Dillon Carter

Have you ever had one of those months where you completely rethink your whole life and analyze where you put your focus and effort? Yea, me either…. OK, so I did and it was great.

 

I realized I’m simply not living the ideal lifestyle I want holistically and needed to make a change. There are many aspects of life you need to consider to make you happy, at least for myself and I was greatly lacking in one area; How I make money.

 

I decided a change needed to be made and started to take action. I’m not going to tell you what I’m doing yet. I’m still in the early phase of things but so far it’s looking very good!

 

So what’s the bad news? The bad news is that my girlfriend and I won’t be able to take our planned trip to Thailand as early as we thought. Instead, we’ve decided to spend a week or so in New Orleans as it’s a much easier travel plan points wise and we’ve both always wanted to go.

 

Not really bad news after all.

 

So let’s dive into how I did this past month with my goals.

 

Travel Hacking

 

I applied for the last two cards I needed for the Thailand trip, but only got approved for one due to too many applications is such a short time. Not a big deal as I can reapply once my credit score jumps back up another 30+ points.

 

I have not started travel hacking cards for my girlfriend due to a stop on MS methods we sustained recently. MS became too expensive and we’re waiting for something new to come along sometime soon so we can go full force again.

 

I still need to meet the minimum spend on my new card, but I have three months to make that happen so I should be fine.

 

On a happier note, my girlfriend and I are spending this weekend in Savannah Georgia at the Hyatt Andaz for free using hyatt’s free nights and free room service, drinks and hotel restaurant taken care of using my Barclay’s points left over from a previous trip.

 

God I love travel hacking!

 

Golf Mastery

 

Yea, I did nothing this month even closely related to golf. It really just hasn’t been a priority at this time and I’m strongly considering replacing this goal with something that has more value in my life.

 

I learned recently that if you don’t make time for something, it’s not because you’re too busy, it’s because it isn’t THAT important to make time for. So golf mastery is being pushed aside for now.

 

Personal Training

 

I was able to add another 4 clients this past month and my schedule is really starting to take over my life. Income is going up, but time is quickly going away which is why I needed to make a switch in this aspect of my life.

 

I need to dive deeper into the numbers with clients as I still haven’t reached my financial goal and something is off. Either I made a bad calculation or something is getting lost without my knowledge.

 

Either way I’m doing extremely well with the goal, but a switch needed to be made.

 

TL;DR – The Tally For April

• Approved for ½ last travel hacking cards
• Won’t be going to Thailand but New Orleans instead
• Made a massive, yet secretive change in my life related to income
• Did nothing for Golf Mastery and pushing it aside
• Did extremely well with Personal Training
• Two free nights this weekend at the Hyatt Andaz with room service, drinks etc erased with Barclay points

 

Goals For June

 

As usual I’m going to keep this short and to the point.

 

Personal Training

• Add 4 more clients

 

Secretive Change

• Increase product amount 10x (are you curious yet?)

 

Travel Hacking

• Meet minimum spend on newest card
• Find new MS method to turn things back on full blast

 

Improving The  Blog

• Write in-depth post on how my girlfriend and I spent the weekend in Savannah for free
• Write 1 guest post for another site to increase traffic and subscribers

 

I really hope these monthly posts, although not intensive encourage you to start keeping track of your yearly and monthly goals to get closer every day to your ideal life. Living your ideal life isn’t something that happens overnight, but you can make incredible progress in just six months or less.

 

If you haven’t already, jump on revamped email list. In it you’ll learn exactly how I live the lifestyle I currently do; Designing your ideal life, breaking it down, travel hacking your way to freedom and building wealth.

 

It took me longer than I had planned to write this month’s update post. I had planned to write a few more posts before this one also, but could only manage to write one on my recent trip and how my girlfriend and I are planning a trip to Thailand.

 

This month has been pretty fun, with some up and downs for sure. For starters, the semester is finally over and as it stands now I have all A’s and potentially one B depending on how my final went in that class. On top of that, I made a pretty big decision to move in with my girlfriend of almost two years.

 

Let’s see how I ended up doing in April…

 

Travel Hacking

 

This will most likely be the best category of the month. Not only did we use points for a free night stay for my best friends wedding, but I’m also planning a trip to Thailand for me and my girlfriend using nothing but points and award night stays.

 

I’ll go more in-depth on in a future post!

 

So far I’ve accrued over 100,000 points and counting, with another few hundred thousand points coming in over the next few months. This Thailand trip will cost a decent amount of points and all of the current points I have and am earning are going to this trip.

 

I was, however, able to use Hyatt’s rewards card to earn two free nights at any Hyatt to book a small weekend trip to Savannah Georgia for the beginning of June. Anyone in the travel hacking world will comment saying how wasteful it was to use these free nights at such a small hotel, when they could have been used on a major trip overseas, but travel is about what you want to get out of it and it was a very quick fix to a nice summer weekend away as a couple.

 

Golf Mastery

 

So I’m slacking. Like majorly. The truth is I just haven’t been giving it the focus it requires at all. I can make excuses all day long, but I simply haven’t made the time.

 

My goal was to schedule a minimum of two driving range sessions, but I only scheduled one. After watching Tim Ferriss’ episode on Golf, I’m a bit more inclined to get back at this skill and breaking it down.

 

Personal Training

 

This has been an up and down year for our industry and I’m really not sure why. Anyhow, I’ve been able to manage the highest conversion rate at our facility in closing new clients and have added another 4 clients to my schedule, which is incredibly low for a whole month. I’m merely 2-3 clients away from reaching my financial goal. Unfortunately as clients reach their goals, some leave, which means I have to replace them.

 

Regardless I’m very much on track for this goal.

 

Hiking The Appalachian Trail

 

Literally have given this zero thought or action this month. I’m considering putting this off as I’m more focused and excited for Thailand and international travel hacking it seems.

 

TL;DR – The Tally For April

 

• Paid for a hotel stay with 100% points
• Awarded two free nights at any Hyatt hotel in the world
• Planned a trip to Thailand with my girlfriend using travel hacking
• Only golfed one time instead of two
• Added 4 new clients and completely on track
• Nothing done for my hiking trip

 

Goals For May

 

I’m going to keep this super short and to the point this time. No real explanation needed.

 

Personal Training

• Add 4 more clients and reach financial goal

 

Golf Mastery

• Visit driving range twice this month

 

Travel Hacking

• Apply for last two cards needed for my side of our Thailand trip
• Start travel hacking for my girlfriend’s side of the trip (5 cards needed…)

 

Should be a very interesting month to say the least. I’ll try my best to publish more posts as well. I’m sure you guys want to read more how-to and lifestyle posts than just my monthly check-ins.

 

If you have anything specific you would like to read about, please post in the comments!

 

March has been a great month. I’ve pretty much reached my financial goal for personal training, but I would really like to increase it a bit more just as a buffer. Over spring break I was able to go rock climbing, enjoy all you can eat sushi and spend some quality time with my girlfriend.

 

I’m so glad to be writing these monthly posts and holding myself accountable. So, let’s dive right in…

 

Travel Hacking

 

I’ve been studying travel hacking for some time and even wrote a finance post on my friend Bryce’s site 10XTravel.com. It wasn’t until this month that I really jumped completely into the hobby. So far I’ve applied for 4 new cards and successfully got bonus points from 2. I received the 3rd card today in the mail and will have the points within the end of the week.

 

Now that I understand how valuable this hobby is, I will never go back. It greatly decreases the cost of travel so that even a full time college student like myself can afford to travel around the world without breaking the bank each time.

 

Golf Mastery

 

At the time of writing this posts (I do things way too early!) I’ve gone to the driving range once which is a 100% increase since last month. My main goal at this time is to go twice a month and I think I can easily make that happen.

 

The biggest hurdle for this goal is the financial cost associated with playing and equipment. For a little over 100 balls at the driving range is $13 which is not bad at all, but I live in Florida, where we’re surrounded by top tier golf/country clubs that never bat an eye at charging you $100+ for a round of golf.

 

Obviously I’ll be using apps like Golf Now to find deals when I actually play a course, but this is not something I can afford to do every single week. So my frequency will have to stay low which vastly decreases the time it will take to achieve this goal.

 

I’m going to need to get very creative with the time I do have for this goal! Any thoughts or resources would be greatly appreciated in the comments below.

 

Personal Training

 

This is my current sole income at the moment all thanks to going back to school and not having time at my disposal as I once had. Initially I was happy if I had 13 clients in total training a mixture of 2 and 3 times each week. I’ve done that in record time and just found out that my closing percentage was higher than anyone at my facility.

 

I’m making more than I thought I would need, but truth be told I could totally take on more clients and I intend to do so. Remember how I mentioned paying for a full round of golf each week is a stretch? If I had 5 more clients it wouldn’t be a stretch anymore. Even better, having more disposable income is always a massive benefit to quality of life.

 

Increasing my income even more would allow me to save more towards my financial goals, invest more each month or simply move closer towards living my ideal life each and every day.

 

Hiking The Appalachian Trail

 

As I mentioned in my previous post, I’m decreasing the timeframe of this trip from a full week to a simply weekend. The main reason is the cost of gear that I may never use again. I do have a pack that would be perfect for a weekend trip and will hold enough supplies for me to not die on my last day. This also gives me a better insight into what a full week would actually be like.

 

So for now I’m switching my plan to just a weekend, but the same reason stands.

 

How I Did In March

 

At glance I wouldn’t consider March a successful month, but after really thinking about it to write this post I believe otherwise. I’m training more clients than I had before I left, I’m consistently churning a ton of travel miles for pennies and I’m getting myself back on track with measuring everything each and every week.

 

I’ve noticed a massive increase in mood while writing this type of post each month so I’m very glad to have brought them back!

 

Goals For April

 

Here is everything I need to get done in April in as detailed as I can get:

 

1. Add 5 new personal training clients
2. Hit the driving range a minimum of twice
3. Plan a trip using the miles I have made using travel hacking
4. Work on a plan for my hiking trip!

 

I’m also getting better with the images I use for my posts. This is a personal blog after all and I want to give you a glimpse into my life and I can’t just do that through words. From now on every post I publish will have a feature image of myself or taken by myself.

 

I’ve also been completely hooked on the idea of making short videos for either a specific post or topic. I may even make an accompanying video for each post so if you want to watch instead of read, you can look at my pretty face.

 

I want to hear what your goals are for April! Post 3 massive goals you have to accomplish this month in the comments.

I’ve learned many of times that success isn’t a straight path. We will fail more times than we ever want to admit, but it will happen. After publishing my annual post on what I intend to accomplish this year I began to work towards making each goal happen.

 

Unfortunately, the government has other plans for the money that I had set aside for accomplishing these goals. Although it’s not their fault that I owe money in taxes this year. I’m grateful that I had the money set aside to cover the expense and can get back to working towards achieving these goals.

 

I wanted to write this post to hold myself accountable. You see, I’ve been slacking like most people do after the first month of working towards major goals. I’ve realized my major setback was not setting micro goals each month and holding myself accountable in doing so.

 

So I’m bringing back my monthly “check in” posts that I would love for you to keep up with!

 

Each month I’ll go over how I did on the previous month and set goals for the next month.

 

So let’s see how I’ve done so far….

 

Mastering Golf

 

I never really understood how expensive this sport was. As a full-time college student I’m a bit limited in my play time, but that’s no excuse to get better. I’ve started analyzing my swings and implementing corrections.

 

My game plan here is to increase practice time to at least twice a month. Right now I’m mainly concerned with consistency than I am frequency.

 

Hiking The Appalachian Trail

 

This is the goal that took the biggest hit. Again, I vastly under-estimated the total cost of this goal. The money I had set aside is now going towards paying my taxes owed this year so I’m back at square one.

 

Moving forward I’m going to change this goal from a week to a weekend. The main reason is the current gear I have is more designed for a weekend trip than a whole week. This alone will save me hundreds of dollars in gear that I already have.

 

Personal Training

 

I’m back and better than ever as a personal trainer. I took what I learned the first time around and within a few weeks was back up on my feet. At this point I’ve far succeeded my previous successes and I’m just getting started.

 

My plan here is to add another 2-4 clients over the next month or so, bringing me well over my financial goal while in college.

 

This is my main source of income at this time and I need it to provide for living expenses, savings, investments and personal growth as I plan on traveling a lot this year using travel hacking techniques I’ve learned.

 

Completing My AA Degree

 

At this point my college education is on autopilot. I’m doing very well in my ASL II class which is a major milestone in learning another language. I’m maintaining my 3.5 GPA and was invited to the honor society which I have yet to pay for as it’s $80 just to have it added to your transcript, but maybe it’s still worth it.

 

Nothing to really change here.

 

Crossing Something Off My Yearly Goals

 

One of my biggest focuses this year was to further my knowledge in finances and I strongly believe I’ve accomplished this goal. I’ve automated my savings and investments each month to consistently grow my wealth. I’ve learned how to properly use credit cards to my benefit and gain valuable rewards without spending anything else.

 

I’m going to write an in-depth post on accomplishing this goal and everything I’ve learned.

 

I’ve had an equal amount of success and failure already this year and I can’t wait to see what I accomplish in 2016. Holding myself accountable each month will ensure that I stay on track and reach each goal.

 

Stay tuned for my next monthly goal post to see exactly what I’m up to!