Hi everyone.

Well as it is not quite the third month of the year I can make this post and have it still count as a new year post right?

Last year was awesome for our PIGs as our business expanded (actually tripled) over the course of the year, we set up 2 LLCs (our first companies!), and started a new Network Marketing organization.

January was a little big of a mess though as I scrambled to make sense out of my personal accounting and present all the necessary information to our CPAs in a way that would make sense to them.  Good book-keeping may be boring but you’ll never become financially free without it!

This month has been a mess also as we have been snowed in, I haven’t been able to golf (boo hoo!), and I finally had to take my trusty old Gateway PC to that big geek farm in the sky.  After spending a week struggling with a brand new Gateway running Windows 7 I finally took the plunge and switched over to Mac.

The iMac is great but the switch required a different kind of scramble as I had to recreate or replace all the software I was using with Windows.  Well actually I didn’t, but I didn’t realize that until later.

The hardest program to replace was my Microsoft Money.  It’s not the best product in the world but it was certainly the best I have ever found for what I needed.  Not only was it able to make sense out of our multiple accounts, but it had a cashflow forecasting feature that I depended on.  That also turned out to be the toughest feature to replace.  Most of the finance software out there lacks this critical feature.  I finally found a program called moneyGuru for Mac.  It’s not perfect either, but I LOVE the cashflow forecasting features in it.

Here’s a secret.  I enjoy playing with the financial software.  I admit it.  My wife Amanda outed me this week when she said I enjoy playing with the financial software more than I enjoy playing my computer games!

Remember, I am on a quest for Passive Income Generators that will increase our passive income, our monthly cashflow, and therefore our lifestyle.  Without having Cashflow charts in an easy to read format I would have to resort to spreadsheets or (gasp!) budgeting to keep track of how our spending impacts us.  Any software can tell you what you’ve done.  I don’t care about that, that is in the past!  The Cashflow forecasting tells me how the decisions we make today will affect us next week, next month, and next year.  As the kids say, that’s whats up!

So that brings me to the title of my blog post, this year’s PIGs.

One of the things we learned last year is that spreading ourselves too thin, trying to do too many things at one time, is counter-productive.  So we have streamlined a little bit in what we are focusing on for this year.

Our main PIG is still our Second Life land business.  We are striving to increase our profits this year by a little more than double what we did in 2009.  This will get the business to the point where we can hire a full time General Manager at good wages, and put the P back in the -IG.  (If you have trouble following my abbreviations just let me know in a comment and I will break it out for you further.)

Not only will this free up some time, but it will also get the business spitting out extra cash that we can use to create or expand other PIGs.

Along with our Second Life expansion, our Open-Sim based world, Segarra Open Grid, is starting to take off as well.  Our goals for this year is to get that business to become a proper PIG in its own right by the end of the year.

Those two income generators are awesome but they are both in the realm of what we like to call Virtual Real Estate.  For true wealth-building we seek multiple PIGs from different areas.  That way if for some reason one PIG dries up, gets slaughtered, or we sell it for cash, we still have other PIGgies bringing in cash for us.

So our second primary PIG for this year is our GDI Power Team.  We will build this over the next few months until it becomes a very nice PIG in its own right, with room for massive growth in the years to come.

Finally, we have our eyes set on purchasing rental real estate before the year is out.  This will add to our passive income but also give us the opportunity for additional tax breaks which we will certainly need!

All told, our goal is to increase our PIG revenue by $10K/month by the end of the year.

Even if we fall short of our goal, we fill have a mighty fine year!

Be on the look-out for Passive Income Generators that you can add to your own portfolio.  These can be anything from cash producing real estate, profitable businesses, even interest income from savings.

The PIGs shall set you free!