My Financial Journey

I almost forgot I even wrote a post about this, but in September of 2006 I wrote about my other $100,000 by age 30 goal where I mentioned that I word sort of like to be making six figures by the time I turned 30. At the time it seemed pretty foolish as I was only making about half that and it’s not exactly easy to double your income in just a few years.

From that post

Well maybe I am too narrowly focused, but the only way I could think of to judge yourself was by how much money you made. I had gone to a pretty reputable college and was majoring in a pretty lucrative profession (computer science) and so I figured if I was making $100,000 a year or more by age 30 I would probably be doing pretty good. Now part of the reason I don’t mention it is because even at the time I knew that was somewhat of a stretch for my profession. I’d have to be really successful or come up with ideas for extra revenue streams (start side companies, etc).
……
it’s a pretty daunting feet and even if I do all of the things right that are in my control there is a very good chance that I could still fall incredibly short of that goal, but I suppose now that I actually wrote it down and know that people will make fun of me when 3 years down the road I’m still 40k short it will motivate me to get my act in gear.

Anyway this is a very soft goal as while making $100k a year sure would be a nice thing, it’s not something I actually need to support my family, plan for an early retirement, put my kids through college, etc. At same time if I do have the skills, talents, and education to make it happen I probably owe it to myself to give it a decent effort.

So mark my words 2 years 11 months I’ll be pulling in 6 figures 🙂

Well here we are just a year and a half later and I’ve made some pretty good progress on this goal. I’ve since taken a new position with a different company and have been promoted to manager of my department. Things have gone so well in fact that I think I might even have a shot at attaining this goal this year (I turn 29 in August).

Let’s take a look at my income this year

Base Salary $81,142.88
Bonus received in February $1,636.66
Bonus received in March $10,074.38

That puts me at $92,853.92 for income that I have or will have received from work this year. Which puts my awfully darn close to $100,000 a year and makes me think I better do something about it.

I do have some other side income that I receive for developing and maintaining some ecommerce sites for a friend as well as a small amount of income I make off this blog that results in an estimated additional $3,000 a year which puts me at just under $96,000. So I guess if I can find away to make an extra $5,000 in the next 7 months there is a very good chance that I will achieve my goal and really since I turn 30 next August is the last chance I have to break six figures.

So I guess it is up to me to be creative and think of ways to make that extra money. The most obvious way for me to make that extra money would be to pick up a side development project as that would probably be the easiest and fastest way to make the extra money. The problem is finding the client and the extra time to do the work.

I do get $1500 for every person I refer at my place of employment and did refer once person last year and got the bonus and almost had one of my referrals get hired this last week. So in theory I could just refer 3 people for jobs and I would be set (although this is unlikely).

I guess the $100,000 income goal isn’t important enough to me to actually go out and get something like a part-time job just to get me over the mark. My time is much more valuable than the extra $5k and achieving some rather meaningless financial goal. So I guess what I’m looking for is using some talent I have that will allow me to make some extra money without dedicating a bunch of time doing something I normally wouldn’t be doing if it weren’t for the money.

In other words I view this goal more as maximizing my talents and abilities to earn as much income as I have the ability to rather than the specifics of reaching a certain salary ($100k). I view it more like a basketball player who has 25 points, 12 boards, and 8 assists and who’s team is winning by 15 points looking to get the additional 2 assists in the last few minutes so that they can brag that they had a triple double when regardless its obvious they had a great game either way.

So I guess there are a couple of reasons that I drug up this post. First off it is another example of me putting a goal down in writing and in just a short period of time making pretty incredible progress towards achieving the goal. Second it gives me a chance to be creative and try to figure out additional ways to make some extra money that will not require a lot of additional effort or time (things such as donating plasma, signing up for online surveys, etc.). Finally it forced me to evaluate my progress – there really is no point in coming up with a goal if you don’t track your progress over time and figure out whether or not you are on the right track. With this goal even though I may or may not fully achieve it I think I’m definitely on the right track.

So I guess I’ll turn the conversation over to you. Anyone got any ideas for good side gigs to earn some additional cash?