Sunday, December 31, 2017

2017 Financial Independence Goals ($482,266 +$94,434 or +24%).

2017 Financial Independence Goals ($482,266 +$94,434 or +24%).
Financial goals.
- Accumulate $10 K a year, with $4k of them towards long term house maintenance – Partially complete.  We did not manage to save $4K towards the house maintenance, instead invested it during the year.
- Portfolio – go 0% cash for savings as of end 2016.  Generate $10K in dividends. Portfolio to be $430 K by end of the year – Complete.  There has been a change, as with going to Vanguard it reinvests all dividends automatically.
- Develop additional income source in full, potential reward about $2,000 a year – Not achieved, although some measurable progress made.

Blog:
- Regular monthly updates – Achieved.
- To cover 6 themes on financial independence. Two of them : mortgage, 30 year forecast scenario – Not achieved, covered only four:  “Transfer to low cost investment”, “Loft insulation and energy cost”, “Zero based approach”, “Mortgage”.
- Publish easy tracker for the long-term portfolio performance- Not achieved.
 
Educational:
- Create list of books to read - 12 books is minimum - Not achieved.
- Read the books – Partially achieved.
- Publish the books reviews Not achieved.

Family Budget:
- Stay under 110%  of 2016 budget. Increase is due to additional cost of commuting -  Not achieved. Previous year budget exceeded by 26%.  We spent too much money on the house, that we should have. 

Be happy.  Run 1,000 miles during the year. Keep BMI below, target 26.5 (current 27.7) – Not achieved. I was too relax.

The best thing happened to me it  discrimination by my ex-bank, forcing me sell all my shares and go elsewhere. This resulted in shift to low cost investments, which performed rather well.

I allowed to use reduction in income, as an excuse to do less exercise.  To be fair, I also worked about 50 hours a week, on average this year.  Should have worked on myself, as condition of current job is no promotion and no measurable bonuses.




2 comments:

  1. Wow! 24% increase, congratulations. I managed to increase by 16%, but really most of it was from monthly savings. Investing wise it was a disappointing year for me.
    I had the goal of additional income sources for years, never followed through (not enough time). Now I'm fine with not pursuing it, instead I concentrate on the investing.

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    Replies
    1. Hi eurfi,
      I am still envy your frugality. I can not imagine that I could do the same if not hard pressed.
      My investing strategy was bad in previous years. I was very lucky with the bank, which decided to discriminate against certain nationalities and forced me to sell my shares. As the result I invested in the index funds with low expense ration. Trump was very good for the market last year.
      But if you think about it my best hope with such investment strategy is to do as well as market does, i.e. mediocre performance (but relatively low risk). Safe dollar is means more that risky one at the moment for me. Should I get some more money from my salary, I could experiment with riskier investments in the future.

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