My Single Goal for 2017

Happy New Year everyone! As I look around the ol’ blogosphere, I see outstanding year-end summaries and incredibly detailed goals laid out for 2017.

Sadly you won’t find that here. As much as I love you guys, I’d rather spend the day playing with my kids.

But as I’m on a Cal Ripken, Jr.-like streak of weekly posts, I do need to get something out, so I’ll share my single goal for 2017:

Maintain My Current Net Worth

Many would say that’s a bit unambitious, but that’s only if you measure net worth narrowly. If you just add up all of your money and stuff, then I agree holding steady is probably not enough.

But once you start to broaden the definition of net worth, maintaining its current level is actually quite the challenge. I’ve got some massive non-financial assets sitting large on my balance sheet: I’m healthy (at least for a 40-something…), happily married, have two wonderful kids with whom I have great relationships, have a great family and friends, and have a lot of stuff to look forward to. If any of these critical intangibles slip, even a little, it’s going to be very hard to make up somewhere else.

I’m also still sitting on a reasonable pile of human capital, and it’ll be worth less (one year’s worth of earnings, to be exact) at the end of next year. I’ll need to turn a nice chunk of it into equivalent financial assets in 2017 just to stay level.

Finally, there’s time. Even if I make it to the end of 2017, I’ll still be one year closer to the end of my time here on earth. I’m going to need some outstanding memories and experiences to even the score.

Once you’ve hit a reasonable net worth – broadly defined – just holding steady is really hard. So that’s my goal for 2017!

Happy New Year everyone!

Picture courtesy of Hans Braxmeier