Below is an email I sent to my team recently giving them the option to have some feedback into their annual performance reviews.  In the past, team leaders have filled out all the information but I think each person is their own best advocate so I wanted to hear what each person had to say. 

I was a little surprised when one person sent back the form with only three or four sentences filled out.  If you have an opportunity similar to this in your job, wouldn’t you put as much detail into it as you could to create the best performance review possible?  As I mentioned, you know best all the work you’ve done and things you’ve accomplished at work so be sure to let your boss know those things when it’s time for reviews. Promote yourself to get promoted : )

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John has informed me its time for annual reviews again. I’d like to incorporate your input into the review document so please send me any information you think is relevant, ex: projects you’ve worked on, congratulatory emails, achievements, training you’ve attended, process improvements, etc.

I’ve attached the form that will be used for the appraisal so you can get a feel for what kind of information is documented. Pay particular attention to:

SECTION I
Information that would be helpful here is a list of the projects you’ve worked on/contributed to over the last year.

SECTION II
As you can see off to the right of this section is where ratings are assigned for each Goal Area.  The Results column is where specifics are entered to support the rating.  Any details you can provide on how you helped work towards those goals during your projects would be useful.

SECTION III
This is similar to SECTION II except it measures the performance factors listed rather than the goals addressed in SECTION II.  You can offer your thoughts and examples on how you performed in each of the performance factors.

One of the things that we include in the appraisal are things to work on next year so be sure to include things you’d like to learn, projects you’d like to be involved in, or things you might want to work on next year.

Feedback Optional
Although I won’t necessarily be able to incorporate all the information you send into the document, I wanted to give you the opportunity to provide your input since you’re the most familiar with all of your accomplishments.  You don’t have to send me anything if you don’t want to, it’s just a way to allow everyone to participate in the appraisal process.

Emily, the winner of the FinanceSpiration Challenge, emailed me her thoughts on the prize, a one-hour consultation with a financial planner. She shares the recommendations that Kristine made and her reflections on the financial planning process.

The financial consultation with Kristine was extremely helpful. She started by calculating a target number for my retirement savings, assuming that I retire at age 65. She said I needed to do two things to get to the target number: 1) Invest (not just save) and 2) Get a higher rate of return, between 8-9% per year on average.

Kristine advised me to move my company retirement plan out of the stable value fund and into a balanced fund consisting of approximately 65% stocks and 35% bonds. She said this fund is less volatile than all-stock funds and would allow me to get used to the risks of investing. The fund she recommended also has a low expense ratio.

Kristine recommended that I move my Roth IRA from my credit union to a mutual fund company, again investing in a balanced fund. She also urged me to sign up for the 403(b) plan at work, and to allocate my contributions to a balanced fund (instead of a stable value fund), again until I get used to the risks of investing.

I was surprised by the simplicity of her advice. When I’m done making these changes, all of my retirement accounts will be at one mutual fund company, and everything will be invested in one balanced fund. I thought it was going to be much harder than this!

Kristine said that once I get comfortable with investing, I will need to change the allocation to make it more appropriate for someone my age (early 30s). I will need to increase the percentage of stocks to 70-80% and add an international fund to get the percentage of foreign stocks up to about 20%. Kristine also pointed me to some great tools and articles at Morningstar.com where I can learn more.

Thanks to Ben’s contest and Kristine’s excellent advice, I now feel like I have a plan and I’m on the right path to a secure retirement.

Thanks to Emily for sharing her experience and to Kristine of Beacon Financial Advisors for helping her out!

And the winner is……. Going to be announced at the end of the article! The FinanceSpiration Challenge has come to an end, thanks to everyone that participated! I hope you all have gotten something out of the different stories of inspiration in personal finance; here they are in order of appearance.

Iram
Iram started it off with Working Hard and Spending Very Little. Cheers to no credit card debt, hard work, and saving more than you spend!

Lazy Man
In response to Lazy Man’s praise of personal finance bloggers I thanked these bloggers for being personal finance leaders and examples for the rest of us. Move over Suze Orman, here comes Boston Gal, Flexo, J.D., Trent, and Jim!

Emily
Making important decisions by yourself is not always easy as Emily shares with us in Making Financial Decisions Alone. Thanks to Madame X at My Open Wallet and Boston Gal she has had some guidance and inspiration. While reading about others’ finances is interesting and can be helpful, Emily brings up that it can also be discouraging. Madame X reminds us “don’t be so hard on yourself if you don’t feel you measure up”. Everyone’s personal finance situation is different, if we set and meet our own goals we should be just fine. It sounds like Emily is on the right track!

Courtney
Courtney rounds out the entries in the FinanceSpiration Challenge with Until Last Year, I Hated Money. She has been influenced by many different personal finance sites, most notably the Ladies in Red. I’m glad to hear that these sites have given Courtney a new outlook on personal finance and have gotten her started down the road to financial success!

Thank You
I’ve learned some things from the participants; hopefully you all have as well. A big thanks to Binary Dollar, Blogging Away Debt, Get Rich Slowly, Blueprint For Financial Prosperity, and My Open Wallet for letting everyone know about the contest.

Financial Advice
I’d also like to thank Kristine McKinley from Beacon Advisor for being a sponsor of the contest by providing her knowledge, expertise, and time to the winner. One of the great things about Kristine is that she can handle both personal finance and tax questions since she’s a CFP and CPA. She shares her finance and tax knowledge with the world on her blog, and you can sign up for her monthly newsletter on her website.

Winner’s Circle
Speaking of the winner, the submission with the highest number of comments is Emily! The comments from Boston Gal and Madame X put you over the top, now you can’t say you never got anything out of a personal finance blog! Thanks to everyone for sharing their stories and being an inspiration to all of us! If you enjoyed this contest please subscribe to my feed to keep track of what’s new at a Money Smart Life.

The newest entry in the FinanceSpiration Challenge is from Courtney. Not long ago she was a stranger to personal finance. Thanks to the different sites she describes below Courtney’s been inspired to take charge of her money in a way that meshes with her life. Thanks for sharing Courtney!

Until last year, I hated money. I hated spending it and I didn’t much like making it either. I started browsing the internet for financial advice after opening a 403b, which is when I realized that making and saving money now meant that I wouldn’t have to worry about it and hate it for my entire life.

I credit my intro to financial self-eduction to the humorous and informative columns of the “Ladies in Red” on MSN. They led me to the fun of playing “The Grocery Game”, and browsing their message boards to find useful shopping advice from a lot of savvy young mommys (which I happily am not) who seem to have a lot of time on their hands to find awesome deals.

Since then I’ve been steadily expanding my personal finance research, and I have the “Money Dummy” to thank for introducing me to other methods of saving on groceries like the Grocery Guide.

Now I strive to find financial advice in harmony with simple and more sustainable living, which is abundant on the humble Dollar Stretcher (this also led me to find the internet-unfriendly, but nonetheless worthy Amy Dacszyn and her Tightwad Gazette series).

I also always enjoy sticking it to the man, so I’ve come to frequent The Consumerist and even though those craigslist ads about making 6k a month working from home sound enticing, I am a realist, so I also enjoy the “Get Rich Slowly” blog. I’m so grateful to all those in the personal finance blog community for sharing their wonderful experience and knowledge!

Vote for Courtney to win a financial consultation from Beacon Financial Advisors by leaving her a comment about her story and check out the other entries here. Stay tuned for contest developments by subscribing to my feed.

The latest entry in the FinanceSpirations Challenge comes to us from Emily, a thirtysomething woman whose single status means she makes all of her financial decisions by herself. Luckily she has Boston Gal and My Open Wallet to inspire her and pass along tidbits of financial advice.

Thanks to Emily for sharing her FinanceSpiration story with us and to Boston Gal and My Open Wallet for inspiring her to strive for financial success!

The two bloggers I find most inspiring are Boston Gal and My Open Wallet. Like them, I am a thirtysomething single woman. They have shown me that it is possible to make it financially on your own. I am not doing as well as they are: I am 33 years old, my salary is only $53k, my net worth is only $135k, I’m still renting an apartment, and I drive a 15 year old car.

Actually, most personal finance blogs make me feel like I’m behind. I’m trying to use it as an impetus for change though. Recently I used an online retirement savings calculator to determine that I will need $3.1 million for retirement. Yikes! It made me realize that I will not be able to get to that number through brute force saving.

Right now my company retirement money is in the “stable value fund” and my Roth IRA is in a CD at my credit union. In 2007 I want to become an investor, not just a saver, and try to get better returns on my money.

The hardest part of being single is making decisions alone, and it would be great to get objective advice from a planner on specific steps I can take to improve my financial situation.

Vote for Emily to win a financial consultation from Beacon Financial Advisors by leaving her a comment about her story and check out the other entries here. Stay tuned for contest developments by subscribing to my feed.

Do you have friends that constantly make poor financial decisions? Do you want to help them out but don’t know how? You’re afraid to step on their toes by offering financial advice. You don’t want to come across as pushy or a know it all. However, you care about their future so not doing anything at all doesn’t feel right.

The Gift of Finance
Why not set them up with an objective third party that can give them some financial guidance? It seems like a win, win solution. You won’t feel as though you’re pushing your passion for money on them and they get the help they need. The problem is you don’t have the extra money to save for yourself, let alone pay for a financial professional for them.

Money Smart Life to the Rescue!
That’s where I come in! Send me a story about a personal finance blogger that inspired you in 2006 and you’ll be entered into the FinanceSpirations challenge. If you’re the lucky winner of a 1-hour financial consultation with Beacon Financial Advisors you can transfer the prize to your money dummy friend. If you have more than one, I guess you can just pick the biggest money dummy of them all.

They can have their budgeting, investing, or tax questions answered by a certified financial planner. I’m pretty sure if you can help them get started on the right track financially they’ll thank you for it.

Lazy Man and Money listed his five favorite personal finance bloggers yesterday. I read all of the sites he listed regularly and pretty much concur with his assessment of each. As I thought about the commonalities among these sites I remembered a special report on leadership from October’s U.S. News & World Report that listed common traits of leaders:

The 5 Traits of Leadership
1) Pursing their vision with passion
2) Practicing solid values
3) Leading with their hearts as well as their heads
4) Establishing connected relationships
5) Demonstrating self-discipline

Thank You!
From what I’ve seen, or read, the people highlighted have become some of the leaders in the personal finance blogging arena by exhibiting these traits. In a world of consumers gone wild, it’s nice to see people setting good examples and offering little islands of sanity in a sea of debt and speculation. Thanks to these bloggers for a job well done Boston Gal, Flexo, J.D., Trent, and Jim.

FinanceSpiration
In honor of bloggers like these, and there are many more, I launched a contest a few days ago to encourage people to share which personal finance blogs gave them FinanceSpiration in 2006. The lucky winner gets a free financial consultation with a financial planner from Beacon Advisors.

There has been only one entry so far, the odds of winning look pretty good! Actually, Lazy Man’s post is a great example of an entry so Lazy Man, consider yourself entered.

If a personal finance blogger inspired you in 2006 let me know about it today via my contact form or write about it on your own site. Hurry, the contest ends on 1/22! To keep up to date on contest developments, subscribe to my feed.

In the first submission for the contest, Iram shares her financial habits. Sounds like ING can be credited with motivating her to start saving. A variety of blogs have inspired her to avoid credit card debt.

Her story is below, I’ve highlighted some parts that caught my eye. Iram, thanks for setting a good example for the rest of us with your financially healthy habits, keep up the good work!

I have always paid attention to my finances. At age 25 I have a 4 flat investment property and a condo that I share with my boyfriend. We are both very frugal but I got my start when I learned about ING savings plan. I did not have rich parents, I paid my own way through college by working hard and spending very little. Needless to say, I didnt have the college life I would have liked to but at least I got out of college with 0 credit card debt. Reading different blogs on fiscal awareness and fitness, I have been able to maintain my 0 credit card debt by paying off my balance each month. I do energy audits on my own house, clip coupons, watch sales and generally try to lead an average life including saving more than I spend. I currently make about $50K at my job.

Iram

Vote for Iram to win the financial consultation by leaving her a comment about her story and check out the other entries here.

Who inspired you financially in 2006? The blogosphere is full of financial wisdom and inspiration. Where did you find your most helpful tip or most inspiring article in 2006?

I challenge you to let everyone know which site or article made a difference in your personal finances last year. Let’s highlight your successes and the people that helped make them possible! One lucky submission will win a free 1 hour consultation with a certified financial planner.

Kristine McKinley is a CFP and CPA from Beacon Financial Advisors whom some of you may recognize from her contributions to various finance carnivals. The winner of the challenge will get a mini-version of her Right Start Financial Checkup. The prize is one hour of phone consultation with Kristine on your investment or tax issues.

So how do you participate? It’s easy, here are the rules:

1) Write about how a personal finance blogger inspired you financially in 2006.
Submit your stories via my Contact page or by email and I’ll post them on this site under the category of FinanceSpiration. If you have a site of your own, post your entry there and link back to this contest.

2) Voting
Everyone’s favorite story will be chosen for the people by the people! Get out and read the submissions, then vote for your favorite success stories by leaving a comment on their post. Of course you can vote for more than one.

The entries submitted directly to me can be found under the FinanceSpiration category. Any story written on another site linking back to this contest can be found in the comments/pingbacks section at the bottom of this contest.

3) Winner
Whichever submission has the most comments by the end of the day January 22nd wins! At the end of the contest, I’ll write a summary post and announce the winner.

Kristine will contact the winner to schedule the meeting and determine the personal finance questions to be covered in the consultation.

Contest Updates
I’ll be giving updates on the contest over the next two weeks so subscribe to my feed to stay in the loop.
Good luck!