2006 Financial Goals Final Recap – How Did I Do?

A year ago I set myself some specific financial goals to reach in 2006. Let’s see what I managed to accomplish:

Separate business and personal financial worlds. Done, I have separate business checking accounts and credit cards, and I run all of my business expenses through those accounts. I have also set up a special home office area in our house.

Open a SEP IRA for 2005 business income at Vanguard. Done, opened a SEP-IRA with $2,500, which I then later rolled over to combine with my existing Traditional IRA.

Do my taxes and research to maximize tax return. Used the advanced form of TurboTax to do this for 2006, for 2007 I will either have to do a lot more reading on how to do S-Corp taxes or use an accountant. Probably the latter.

Roll over Traditional IRA to Roth IRA. After much deliberation and procrastination, we finally initiated the conversion internally with Vanguard last week.

Implement Business Idea A, and have it not take too long to maintain. Decided against pursuing this due to various reasons. I have started writing up all my reasons for failure, but haven’t finished yet.

Have achieved 3 new freelancing clients. I reached this goal.

Open either a Solo Roth or Traditional 401(k) for 2006 business income. I opened up a Self-Employed Traditional 401(k) with Fidelity. It’s been working out well for me so far, but there are high $10,000 minimums with their index funds. If you can’t meet those minimums then I might go with someone else.

Implement Business Idea B. This was a way to package my freelance services differently than my competitors, and has worked out pretty well so far. I won’t be sharing this one just yet.

By the end of the year, earn $20,000 in side income. I achieved this as well.

Explore LLC / S-Corp. I formed an S-Corporation to help separate the finances, limit personal liability, and reduce overall taxes paid. I am not sure if it was worth all the trouble, but it’s done now. Also something else to write more about.

Overall, I am satisfied with my accomplishments in 2006. It was a busy and hectic year, but it went by really quickly. I hope that everyone also made progress with their goals as well. Thanks to everyone for reading! I’m still pondering what to reach for in 2007, the list will probably be much different than this year.

For, my goal is to set off a ton of fireworks without meeting any medical personnel. Happy New Year! 🙂