The title of this post used to be 2008 A Year Revisited, that is how bad good a procrastinator I am.  In a previous post I discussed my original intent for this site along with my goal of becoming self sufficient by 2009.  Meaning I would be sustainably self employed with multiple streams of income, posessing a number of diversified investments/businesses and generally steaming forward like a freight train firing on all cylinders.  Well 2009 rolled around and I was more Lionel than Union Pacific, needless to say I was a bit extremely ambitious in setting my expectations.

However I have been able to accomplish a number of my longstanding goals in 2008 and 2009 bringing me closer to my financial freedom.  Most notable of those goals checked off my list was the purchase of my first condo.  I started researching the Chicago real estate market before even arriving in the Windy City, and spent the majority of my free time doing so ever since.  It was a bumpy ride for a while but everything ended up working out, and I bought my first bit of real estate near the bottom of what looks like ended up being one of the largest real estate sell offs in history.  It was mostly dumb-luck.

Buying a condo was an important part of my financial strategy.  My short-term goal was to save on rent every month, from my research of the Chicago real estate and rental market I knew that I could purchase a condo and pay less per month than what it would cost to rent a comparable apartment.

My long-term strategy was to build equity by rehabbing an undesirable unit, and rent it out while I pay down the mortgage.  Based on my research, my target was a to keep my monthly expenses below $1150 for a two bedroom condo on Chicago’s north side.

My research methods were a bit sneaky, more on that in another post, but they were validated upon moving in.  Two guys were moving in across the hall at the same time and as it turns out they were paying $1150 a month!

The second major goal I accomplished was to set aside a rainy day fund equivalent to 6 months living expenses (which I handsomely surpassed).  This was quite a bit harder than I had expected as I was pouring a significant amount of money into rehabbing my condo each month.  However I achieved this goal, though not in the way that I had hoped, by re-financing my condo and taking out a “lump-sum”.

Even so, this refinancing was an important step in it’s own right.  As a first-time homeowner, I had trouble coming up with a 20% down payment for my condo.  Subsequently I was stuck paying PMI with an outrageous interest rate of 7%.  Refinancing my house, not only allowed me to take a fairly large chunk of change, but more importantly it actually decreased my monthly expenses, by lowering my interest rate to 5%, and removing the Private Mortgage Insurance each month.

In the end, looking back over the past 18 months since I layed out my goals for this site and my life, I have marked a few major items off my list, however, I still have a lot of work left to do.

I have made little progress in the way of developing additional streams of income. I have not devoted enough time developing any single idea, to fully vet its merits to really see if any of them are a viable business, before moving on to something new.  I am still constantly coming up with ideas, jumping around from one to another like a lunatic. I have not been able to sustain the motivation, to keep pushing myself foreword, I have struggled with inspiration, I have lost interest, given up, and started over countless times. I have not held my self accountable for my goals, dreams, and passions, and that is what truly matters.

I have begun to realize that there is more to life than checking goals off a list, life is more than the destination, life is the journey, and that realization may be the biggest achievement yet.  In fact that is what this whole idea this whole website,  set out to capture, and as a result succeed itself by documenting that journey in spite of the acheivements or failures.