This page captures my financial goals and will be updated periodically. The goals listed on this page are annual goals. For the sake of completion, I have added a few goals from previous years.
Long term goals:
- Generate enough passive income to achieve financial independence. Ongoing
- Expand my knowledge of economics, business and finance. Ongoing
- Educate myself about home buying. Ongoingg
- Buying our house was quite an experience. We learnt a lot and some of it the hard way. Definitely will be adding that experience to my arsenal when we look to buy rental properties in the future.
- Explore other investing opportunities including real estate, small business ownership, alternate investments etc. Ongoing
- Educate myself about options trading. Ongoingng
- I have started trading options with simple trading strategies (writing covered calls). A roadblock I face here is that most of my assets are in registered accounts (RRSP and TFSA), which prevents me from writing put options and other short strategies. From time to time, I dabble into covered calls on securities that I do not mind selling from my portfolio.
Goals for 2011
- Earn $1,200 in annual passive income. Failed!
- Although I did have a portfolio sized enough to potentially generate this amount of passive income, I was mostly invested in growth focused stocks and funds. My passive income for 2011 was $762.
Goals for 2012
- Earn $1,500 in annual passive income. Achieved!
- My passive income for 2012 was $1,647.
- Sell all my positions in mutual funds and cut down on the fees. Failed!
- Even though the MERs are high in the mutual funds, I saw great returns from both the healthcare and monthly income funds. I am not able to find an equivalent ETF with similar holding and performance. I continue to maintain the positions in the aforementioned mutual funds.
Goals for 2013
- Earn $2,000 in annual passive income. Achieved!
- My passive income for 2013 was $2,682.
- Start blogging. Achieved!
- This blog 🙂
- Add atleast one more source of passive income. Achieved!
- I managed to add more than one source this year – ad revenue from this blog, a cash back rewards credit card. In addition, I have also started writing out-of-the-money options contracts supplementing my passive income.
- Sell all my positions in mutual funds and cut down on the fees. Failed!
- I continue to hold the mutual funds with the high fees, but 2013 has seen some fantastic returns and I am glad I did not sell them.
- Get a life insurance Achieved!
- This was originally planned for 2014 or later, but I decided to get started sooner. I am in the best shape of my life and qualified for Elite premium rates, so I decided to lock in the low premium rates for the 30-year term life policy.
Read the 2013 Goals Review Update
Goals for 2014
Earn $4,000 in annual passive incomeAchieved!- My passive income for 2014 was $5,133.33.
- Buy a house Achieved!
- We bought our house in the summer of 2014. Read the details here.
Re-balance portfolio with my wife’s portfolio integratedFailed!- This is a work item that we haven’t been able to complete and hope to finish it in the new year.
- Sell all my positions in mutual funds and cut down on the fees Partially Achieved!
- I sold my positions in Apr 2014, but my wife’s portfolio still continues to hold some expensive mutual funds.
Read and review more booksNeeds Improvement- This is one work item I am not pleased with. Even though I read and reviewed some interesting books, there are a lot more books that I started and haven’t finished. I hope to clean up my act in 2015 and beyond. Click here to find all reviews.
- Write atleast 6 premium articles for
Seeking AlphaAchieved!- Completed 17 (Click here to view list of all) articles
Read the 2014 Goals Review Update
Goals for 2015
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Earn $5,500 in annual passive incomeAchieved!- Our passive income for 2015 was $7,840.03.
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Focus on reducing debt (mortgage) – Pay down more than the minimum mortgage amountAchieved!- In 2015, we paid 21% extra towards our mortgage dues.
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Maintain a 3-5% cash position in portfolioAchieved!- This goal was motivated by the fact that I missed some great investing opportunities in previous year due to lack of cash in portfolio. We were able to maintain this level and take advantage of volatility in the markets.
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Re-balance portfolio with my wife’s portfolio integratedAchieved!- We sold the expensive mutual funds in my wife’s portfolio in January and have started building an ETF portfolio.
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Take atleast one finance related e-courseNeeds Improvement- I took this online course from Coursera – The Power of Macroeconomics: Economic Principles in the Real World by Dr. Peter Navarro from University of California, Irvine. However, it was very dry and eventually did not complete the full course as my interest waned. It still was a decent course and I managed to learn quite a bit.
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Write an e-bookFailed!- I had some ideas but they did not stick and materialize into anything. This still remains one of my goals for the upcoming years and I will be aiming for this goal again.
Read the 2015 Annual Review Update
Goals for 2016
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Earn $9,000 in annual passive incomeAchieved!- Our passive income for 2016 was $9,099.70
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Achieve better balance across asset classes and sectorsAchieved!- For the time being, I am happy with our asset allocation…we are close to 1/3 cash, 1/3 real assets (gold/silver and real estate) and 1/3 in other DGI stocks. I have detailed the reasons for picking this in this post. This is a short term allocation, and I will be slowly adjusting our portfolio going forward to align with our long term goals.
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Take atleast two finance related coursesFailed!- I took only one course in 2016. The course was Financial Markets taught by none other than Robert Shiller. I was hoping to take another course in Q4 of 2016, but life got busier and I missed this goal.Take atleast two finance related courses
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Blog Growth: Achieve 15K pageviews consistently through 2016Failed!- I was not able to keep my blog traffic up and fell well below the target of 15K pageviews per month.
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Write an e-bookFailed!- I started writing an ebook earlier in 2016, but was not able to dedicate enough time to keep working on it. I have struggled with this goal for a few years now and hope to find enough time and motivation to work on this in the coming years.
Read the 2016 Annual Review Update
Goals for 2017
Earn $10,000 in annual passive incomeFailed!- Our passive income for 2017 was $9,697.25
Start two portfolios for our daughter – one for post-secondary education via RESP (Registered Education Savings Plan) and the other- a DRIP planAchieved!- I started the two portfolios mentioned and have been making regular contributions to grow these accounts. See the details here.
Pay down an extra 25% towards mortgage debtFailed!- We failed to pay any extra amount on the mortgage debt. We decided to hold off on paying extra until we sorted a few things out financially in other areas of our life.
Read the 2017 Annual Review Update
Goals for 2018
- Earn $11,000 in annual passive income Failed!
- Our passive Income for 2018 was$9,230.40
- Pay down an extra 25% towards our mortgage debt Achieved!
- We paid an additional 112% in 2018
- Portfolio rebalancing & diversification focus Partially Achieved!
- More passive investing. Target 60/40 for passive/active
- Researched factor-based ETFs and decided against using the approach, since I did not agree with the index composition on the products available.
- Rebalance stock portfolio to reduce materials exposure. Target 35%
- Failed at this goal. Allocation still hovering close to 50%.
- Asset class diversification. Reduced equity focus and increased international exposure
- Achieved. Reduced equity exposure from 72% to 60%.
- More passive investing. Target 60/40 for passive/active
Goals for 2019
- Earn $8,000 in annual passive income
- Continue building Baby R2R’s portfolio – max RESP contribution & atleast two purchases in Nest Egg portfolio
- Mortgage renewal due in summer 2019
- Credit report checkup & fix any errors found
- Read 25 books
Further Reading: Our investment holdings and our passive income progress.
That is quite a nice list of achievements for 2014. Good job.
Keep cranking,
Robert the DividendDreamer
Thanks Robert. Looks like I should be able to hit most of them this year.
Thanks for stopping by and the comment.
R2R
I second DD on the goals accomplishment. I was just wondering, is $12,000 the ultimate goal at which you will be able to retire ( including maybe pensions, OAS etc)?
If so, I think based on your level of dividend income, projected dividend growth and dividend reinvestment, you will be able to reach it and be FI.
Thanks for stopping by, DGI.
The $12000 is not the ultimate goal for retirement. Its just a goal that I set myself over the medium term. I will need a lot more than $12K to cover my living expenses – we dont really live the most frugal lifestyle, although we save a good percentage of money. So far, things seem to be heading in the right direction. Hopefully, I will be able to hit that goal.
regards
R2R
Hi R2R,
just wanted to let you know that your achivements are impressive! I am following your journey for quite a while now.
Just one remark, 5500 div income in 2015 is not that agressive isn´t it?
KR
Lars
Lars,
Thanks for stopping by and the comment. The non-aggressive looking target of $5500 is because we had to sell a portion of our investments in 2014 to fund our house downpayment. We are hoping to catch up on the investments this year and hope to achieve some positive progress from last year. Meanwhile I am supplementing the dividend income from my “other” income. I have a more detailed post here.
http://roadmap2retire.com/2014/12/goals-2015/
R2R
Congrats on setting goals and following through. Keep up the good work.
Thanks PIE. Hope things are well on your end. Thanks for stopping by
R2R
Hey r2r,
As i also just started in covered call writing, i wondered what your experience is like.
I wrote a first post an plan a follow up when the option expires.
Amber tree
Hi AT,
I tried covered call a few times and it was an interesting experience. The thing I dont like about them is that it puts a limit on your upside potential, if exercised. While its a valid method of investing and can work for some people, I find that writing covered calls makes sense if I am happy selling a stock from my portfolio. If its a company that I like to own forever, I wouldnt write a covered call on it.
Looking forward to read your experiences
R2R
Hello,
I am a new reader of your blog, owning a similar blog like yours but in “Français”
http://www.LeDividende.com
I am very impress by your goals and progress. So far I am about where you were in 2011, so I can see what I can achieve if I keep investing and focusing on dividends stocks.
Thanks for sharing your experience and good luck.
Thanks for stopping by and the wishes, LeDividende. I will stop by and check out your blog.
Best wishes in your journey
R2R
I am interested in how you set up the dripp plan for your child.. i do drips with my stock account automatically but i know you can go through the brokers
Hi linda,
I didnt setup a direct DRIP plan with the transfer agent. I decided to go with my discount brokerage and that only supports synthetic drips. I need to invest a lot more before the dividends add up to atleast one share per quarter.
Best
R2R