Relection on 2017 and a brief look at 2018 in terms of health, work and finances

Happy new year guys!

I am so very excited about the new year. 2017 was probably one of the most special years of my life and I learned a lot. It is scaring that 2017 is already over. Time flies even when you’re not having fun!

There were a few things that happened in 2017 that make me consider it very peculiar:

I moved to Portugal and I started living alone, in one of my beautiful rental properties. Living alone on this property is freaking awesome!
I felt dizzy/nauseous for the most part of the year, and my CFS/adrenal fatigue was exacerbated in specific parts of the year. This was so relevant and debilitating for me, that 2017 was marked by my dizziness.
Although I first considered doing a gap year, being off of work for 12 months, I ended up getting a part-time, reasonably well-paying job, which allowed me to focus on other projects in my life. This enabled me to grow wiser.
My real estate business took off and brought home some decent income. I realized I can retire earlier than I expected at first, especially if my projections for 2018 are met.
I was able to re-structure my real estate portfolio and hit €1,800/mo in rental income (with about €400/mo in liabilities).
…among many other things.

You can also check out the entire list of my goals I had for the year. Overall, I did pretty well:

Post at least 3 times a week. ALMOST DONE. There was a period where I clearly published less often but I was able to keep 2 posts/week for most of the time. Sadly, anything above this is not realistic (unless I do like 90% of the bloggers – who hire ghostwriters – which I don’t want). In fact, many great blogs, such as Backlinko only have a few articles published and yet they get a ton of traffic.
I hope to complete the task of re-reading 100 books, and provide summaries and reviews for all of them. FAIL. This is more like “I changed the plans for the year. Entirely.” I do hope to read some books this year (and publish reviews and summaries) but it won’t be close to 100 for sure. I have plenty of things that I could do with my time beyond that.
Grow the number of subscribers of the blog to 6000 (I was at 650 last year), and 25.000 likes on Facebook. FAIL. This was also pretty unrealistic without spending more money on Facebook ads and what not. I am not disappointed though. This year, I hope to double the number of Facebook likes. Not sure if this is totally realistic, but I hope it is.
Find a fully flexible (probably freelancing or consultancy) job, which permits me to live in one of my units and make $25k for the year. DONE. I worked part-time at a Portuguese university and got a pretty nice salary for the Portuguese standards. I used most of it to fund the renovation of RP#3 so I definitely feel I put the money to work!
Rent out all my units and make $20k from that. DONE. Fortunately, the demand for apartments in my markets is pretty high, and so I don’t have many troubles in renting them out. I feel this will be the case in the following years, but I plan to rent out many or my properties to companies anyways.
Make $40k on my investments and businesses. ALMOST DONE. I only made 50-60% of that but I am still happy with this.
The ultimate goal was to make $85k, net $50k. DONE. I didn’t net $50k in cash, but I was able to grow my portfolio by LINK LINK.
I wanted to dominate the Portuguese fiscal code. ALMOST DONE. I sure learned a lot but mastering it like an accountant would retire me way more attention than I am willing to put into this.
I wanted to participate a lot on Quora. ALMOST DONE. I missed the stats that I aimed for, but I was able to reach more than 10k followers.
I wanted to publish 3 books. ALMOST DONE. The first one is published, the second one is written and the third one is planned. Good enough?
Not letting other people affect me in a negative way. FAIL. This is also why I wanted to fast from people during Christmas time LINK.
Cultivate all my friendships and create at least 10 new great relationships. ALMOST DONE. I was able to make 3 or 4 new great friends.
Learn a lot about renovating homes (and doing it myself). FAIL. I swear I tried, but feeling exhausted and dizzy all the time was a killer.
I wanted to regain the shape I had in 2011. FAIL. Again, I swear I tried, but feeling exhausted and dizzy all the time was a killer.
Do one or two 7-day juice cleanse with organic juicing. ALMOST DONE. I did at least 3 different detoxes so this is done.
Move to my dream home, and live alone. DONE. Just not the home I initially thought I was going to move to.

Why am I so excited about 2018

2018 will be big for me because I feel that although this may take a while, I am moving towards the right direction with my health, at the same time I am taking my company to a whole new level. The big thing for my company will be hiring 1 or 2 full-time employees and grow the fixed income to €5,000/mo.

In other words, I can now see the dream a few miles away from me. And the dream is to be healthy and set up an efficient real estate company that has a few employees and runs pretty much automatically.

I also feel that 2018 will be big for From Cents To Retirement. I will work badly to grow it to a reference blog in early retirement. I do hope to hit 3x more the traffic I currently have, by the end of the year.

As for my health, I have a few plans as well. And this year I will be sticking to them badly! I will write a complete article on my perfect morning and evening routines and I will cover all the plans for my health in 2018.

Later this week I will be publishing an article on the goals for 2018 and you can scrutinize them thoroughly. 😉

Let me know how 2017 was for you.

Ben