Tag Archives: Milestones

Adsense Blogging Goal Met For The Year!

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My secret Adsense goal for this year was to have my blog earn over $100 in 1 month via Adsense.

Fireworks

Fireworks

I’m happy to announce that I met this goal this past August with just a few cents over $100.  Next month, I probably won’t hit $100, but that’s okay because it wasn’t part of my goal.

This seemed like a stretch goal for me because for the first 5 months after starting my blog (almost 2 years ago), I only made 5 dollars.  To be fair, I didn’t even run Adsense for the first 2 months though.

So to celebration, on the way home from my day job, I got some food at a pulled pork place and bought myself an ice cream cone (mint chocolate) at the ice cream shop next door.  Not a big celebration, but it was nice to celebrate the goal accomplishment in some manner.

My Adsense goal for next year will be to earn $150 in 1 month.  Nothing over the top, but respectable.  Actually I have a financial range for next year.  I really want to hit between $150 to $200 per month.  So at a minimum, I would like to hit $150, but really if by some miracle I passed the $200 mark, that would be a much bigger celebration.

To some these goal might seem trivial and they are right, they are trivial to a certain extent, but I find that little milestones on financial goals work best for me.  I used financial milestones in paying off my mortgage, and to help motivate me to contribute and grow my 401k balance.  Financial milestones/goals really do make a difference!

So am I going to become a full-time blogger next year?  No way, I don’t expect this blog to ever make enough money to stop working my day job.  But as a hobby that provides an alternative money stream, blogging is great!

Would I like to blog or do online businesses full-time some day?  Yes, but that’s a long ways off.

Thanks for joining my in my goal accomplishment for my blog for the year.

Have a great weekend,

MR

 

Creating Alternative Income Milestones

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During this post, as I’m typing, I’m trying to come up with the formation a new set of financial milestones called “Alternative Income Milestones”.

Reference Material:

Below are the poverty level guidelines in 2009:

2009 Poverty Levels
 Family Members Poverty Guideline
1 $10,830
2 14,570
3 18,310
4 22,050
5 25,790
6 29,530
7 33,270
8 37,010
for more than 8 family members, add $3,740 for each additional person.

Even with our house mortgage gone (next Feb.), we will spend more than the poverty level guideline for a family of 4.  Looking at the table, we should be spending a thousand or so more than the poverty level for a family of 8 (if we stay frugal, and don’t let lifestyle creep set in).

So why am I bringing this up?

Well, I need a new set of financial milestones now that we will have overcome our mortgage milestones, so I thought I’d use a modified version of the US poverty levels for financial milestone markers.  I’m creating these milestones for my taxable brokerage account and my Roth IRA (I’m excluding my 401(k) balance from these milestones).   The idea is that I want to have my passive income (dividend from stocks, bonds interest, and any other form of passive income) to produce enough to pass the set of milestone markers that I am about to create.

Alternative Income Milestones (I added these to my financial spreadsheet labeling the Sheet tab: “Alternative Income Milestones”)

Levels Amount Milestones
1 $5,000
2 $10,000
3 $15,000
4 $20,000
5 $25,000

I estimate that if I just save the extra money from my house payment alone, it will take me about:

  • 9 years to accomplish Level Milestone 1 (at a 4% return rate).
  • 7  years to accomplish Level Milestone 2 (at a 4% return rate).
  • 5  years to accomplish Level Milestone 3 (at a 4% return rate).
  • 4  years to accomplish Level Milestone 4 (at a 4% return rate).
  • 3 1/2  years to accomplish Level Milestone 5 (at a 4% return rate).

Clearly, I don’t want to wait almost 30 years to go through these levels…  I’ll have to come up with a way of making additional money (or earning a higher yield) to speed up the process.

I figure I have about 3 stages to go through before I make it to a financial independent state.

March 1st 2010, will be my start of stage 2, the “Alternative Income” stage.

Hopefully, we’ll do as well with these milestones as we did with the mortgage milestones…