Did I Achieve My Financial Goals For 2019? Surviving One Of The Hardest Years Of My Life

At the end of 2018 I set my financial goals for 2019. Did I achieve those financial goals? In short – no. Here are some of the obstacles that came up for me in 2019 and how I survived one of the hardest years of my life.

0:00 – Introduction
0:37 – Recap of my goals for 2019
1:06 – Context around why my 2019 started so tough
3:05 – I took meaningful steps towards my goals
4:22 – The start of 2019 I was living with my dad
5:40 – The biggest issue I had in 2019: Cash flow issues
8:09 – When things really started to change for me
10:35 – Getting a job
13:25 – I SURVIVED 2019!!!

Recommended Videos:

My Financial Goals For 2019 (Recorded 2018)

My Financial Goals For 2020 – Achieving Financial Freedom…Again

Transcription:

Ryan 0:00
at the end of 2018 i sat down with

simon everingham the buyer’s agent from pumped on property and talked about what my financial goals were for 2019 so i’ll link out to that down below but in this episode i want to talk about how i went with those financial goals in 2019 did i achieve them if so how did i achieve them if i didn’t achieve them why didn’t i achieve them hey i’m ryan from onproperty helping you achieve financial freedom and when i sat down with simon about a year ago today we were talking about our financial goals and what we had planned for 2019 now simon was just buying a property at that time which was his big financial goal and his goals in 2019 was i think to save up another deposit in order to go again and now my position was very different at that time and i really didn’t start 2019 from a place of strength which we’ll talk about but my goals for 2019 was to get myself out of debt and also to achieve financial freedom again now a bit of context around this it was probably 2016 or maybe 2017 now would have been 2016 or 2015 that i achieved what i call pseudo financial freedom so i had online businesses that were generating me enough income that i didn’t really need to worry now i call it pseudo financial freedom because it’s not a long term financial freedom that you get from investing in property where you know that as long as the market doesn’t crash you’re going to be set for life i call it pseudo financial freedom because with internet businesses things change all the time i knew that i would have just a set time period where this would be the case and then i would need to work again but basically back then achieve financial freedom really wasn’t happy in life at all in fact suffered with a lot of depression suffered with anxiety and eating disorders and so i thought well rather than chasing the big box and multi building a multimillion dollar business let’s actually chase happiness and go about finding happiness and so me my then wife kelly at the time we bought a van did have a van moved into the van with our kids ended up moving out to noosa and living there for a couple of years and hardly working so at the end of 2018 simon was in a really good financial position buying his first property i was kind of in the opposite so i had just not been working on our businesses for a couple of years me and kelly had decided to separate and so just kind of going through that separation and about to move into state so at the same time that that was happening my businesses finally started to move backwards and the income from my businesses was dropping so at the end of 2018 i really wasn’t in a very strong financial position and i was actually getting into debt i also had a bunch of investments that went bad over the course of 2018 as well and so all in all i just didn’t start 2019 from a place of strength so did i achieve my goals in 2019 of paying off all my debt and achieving financial freedom no i didn’t achieve them but i did take meaningful steps towards them and i am now going to be starting 2020 from a much greater place of strength i will talk about what my goals are for 2020 in the next video but in this video we’re kind of just reviewing okay what happened in 2019 what kind of hurdles did i have to go through what did i learn from those experiences and i hope that you can take some learning out of this as well because wealth building growing your wealth growing your passive income you know i always saw it as just a straight line that goes upwards and to the right but what i’ve realized in life is that you have your ups and downs you have your times where things are going really good you have your science when things are going really bad i was actually just hanging out with a friend the other day and she has started lots of multimillion dollar businesses that she has grown tremendously but then they’ve crashed and then she started again grown it again but each time along the way you learn something new so this is kind of for you know it’s an opportunity for me to look back over the year but it’s also an opportunity for you to be a part of my journey and to learn along with me so the start of 2019 i started living at my dad’s place so we had just moved me and kelly decided to move and relocate the kids down to sydney because all of our family are down here so moved down to sydney and i was living with dad at the time in order to save on rent the funny thing is i’ll be starting 2020 in a very similar position living with my dad the owners are moving into this place so i need to move out but i am starting 2020 from a much greater place of strength that basically started 2019 with my dad the goal was let’s keep expenses low as low as possible And then let’s build up the business so that I’ve got more money coming in, in order to pay off debt. And so the start of the year was really focused on building out my online content business. Now, that includes on property. But I also have a bunch of other web properties as well. So I was working on them. And I don’t really remember the first part of the year, to be honest, it was, the whole year was a massive emotional roller coaster. As you can imagine, with someone who’s going through or been through a separation and moving into state and going through financial difficulties. It was a pretty hard year, to be honest. And the biggest problem that I had in 2019, was cashflow issues. So it wasn’t that I wasn’t earning enough money to start reducing my debt. But it was that I would have these wild fluctuations in cash flow. So I believe at the start of the year, my expenses were really low. I was working hard on the business and business were growing, the market was doing quite well. And so my income was starting to go up, which meant I was starting to pay off debt, get in a better position, I then decided to move into this place. I think it was in June, that I moved in here, the start of June. And then unfortunately, in the month of June and July was some of my two worst months for the business. And I realized that I just stretched myself a bit too thin. And you know, I just like a huge drop in income, just really unfortunate circumstances that led to the business not doing well in those months. So all of us are now this massive cash flow squeeze. And obviously, the anxiety that comes with that, I remember, there was multiple times throughout this year where I would talk to my mom and be like, Mom, I may need to borrow some money from you again. But then Luckily, things would come through and I wouldn’t have to so I think we had that conversation many times throughout the year. But luckily, I didn’t have to. And so yeah, I just had a lot of kind of times this year where cash flow was just really tight. And I wasn’t sure how I was going to pay, you know, the next bit of school fees, or the next bills that were coming in. And I remember having my spreadsheet or mapping it out on paper, okay, what is my runway, they call it in start up land, you have a runway, so how much money do you have. And then once you run out of money, the plane crashes, basically. So with a startup, you want to have enough runway that the plane can take off and then be self supporting. And so for me, it was like, Okay, how close is the end of my runway, and at times the end of my runway, you know,

it was a week or two weeks, and it was right there. And so that was really scary. And it was really hard place to be in. In that situation. I know there are a lot of people are in that situation where they’re really living week to week, and they don’t know how they’re going to afford the next week’s mortgage repayment, and things like that. So I went through a lot of that towards the end of the year, I was very fortunate to have quite a good running business. And I think things really started to change for me, in my business in about August, where I really got down and really started to understand my strategy of how to grow my business better. It’s hard to explain without knowing the ins and outs of my business, but oh, I really mapped out how the exact actions that I take today, how much money they will generate for me in the first month, in the second month, the third month, and so forth. So what that meant is that I can actually map out my future and estimate, okay, given the work that I’m putting in, and the articles I’m running today, how much money am I going to be making in November, December, January, February, etc, and map out the future. And so that realization was basically the massive turning point for me in 2019. And in my business, and just being able to see that growth. Now, I will put up a video in a couple of days of the hard parts about financial freedom. And I think I recorded a month a month ago, but never published it. And I was like, I was sick. The kids had just been really sick. But it was nighttime. And I was working on writing these articles and I filmed this video. But the problem with my business is that I will run an article and in the first month, it might make one to $2 in the second month and might make four or $5 third month and might make a and then slowly grows up till you know, upwards of around like 15 to $20 per month. But basically I’m working because I hadn’t been doing that for many years. I’m basically working a full month writing all these articles and maybe earning less than $100 for 40 hour weeks every week writing all these articles earning less than $100. But those articles will then sit there. They will then grow and continue to make money every single month and then the next month. I’m writing more articles they might make only $100 in the first month but in the second month they’ll make more and so over time i’m building out my collection of online content and building up the income that comes with that so august was a real turning point where i kind of got the clarity of that plan and how i was going to actually get myself completely out of debt get myself out of this situation and achieve financial freedom again so before that i was working on the business but i just didn’t have that really clear goal and so that’s been super motivating for me so towards the end of 2019 you know mid 2019 i basically had no runway nearly ran out of money was not in a position where i was paying down debt i did obviously manage the debts and make sure that i was keeping up with repayments but i wasn’t reducing my debt at all i was just as in like staying afloat basically if not going backwards and then towards the end of the year i’ve been really fortunate in how business has gone and been building that up and it was actually something i forgot to talk about was around that time in june or july where runway was really tight was the time where it’s like okay i don’t know what’s going to happen i don’t have much on my left it’s time that i need to go out and actually get a job and so i went out and looked for a bunch of marketing jobs ended up getting a job at a local cafe just a couple of days a week and working in that and that ended up being just enough to provide me with just enough income for food for the week so that i would have enough runway that i could continue to build my business and then towards the end of the year 2019 as i said really fortunate was able to grow the income of my business get some good sales get some good income coming in and actually get in a position where i could actually start paying off debt again and actually extend my runway so when the runway you know was maybe like a week two weeks now you’re looking at a runway that is more like a couple of months where i’m not super worried about the future and you know whether or not i can pay the next installment of school fees i know that i can make it until the end of the year into next year but i still know that i need to continue working and keep working hard so did i pay off all my debt in 2019 absolutely not do i pay off some of it yeah i did i reduce some of it not nearly as much as i would have liked but i did reduce some of it did i achieve financial freedom in 2019 no i didn’t i did a lot of work i kind of got my business to a place where

it’s more stable again which i’m really happy with but in no way is that financial freedom and it was really in august that i set the plan and understood how i’m going to achieve that financial freedom again and i’m now working that plan but still in the super early stages of it so it’s just november right now it takes six to 12 months for my articles to really begin ranking in google and really begin earning any money so august november december no four months august september october november four months in so basically doing all this work and earning no money but i know that in 2020 that that is going to start to pay off and in 2021 that’s where it’s going to pay off as well so 2019 i didn’t achieve my financial goals but i survived and i didn’t not start 2019 from a place of financial strength at all in fact i was really struggling and he’s having this joke with my dad throughout the year is he keeping your head above water and i’m like no my head is so far below the water the only reason that i’m still alive is that i’ve got this teeny tiny straw this long straw that i’m using to breathe but i’m completely underwater and just struggling and so now i can say that my head is above what our i’m going into 2020 from a stronger position still not the best position or exactly where i would like to be but definitely in a stronger position in the next video i’m going to talk about what my plans are for 2020 what my financial goals are for 2020 and so i look forward to sharing that with you i’ll link up to it down below once it’s uploaded and i hope that you enjoyed this i hope that 2019 was the year that you move towards your financial goals and got a bit closer towards it maybe you paid off some debt maybe you saved a deposit maybe you purchased your first property if you didn’t though that’s okay as well because i didn’t go i didn’t achieve what i wanted to achieve in 2019 but 2020 is a new year and year that we can start to really move forward and build from a place of strength so i’m excited to share my plans and goals for 2020 in the next video hope you’ve enjoyed this i’ll also link up to In the conversation of my goals for 2019, the interview I did with Simon, I’ll link up to that down below if you want to go ahead and check it out. But thanks so much for tuning in, and until next time, stay positive