It’s easy to stick with your current habits. Perhaps you make automatic retirement contributions and mortgage payments, but it’s been years since you last challenged yourself to go the extra mile.
If you set an ambitious financial goal, you can maximize your money and accelerate your dreams. Maybe you’ll vow to pay off your mortgage within the next 5 years, or to fully max out your 401k, or to boost your income by an extra $20,000.
Since many people naturally reflect on their goals (and set resolutions) around the New Year, we thought that this would be a great time to reach out to some of our favorite personal finance bloggers on Twitter and Facebook. We asked them to share their financial goals for the new year.
Here’s what they had to say.
Financial Goals for 2014
Save for My Children’s College: “My goal for the New Year is to save more money toward college for my kids. We’ve been cashflowing my wife’s master’s degree, and when she’s done in June, we’ll start adding that to the kids’ college fund. My son starts college in 2015, followed by my daughter in 2017.
“My plan is to also add to my income this year to juice our college savings, as well as our other savings. I plan to do this by making more money from my blog and the get out of debt course and budgeting books that I offer there.”
Dr. Jason Cabler, Celebrating Financial Freedom
Grow Professional Network: “In 2014, I’m going to focus on growing my professional network and trying to meet with entrepreneurs working on fun and interesting projects. I’ve found that my network contributed a lot to my previous successes and I like meeting new people working on interesting projects, so it’s a perfect combination.”
Jim Wang, Microblogger
Pay Off $22,000 in Debt: “Goal: Our big financial goal for 2014 is to pay off the last $22,000 of my wife’s student loan debt so that we can begin investing more for our retirement. My wife and I have been working on paying off her student loan debt aggressively. Believe it or not, we started with $82,000 of student loan debt in May of 2011.”
Lance and Victoria Cothern, Money, Life, and More
Follow My Passion and Take Risks: “My main investing goal is to now invest more time into projects that I’m really passionate about. In 2013 I had a few investments pay off (condo being out of them) and now I want to take more risks with my time. I want to invest my time into projects that I hope will pay off in the long run.”
Martin Dasko, Studenomics
Diversify Income: “My goal for 2014 is to diversify my income streams even further by investing some of the profits from my ecommerce business into real estate. Also, I’ve finally decided to launch a podcast to further the reach of my blog. Looking forward to taking action in 2014!”
Steve Chou, Bumble Bee Linens
Diversify Investments: “For 2014, I plan to reduce the amount of money my husband and I have in a former employer’s stock. This holding has performed well for us and I have already begun the process of diversifying. However, I need to create (and implement) a long-term plan for selling our holdings and investing in new opportunities, primarily in companies with long-term potential for steady growth.“
Julie Rains, WorkingToLive
Build Passive Income — “Focus on passive income because the “Rule of 300” shows that every $1,000/month of passive income roughly equals a $300,000 investment account on a cash flow basis. That’s why one of my 2014 goals is to multiply my passive business income 3-fold. It is the fastest path to financial growth because it is far easier and faster to figure out how to create $3,000 per month of passive income than it is to save nearly a million dollars.”
Todd R. Tresidder, FinancialMentor.com
Get Organized – “Get better organized. You can’t maximize your finances (or minimize your tax bill) if you don’t know where you are. It’s easier, and more lucrative, to make money moves throughout the year, rather than try to catch up or backtrack at the end. An organized budget, investment plan, tax paying/filing system will literally pay off.”
Kay Bell, Don’t Mess with Taxes
For expert, unbiased advice to help you achieve your retirement investing goals, visit Jemstep.com and sign up for Portfolio Manager.