Taking A Look Back At 2009

by Erik Folgate  
Filed under Spending and Saving

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I wanted to share with you my accomplishments and failures for 2009 and hopefully you’ll share with me some of yours. Part of growing as an individual and becoming wiser involves knowing your failures and accomplishments.

My Career

• I spent the first 5 months working at a financial services company doing temp work. It was grueling and frustrating, but I successfully managed to find a company that hired me as an internet marketing/social media coordinator. I had the experience doing it self-employed, but no formal experience with another company. This was definitely an accomplishment, because I transitioned from the insurance/financial services industry to the digital marketing industry.
• I started a REAL company with REAL clients. My buddy Tim and I saw the need for small businesses to start using social media as part of their marketing strategy, so we formed Presence Media. We help small businesses and bloggers learn how to effectively market their products and services on mega social networks like Twitter and Facebook. We’ll also update websites/blogs to give them a more web 2.0 look and feel. So far, we have clients such as individual Chick-fil-A restaurants, Golden Spoon frozen yogurt, the Cult of Mac blog, and a few others! This is definitely a success, because we anticipate a lot of growth in 2010!

Personal Finances

• We saved about $9,000 in our savings account for various different projects and emergency fund money. Success!
• I built my IRA back up to it’s original amount after losing about half of it in 2008. Success!
• We paid off about $6,000 in debt. That’s a failure for us, we had wanted to do about $10k to $15k.
• Didn’t max out my IRA contributions. Fail.

Relationships

• My wife and I had an overall good year. We have been trying to have a baby, but it hasn’t been as easy as it is for some people, but we’re staying optimistic about it.
• We had the chance to visit quite a few of our best friends throughout the year, including a really fun wedding/cruise combo in July. I think we did a good job at staying connected with our closest friends and family.

Spiritual

• An accomplishment was that we found a church in Orlando that we want to call our home church. It’s a church plant in downtown Orlando, but there’s a lot of great people there, and we really like the pastor.
• A failure would be that we haven’t plugged into the church yet. We have talked about joining one of their small groups for the past 4 months, but just never got around to it. It’ll definitely be a goal of ours this coming year.

Overall, 2009 was a very productive year for me and my wife. We felt that it flew by, but when I look back on it, we really did accomplish a lot in just one year. I am even more excited about 2010, because I know that this will be the year that we make a serious dent in our student loan debt, and my internet marketing business will continue to grow. What are some of your accomplishments and failures from 2009?

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