2019 Goals — July Update

Joe Previte (he/him) - Aug 11 '19 - - Dev Community

11 days into August, so I'm a bit late on my July update but better late than never! 😜

Achievements

Here, I’ll share the goal followed by the related achievement of the month after the arrow.

Intellectual

  • Launch 2 projects on Product Hunt -> Made a lot of progress on new project 👀

The majority of July was spent working on my next project. It's a virtual coworking community for developers.

My goal is to launch the MVP by the end of August. Examining where I'm at right now, I should be on target to achieve this. The main task for this month will be building the landing page and setting up a sign up list.

Keep an eye out for more info next month on Twitter!

Financial

  • Start investing -> Rolled old 401K into Roth IRA

My previous employer had a 401K match. I was able to transfer that money (about $4K) into a Roth IRA with Vanguard. Even though I haven't made a "huge" jump into investing, it feels like a step because now I have the Roth IRA, along with an old Simple IRA from another previous employer all in the same account. It feels consolidated, which makes me happy.

I'm hoping with my new job at Echobind, I can easily set up a way to contribute to the Vanguard Roth IRA each month. Once that's set up, then I'll feel like I've fully achieved this goal.

  • Start investing -> New Split Paycheck System

When I started my first full-time job, I set up an automatic paycheck split so that 15% of every paycheck went directly into my savings. This system has served me well in terms of saving money.

I've been reading a lot about financial independence, retiring early, etc. and one of the tips I remembered was to continue living the way you were even after you receive a pay raise.

Since I started a new job on July 1st with a significant pay raise, I thought to increase the split of my paycheck. This month, I'm experimenting with a high percentage (50%), meaning 50% of each paycheck (I get paid 2x/month) will go into savings and 50% will go into my checkings.

I'm fortunate enough to make enough to be able to do this and still be able to pay all the bills (the main ones being rent/food). If this proves to be sustainable, it should help me hit this $36K saving goal by the end of the year.

Updates

Not much from the update side. I am reading a book right now called "Atomic Habits" and one of the points the other makes is to focus on systems/habits rather than goals.

Therefore, I may reevaluate the goals I set this year and see if I can reword them to focus more on systems/habits rather than goals. I want to read more of the book before I make that decision but thought it was a relevant piece to share here.

That's all folks! Until next month!

[Photo by John Fowler on Unsplash]

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