, since it really amounts to me having taken off for work two hours early twice on Fridays in the past month or so as to not go over my allowable accrued vacation time, which is forty days total.
Years ago before I even started my defunct blog, I had resolved never to cash out vacation days again. As a father of two young children, I correctly thought that days off with my family should be considered a better use of time and more valuable than an extra day's pay. As they say, on my deathbed, it is unlikely that I will be thinking proudly of a few extra thousand dollars as opposed to spending time with my family.
Alas, I cashed out fifty-eight hours, or just over seven vacation days in 2018. In terms of pay, it raised my final compensation for the year by about three grand and, trust me, every dollar of it was needed very much and will be in the future.
Even after never having taken a total of eighteen "vacation" days after working for twenty-six years in local government jobs, I am not going to resolve to take that amount in 2019.
For my vacation/time off goal for 2019, what I want to do is take days off when I want to and when I have to, including taking my lovely daughter to visit super expensive colleges beginning in fall of 2019 when she starts her junior year of high school.
Oy!
Setting the Bar Higher
I have to set the bar higher for myself.
This is something easier written or said than done, but done it must be.
Two eBooks
Last year at this time, I "resolved" to self-publish two eBooks in 2018. Grand total of eBooks that I published? Do you even need to ask?
I realize that I could string together a bunch of my posts, slap a prefab cover on it or pay someone on Fiverr twenty or twenty-five bucks to design a cover, and then post it to Amazon.
I realize that I could be even lazier than that and string together a bunch of ezine articles together, written by others, and publish them so long as I attributed the articles to their respective authors. The Laptop Millionaire suggests this in a book that I read and loved two years ago.
But I am setting the bar higher.
Another SMART goal, this coming year I sincerely hope to achieve that modest number. It seems easy to type now and even easier for you to read. But to actually do it; that's another story.
I ask you, have you published an eBook? If so, did you sell some copies? Enough to be worth your time and effort?
Refi
I could write a very long post on this one. Very long.
The short of it is that we "purchased" our current house on Labor Day weekend back in 2001, just ten days before 9/11. As interest rates decreased over the next six or seven years, we refinanced our home three times.
About nine years ago, we refinanced into a five year adjustable rate just below four percent, and I announced to my wife that if we were still living in our house at the end of those five years, that I would be forced to admit that we are living here for a very long time and should concentrate on paying our home off.
The first time that our mortgage adjusted, it actually went down a bit. I was feeling pretty smart. The Prime Rate was near zero and ours dropped to 3.375 percent.
The next year, it went up to just a bit above where it originally was. Not a big deal.
The past two Octobers, it has increased by a half point each time and now stands at five percent. I know, not too bad, but would a Money Mensch really just have an adjustable rate mortgage increasing for years and years? Just really staying with it because I do not want to pay the two to three grand in bullshit fees?
Well, I followed rates over the past fifteen months or so, from the time when we could have refi'd into a fifteen-year mortgage at just under four percent (which would be a mensch-like rate) to just over four to what is now about five percent. Plus, fifteen years from now I hope to be completely retired.
One year from today, or even sooner than that, I intend to report on our refi.
Doctor
I need a new doctor. A new guy to lecture me about my habits and to squeeze my nuts while I cough and stick his finger up you-know-where.
Just when I got a doctor that I have been comfortable with, he goes and switches offices on me and medical groups. I would not mind traveling to his new office, but in the case where I need to be hospitalized, the hospitals that he is now a part of are many miles from my home in towns that I never want to go to.
He took pity on me and refilled my Lisinopril prescription before our trip to the desert; however, he told me that it would be the last time and the clock is now ticking. I have about twenty days until my blood pressure rises too high if I do not find a new doctor to check me out and prescribe it.
Being a mensch, I am sorry to report to you, although still being truthful, that I prefer both a male doctor to check out my nuts and ass, and a Jewish doctor would be preferable. Seeing as how at least half of the doctors in our HMO are named Patel, it is more likely that my next doctor will not be a MOTT.
Declutter
I am not going to totally declutter this year, but I sincerely intend to reduce the amount. It is not just my stuff also. We have bags of clothes that our daughter outgrew, which we have historically given to our nieces.
We may still do that, but I looked through some of them today and saw many cute shirts and pants from Forever 21, Anthropologie, Aeropostale, Charlotte Russe, Abercrombie & Fitch and others of that ilk in plastic garbage bags. Some of these shirts cost us $30, $40 or even $50 and are in "like new" condition.
My sister's oldest daughter absolutely loves getting these hand-me-downs, but as she is now about five foot eight like my daughter is, there are no more hand-me-downs. Her younger daughter will never attain the height of our daughter's recently outgrown fashionable clothing, so what to do with them?
I do not want to donate hundreds of dollars' worth of fashionable teenage girl clothes to the Salvation Army, although I certainly donate quite a lot of items to them. My brother can easily purchase whatever clothes his two daughters want.
I should probably take the time to photograph and list these clothes on eBay, where I can not only clear some things out but also make some more dollars for my efforts. Help recoup pennies on the dollar for the thousands that we have spent trying to keep our daughter in style.
While my son, my wife and I are typically outfitted from our underwear to our jackets in clothing purchased from Kohl's, our daughter insists on more fashionable attire.
It is not just my daughter's outgrown clothes taking up valuable space in our small home. I have so many extra unnecessary things to move along that it would be a very long post on its own. I also mean beyond the hundreds of books that I could part with, but have not yet done so.
I tend to accumulate things that I do not need or particularly want. Some may have value to others, who may find themselves wanting the same things that I once wanted. Being a mensch who now desires more simplicity and wants to rid myself of more stuff than I accumulate, I am ready to set the bar higher for myself when it comes to learning to part with things and declutter a bit, which will also make my better half somewhat happier with me.
Tea Partier
Please do not laugh, but if you do, I certainly understand.
Over the past several years, even as I have gone from being a mere coffee drinker to a coffee addict to a coffee fiend, I have continued purchasing tea.
I am admittedly not a great grocery shopper.
I may head to the grocery store with a list of eight things to purchase. For purposes of this post, let's call my list a loaf of bread, a gallon of milk, a carton of eggs, a bottle of juice, some avocadoes, some limes, a jar of salsa and some tortilla chips.
What I am likely to come home with, in addition to those eight items, is a six pack of beer, a bunch of asparagus, two cartons of ice cream, some sushi, perhaps a bottle of wine or six pack of craft beer bottles, some trail mix, some bagels, some cream cheese to go with the bagels, a block of extra sharp cheddar cheese, some Ritz crackers for the cheese to go with, some lox if I am in a big spending mood, perhaps some chicken or steaks if they are on sale.
Oh yeah, and some tea.
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| My motley assortment of tea. |
Somehow, through my constant purchasing of all assortments of tea, we have had it piling up on us.
Well, let me tell you about setting the bar high. Number one, I will not be purchasing more tea for at least the first six months of 2019. Secondly, I will make an effort to cut back on my wife's and my absolute addiction to coffee, and try to ease back into drinking tea at night. Like a refined Englishman would do.
Not only would my wife appreciate me cleaning out our hoard of tea, but not adding to the collection until we use what we have would be an improvement.
Mind you, there are other similar things that I do this with, but tea is a great example.
One year from today, I shall report a normal amount of tea in our cabinet, perhaps three boxes worth.
e-commerce
There are millions of e-commerce sites. Some are gigantic and dominate the market, while other undoubtedly make no sales. Some may make a few sales but no money for the owners. Some may even take some losses.
To seriously move out of my comfort zone and take a chance and risk of financial loss, I intend to set the bar high and launch a profitable e-commerce site. It may just end up being dropshipping items from my current eBay account or it may be a self-hosted site with a specific niche or number of niches. It may even be two sites, both of which names remain available on Name.com to this day.
In my mind, this is the highest bar for me to reach and I already feel like I won't reach it.
I realize, as you do, that there are young kids, high school students, college aged kids and kids who have not even been born yet who will make millions or perhaps billions from their future e-commerce sites. These young tech-savvy kids will think of new ways to market items, new ways to list them and, more importantly, new ways to sell them. I should not just say items, but services as well.
Problem with me is that I am decidedly not tech-savvy and have furthermore lacked the desire to become more so.
Having done several hours or researching dropshipping companies since returning from the desert three days ago, I am now more confused than before. Especially after reading an hour or so of garbage on the dropshipping thread on Reddit last night. Talk about TMI!
Do I dropship from Amazon? From Alibaba? From AliExpress? From IndiaExpress, who emails to me several times every day about laptops that I have perused? After all, I am less interested in selling a pair of socks for $5 that cost me $4. Like you, I am more interested in selling a laptop for $500 that I purchase for $400.
Do I go with a service and, if so, which one? I have researched many. Some include Shopify, Oberlo, easync.io, Wholesale 2B, SaleHoo and DSM Tool. There are dozens of others, some of which allow you to list fifty items "for free," while charging you if you want to list more. I suspect that by the time you finish reading this, there will be another dropshipping service created.
DSM Tool's "lite" option allows you to list 150 items, which seems like a fair amount if you are a newbie like I am, for a mere ten bucks a month. I certainly would not be crying in all that tea that I will soon be drinking if I "lose" ten bucks per month.
Losing $29 per month, like most of the services charge, would be a little more painful if you do not make at least some profit.
Also, to run an e-commerce site legitimately, it should be set up as its own business entity. Otherwise, you get zapped a bit like I do for my few hundred dollars' worth of sales that I made on eBay this past year.
I get a 1099-MISC from eBay listing out the final sales amount per the site. It may say $500 for 2018 without considering the $200 that I may have spent on shipping, another $20 in shipping supplies, another $40 or $50 in fees from eBay and a comparable amount from PayPal for the privilege of processing payments.
When all is said and done, the $500 in sales that I made this year might have netted me $150 or $200 in profits. Considering the hundred or so hours that I spent photographing and listing items and then wrapping and mailing the items that sold, I would be lucky to have made the Illinois minimum wage of $8.25 per hour for my efforts, or less than a sixth of what my employer pays me full-time throughout the year.
As I previously shared, I intend to remain gainfully employed and a good worker bee throughout this year. But I will not be happy at all with myself if I fail to earn some money while I sleep.
Claiming Social Security
No, I am not going to begin collecting social security this year.
My blog post about starting to collect it will be nearly fifteen years from now, God willing, as I turn sixty-three years old. The subject of multiple future posts, I have decided at the age of four dozen.
I have not shared a lot about this and, frankly, have not done much about it, but there is someone out there who has assumed my identity including a driver's license with all my info on it and his photo and multiple credit cards in my name.
It's a huge black guy, too. Just saying.
I received a call early this year from a police officer from a south suburb who asked several questions about me. This after receiving and canceling several credit cards that I did not apply for at our home.
After I verified his legitimacy, I answered his questions and learned about someone that he arrested with my information and that of others in a notebook in his crappy apartment. The officer emailed me a photo of the bogus driver's license.
I put a hold on my credit with the three agencies for ninety days, and after that expired, I received unwanted credit cards again.
Again I put my credit on hold, thus also holding off on my own refi plans.
After being urged to do so by several publications that I subscribe to, I decided to open my own social security account online before somebody else did.
You guessed it!
I was informed that there was already an online account for my name, DOB and social security number. I discovered this on a weekend when the local office was closed, then I worked like a dog for a week, then headed to the desert for a week.
I am back now, it is the first of the year, and despite all the bureaucracy, forms, long lines, dull lazy employees and the like that I assume comes along with dealing with social security, it is something that I must do.
For all I know, there is somebody already collecting funds that should be due to me someday. I really do not know how it works and most definitely do not plan on relying on social security to support us years from now, but like my mother and father-in-law, I am counting on it to help defray the cost of healthcare and other associated costs associated with being a living senior citizen in the future.
So...
Given enough time, I could write forever on things that I should do to improve my own and my family's lot in life this year.
This post barely scratches the surface, but it does bring out the initial things that come to mind.
Who wouldn't want to be intimate with your spouse more often? Or make more money with eBooks and an e-commerce site?
What early stage book/tea/magazine/paper/clothing hoarder wouldn't want to learn to let go of some clutter while also making a few extra bucks on eBay?
Who wouldn't want to remain alive by getting a new doctor and a refill on the medication that keeps my super-high blood pressure from skyrocketing? Or refinancing a mortgage four long years after the five year rate adjusted?
There will be 364 days left in the year after today.
My main accomplishment for today is this post and also moving along several piles of paper that I photographed (Bed, Bath & Beyond coupons, charitable donation solicitations, 48 razors, Capital One solicitations) for future posts.
I will also be listing five or more items on my eBay account later today including more books that I can part with, a CD that I listened to once twenty years ago and other things that I will not miss when they are gone.
And it goes without saying that tonight my better half and I will be enjoying some tea.
*I'm sure that you know this, but SMART goals are:
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