Neville's Financial Blog

This blog will be dedicated to tracking my financial progress. Today I turn 22, let’s see how far I can financially advance by the time I am 23.

Short Term Goals:

• Ideal Goal: By December 31st, 2005, I should have at least 3 different sources of steady income (not including a job). All sources of income should together average about $7,500 of dependable income per month.
• Minimum Requirement: By December 31st, 2005 I should have found a way to independently pay all my bills/expenses for myself and have money leftover for investing, savings, rainy day and spending. My liquidable balance should be slightly over $45,000 with an investment portfolio of at least $25,000.

Medium Term Goals:

• Have at least 4 different sources of income, balanced in different industries to survive good and bad markets.
• Accumulate somewhere near $1,000,000 in liquidable assets by age 27. This includes cash savings and stock.
• Get mentioned in at least 5 of these sources by age 27: CNBC, New York Times, Business Week, Wall Street Journal, CNN, The Register, The Financial Times, Yahoo News, Google News, Bloomberg, BBC, Wired, Popular Science, Popular Mechanics.

Long Term Goals

• Form Enwon into a conglomerate with at least 5 different subsidiary companies under the corporation. Companies will be balanced in different industries to survive good and bad markets. These would most likely include the liquor industry, asset management, 2 inventions in the consumer products area and real estate.
• Follow plan outlined in my aspirations

A million in liquid assets is an extremely lofty goal. Is it even possible? Of course. To make $1,000,000 in five years I will need to:

Save $200,000 per year

Save $16,666 per month

Save $3,846 per week

Save $549 per day

Keep in mind this is saving $X.XX per year and does not include expenses.

I mandatorily put away $400 per month for investing and permanent savings, and after I get paid (from any source) I put away 60% if not more. Since I started working, I have been putting away roughly $685 per month. My current savings per month needs to increase by 2,400% immediately to meet my goal by 27.

Analyzing myself, am I where I want to be right now? And am I on the track to being where I want to be in five years? NO. I have accomplished a lot more things in my life than the average college student my age, but it is not even close to enough. I have high expectations for myself, and whenever I meet them…I raise them.

I’ve had in my mind a few things to start which I haven’t. I keep blaming school for interfering with my side projects, but that is no excuse.

I need to accomplish these few things within the next few months, definitely before I leave college:

-Videotape traffic patterns, contact traffic engineer researcher on campus and implement my traffic strategy on I-35 with a crew.

-Do research on starting my advertising company idea.

-Start Resumite Personal Sites and make it the largest of its kind on the internet. Fast turnaround, lots of services, upfront/cheap pricing.

-Trademark the name Resumite (even if it gets rejected, at least you now know how).

These few things are accomplishments I would like to have at least tried before I leave college. Even if they all fail they will bring in an untold amount of knowledge and experience. I also want to have the stigma of being a go-getter and someone who GETS THINGS DONE. Laziness and lack of ambition sicken me.

One of my goals was to finish Resumite.com by Dec. 15th. It is mostly done, but I need to add content and upload the sample sites. I am a bit dissapointed that I did not do this earlier.

I don’t really expect to do any business with Resumite until I get back to school. This Dec. 15th goal was simply an arbitrary date I had picked. Next time I make a goal, it should be completed by a relevant date.

My next short term goal is to:

Make $11,000 by April 31st, 2005.

This means I must make an average of:

• $2,750 per month
• $687 per week
• $98 per day

This goal is more than double my last 4 month goal, so something about my income must change. I must either work more, make more money from my online business or create a new income stream. I plan to do all three.

My 2-28-2005 goal of making $3,500 was made in order to meet my 4-30-2005 goal of making $11,000. Unless I come up with two grand in the next 6 days, it looks like I won’t meet it.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: I need more income! I realize I have school which keeps me extremely busy, but I need to form another steady stream of income that is very low maintenance like my current online business. It brings in between $500 and $1,000 per month with less than 20 minutes of maintenance per day.

Resumite.com is my other potential income stream, but takes a large time investment. Even with all the craziness of school I must still dedicate some more time to opening side businesses like in the past to meet my $11,000 goal!

Lots of money yet low maintenance…seems too perfect, but it’s possible. I need to keep thinking!

Look to your right. See that goal for 3-31-200 that states I should “Have made $6,500 since January 1st 2005″? Well, it’s far from complete.

According to this goal, I had 4 months to generate $6,500 and it doesn’t look like it will be fully met. Let’s predict I hit $3,000 by the 31st of this month. If I make only $3,000 every 4 months, I will be at an average of $12,000 per year. That’s only $2,430 over the federal poverty level!!!

What the hell. Even though I’m still in college, I need to make more money on the side. This is ridiculous.

The 3-31-2005 goal is to keep me on track for my $11,000 by 4-30-2005 goal, which is FAR from complete. As for meeting that goal in two days, I have some income coming in soon:

• Approx. $250 check from work
• At least $400 from Ebay sales ending in a few days.
• Over $900 from my online business
• $300 from web design project

So I have a minimum $1,850 of income within the next week. I will still have only accumulated $4,454 since the beginning of the year. To meet that $11,000 goal I really need to kick my own ass and starting making more money, even if it resorts to using my crazy business ideas.

So to sum up:

Almost 2006, so it’s time to start setting goals. I made a poster board with goals and a sort of calendar to make sure I work towards those goals every month. Goals rarely get accomplished unless they are constantly kept track of.

I’ve also bought a giant cork board to thumb-tack inspirational articles right in front of my desk. I’ll start putting up quotes, articles, pictures or anything that inspires me to work harder.

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I think a great financial move I’ve made is splitting my money into separate accounts. It really shows how much money I have for what purpose. I had too much cash sitting in my extremely low-yield permanent savings account (aka “No Risk” account), so I maxed my Roth IRA for the year by adding $2,000 to it, and threw $1,000 into an EmigrantDirect savings account.

I also recently opened up a 2nd Spending Account specifically for the holidays and larger purchases. I noticed every holiday season is much more expensive than other months, so I’ve been stashing a little money each week for a couple of months and built up around $800 for gifts and other holiday expenses.

It makes me feel good that I can buy gifts for family and friends without worrying about prices.

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The second scooter I bought has recently been fully registered and is now actually legal to drive. Almost immediately after I bought it, I got a ticket for driving with: No insurance, No inspection and No registration.

I’ve also got two parking tickets, each $50 a piece. In relation, it takes me $3 to fill an entire tank of gas.

I’ve also been yelled at several times for cutting through standing traffic. One cop said I was a “Traffic Unit” like everyone else and couldn’t go through just because I could. I disagree. I’m not sure what kind of ticket I can get for moving through a line of traffic, but I’m willing to find out.

Despite $700+ extra dollars of additional costs (Not counting helmet, gloves etc), I have been able to easily absorb these costs thanks to my “Bills Account.”

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Visit GoDaddy.com and see if yourname.com is available. If yes, buy it. I don’t know why, but it just seems a good idea. It costs $9 or less per year. NevilleMedhora.com redirects to my original webpage, http://www.neville1.com/. Having a website throughout the years has really helped me in many ways.