Eleven months later.

Every January I open an excel spreadsheet and make estimations as to how I think the year will play out financially for the Ninja household. Although the year isn’t quite over, it’s time to check in and see how we’re doing. Here is a screenshot of our goals for 2011…

In the past, I’ve set the bar low and made my/our goals too easy. One year I reached them by July. It’s embarrassing to set low standards, so I made sure to really step up our game in 2011. You’ll notice in the chart above, we had a goal to increase our net worth by $3,000 a month, for a total gain of $36,000.

I knew we could reach said goal if we buckled down and made wise decisions throughout the year. We went through some significant life changes: like a 1,200 mile move and Girl Ninja looking for work, but overall we have had a really incredible year and pretty much punched our goals in the face. Here’s where we stand…

I guess you can look at our results two ways…

1. We kicked serious booty and were able to blow our “savings” goal out of the water and increase our liquidity by $40,000 in a single year. We also surpassed our $96,000 net worth goal by an additional $15,000.
2. We are epic failures because we were wrong on two of the five categories. Which means we are 60% awesome, and 40% fail. Sad.

Although I didn’t set my standards high for the markets this year, they still managed to do worse than I predicted. I only needed a $700 gain in my Roth IRA (after my $5,000 2011 contribution) to meet my goal. Sadly, I haven’t gotten it yet. It’s the same sad story with my TSP :(. I’m holding out hope though, we still have six weeks before the end of the year and I’m praying for a last-minute rally. I need a 3% rally to hit ALL of our goals. Think it will happen?

I was hesitant to write this post because I don’t want to come across as arrogant or bragging. I hope you know I’m an open book. I blog about the good, the bad, and the ugly in the Ninja household. We were fortunate to have a pretty stellar year, and we try our best to be responsible with what we’ve been given. Sometimes that means having fun and going on a random vacation to San Francisco, other times it means buckling down and contributing to our retirement, and sometimes it means giving a bunch of money away. Twenty-eleven was great to us, and we plan to do everything we can to make sure 2012 is equally awesome.

How has 2011 treated you (the good and the bad)? What were some of your financial (or personal) goals this year? Which ones have you met? Which ones did you fail?