Goals for 2016

With a week to go before Christmas, I think it is a good time to set new goals for DivGro for 2016!

2015 has been a busy year for DivGro and I've achieved some challenging goals. I increased projected annual dividend income from $4,900 to about $8,000, some $500 above my 2015 goal. Also, 2015 dividend income stands at $7,700, which easily beats my goal of $6,000 for the year.

I'm on track to achieve several of the other goals I set for 2015, which is great news! Although I'll miss out on a couple of my goals, I consider that as inspiration to try harder next year. Of course, if you easily achieve all the goal you've set, perhaps they were not challenging enough!

Before listing my 2016 goals, I'd like to state some assumptions and commitments:

• Reduced recurring investments of $2,000 per month ($24,000 for 2016).
• Continue to reinvest dividends, on average at least $800 per month (at least $9,600 in 2016).
• Deposit premium article income from Seeking Alpha monthly.
• Deposit "passive" income earned via Google Adsense biannually.
• Assume initial yield on cost (YoC) averaging 4% and annual dividend increases of 7%.

Here are my 2016 goals:

1. Increase projected annual dividend income to $12,000

DivGro's projected annual dividend income (PADI) is about $8,000, which is $500 above my 2015 goal of $7,500. I'm still transferring stocks from my Scottrade account to DivGro, which should add about $2,000 in additional PADI. Assuming a liberal 7% increase in dividends for existing investments, PADI should grow to $10,700.

New investments totaling $24,000 and reinvested dividends totaling $10,700 should afford an additional $1,388 in PADI (assuming initial YoC averaging 4%).

The total of $12,088 ($10,700 + $1,388) is $88 over the listed 2016 goal.

Although $12,000 does not seem to be a stretching goal, I'm arguing that it is. I'll be selling some stocks I no longer believe should be in my portfolio, which will decrease PADI significantly. In particular, the total reduction could be as much as $1,500!

PADI of $12,000 means that DivGro will generate an average of $1,000 per month starting in 2017, which would be fantastic!

2. Earn $10,800 in dividend income.

My new goal of earning $10,800 in dividend income is an 80% increase over this year's goal of $6,000.

This goal will be very challenging, again because I plan to sell some riskier stocks that will reduce DivGro's dividend income by as much as $1,500.

I'm hoping to make up any shortfall with occasional bonus deposits and with income received from Seeking Alpha and Adsense.

3. Write 120 articles, including 52 premium articles for Seeking Alpha and 8 articles for DivNet.

I'm on track to reach my 2015 goal of writing 104 articles. The new goal implies writing 10 articles per month, which will be quite challenging. My subgoals of writing 52 premium articles for Seeking Alpha and 8 articles for The DIV-Net are stretching goals, too.

So far this year, I've published 40 premium articles at Seeking Alpha and 5 articles at The DIV-Net.

My motivation for publishing articles at Seeking Alpha and The DivNet is to network more actively with other investors focused on dividend growth investing. The wider audience and increased traffic to DivGro is a welcome bonus.

DivGro's page views are approaching 360,000, an average of 10,000 page views a month since I started DivGro in January 2013. In comparison, page views on Seeking Alpha total about 192,000 over the past 12 months, or 16,000 page views a month on average.

4. Hike from Johannesburg to Cape Town and back • Lose one stone 

This year, I attempted to hike a distance equivalent to hiking from San Francisco to Seattle and back. Whether I achieve that goal is still uncertain, but I'm quite close! On the other hand, I easily achieved my goal of climbing the world's tallest building, the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, 30 times! That's the equivalent of 4,890 floors...

Unfortunately, my goal of losing 3 stone (19.05 kg or 42 pounds) was a big fail, despite the increased exercise from the other goals.

So, this year, I'm going to have a more modest goal of losing (just) one stone! I'd like to target midyear (1 July) to reach that goal, then try to sustain that weight level throughout the rest of the year. I believe this is a more realistic goal for me, given my lifestyle and age.

To help achieve my weight loss goal, I'm increasing my hiking goal to 2,795 kilometers (1,737 miles), which is the equivalent to hiking from Johannesburg to Cape Town and back. That represents a modest increase of 7% over this year's goal of hiking from San Francisco to Seattle and back.

Why hike from Johannesburg to Cape Town and back? Well, I grew up near Johannesburg and my sister now lives near Cape Town...

Thanks for reading! Are you setting stretching goals for 2016? Feel free to share your goals and to comment on mine! All the best for 2016 and thanks for your support!