Financial Goals Mid Year Update 2010
It was suggested by a regular reader, canucktuary, to write an update of my financial goals for 2010. I always find it helpful to review progress to see if I’m on track for the end of year report. I’ll be honest, in preparation for this post was the first time I’ve gone over my 2010 goals. However, it seems that most priorities are on track.
Here are the original financial goals, progress, and if I’m on track to achieving them by the end of the year.
Pay off Mortgage – With about $25,000 remaining on my mortgage balance, it’s well within striking distance to being paid off. It will be quite the personal achievement to have the mortgage paid off in less than 3 years. Providing things go as planned, we want to be mortgage free in 2010!
Ah, the coveted debt free goal that most of us have. As I don’t have any consumer debt left (I pay off credit cards every month), besides our tax deductible investment loan, only our mortgage is remaining. We started the year with $25k left on our mortgage, mid way through the year, we have about $15k remaining. With the current low rate environment, I suspect that we are on track to have our variable rate mortgage paid off by the end of 2010 (or close to it).
Maximize TFSA’s – I was pretty slack with the TFSA’s in 2009, but I plan to change that in 2010. I plan to make good use of the $15,000 remaining in contribution room. My goal is to fully fund 2 TFSA accounts in 2010. As of this post, I only have 1 TFSA which was recently opened with Questrade.
After only contributing $5k into a TFSA in 2009, I made it a goal to max out the remaining contribution room in 2010. I’m happy to report that we have already maxed out our TFSA’s for 2010! Now, if I could only find a place to invest the cash..
Optimize RRSP’s – With higher reported income for 2009, there should be plenty of RRSP contribution room available for 2010. However, with 2010 T4 income being questionable, I may only contribute enough to optimize taxation. However, I may simply max out my contribution but carry forward the RRSP deduction should 2010 prove to be a low income T4 year.
After receiving my Notice of Assessment, it turns out that we do have quite a bit of RRSP contribution room for 2010. My goal is to withdraw enough from the corporation in the form of dividends and contribute to the RRSP to make $0 tax payable on the withdrawals.
Generate More Passive Income – After selling my rental properties, passive income has taken a major hit. The only remaining source of passive income is via Canadian dividend stocks in my leveraged portfolio. If stocks become attractively priced in 2010, I will become more aggressive in purchasing dividend equities.
I have increased my positions in my leveraged portfolio somewhat, but not enough to see a large increase in passive income. However, equity prices are becoming more attractive so I may achieve this goal yet!
Consolidate Accounts – I have way too many accounts at various institutions. For example, I have 3 non-registered trading accounts with 3 different institutions. In 2010, my goal is to consolidate some of these accounts and simplify our finances.
I have not attempted this goal yet, but it’s still part of the plan!
Blog Goals – Grow readership to 15,000 subscribers. As this site has become a large part of my life, I plan to put even more energy towards growing the readership. 15k subscribers is quite the jump from 8k at the beginning of 2009, but a nice round number to work towards.
We have grown MDJ readership from 8k to 10k, but still quite a bit away from the goal of 15k. The slower than expected growth may have something to do with my reduced post frequency, but something I hope to correct in the near future. My new career path has taken its toll on blogging time but I’m hoping to find the balance soon.
Overall, I’m pleased with the progress but in hindsight, some of the goals could get more aggressive. For those of you who have declared financial goals for 2010, how are they progressing?
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Great article! I love to see people looking at their goals and reviewing how they are doing at meeting them. Reviewing and assessing your goals is such an important step because it allows you to see if your plans are working, if you need to alter your plan to meet your goal, or if your goal needs to be slightly altered to be more realistic. In one of my blog articles, “Setting Financial Goals for Success”, I talk about the importance of setting specific goals with concrete plans for success, and as you have done here, it’s important to review and make changes as necessary throughout the path to reaching your goals. I find that when I set realistic goals with a detailed plan, I am much more likely to meet them.
Setting Financial Goals For Success: http://jaynsteele.wordpress.com/2010/06/04/setting-financial-goals-for-success/
Hey FT,
Sure you could make your goals “smart”er, but don’t be too hard on yourself…you’re doing pretty darn fine :) Cheers!
@ brandon, you are right. Some of my goals are not quantifiable, perhaps it’s just my way to easily saying “yes, I did achieved that goal”. :) I’ll make them more quantifiable in my next update.
@ bluenoser, thanks for the idea, I will look into it! I know that CIBC does the something similar with VISA expense line items.
FT: As a future topic perhaps…RBC just introduced a new finance tool for their online banking clients. I haven’t gone through the entire tool yet, but it seems to be a pretty solid budgeting/expense tracking tool. The best part is it automatically categorizes all of your income and expenses and creates charts and tables. I know you aren’t an RBC client but perhaps one of your contributors who are a client could provide a review?
Good job on your targets! However, I noticed the passive income and consolidation targets do not completely follow SMART criteria, which will make it difficult for you to say “yes, I’ve achieved this”
Sorry for being picky… I deal with target setting quite often ;)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMART_criteria
Great job on the goals.
I really enjoy the case studies that you’ve done, but sometimes they are a bit obvious. ie. pay off your credit card debt before investing, etc.
Perhaps securing some non-traditional case studies, or making it a monthly feature, as they are very interesting reads.
I agree, MDJ is part of my daily routine, so I appreciate when there is a post every weekday. I assume that your website is broken otherwise and keep checking back to see when the post is up.
Its difficult when you start a new job though. Maybe a blog post on that? Although I know Kathryn has done a post on that in the past.
@ MEB, no I dont’ see owning rentals as a bad investment idea, however, they are more of a “business” than an investment. One thing that I should have done while owning rentals was hire a property manager, which would have taken a lot of the “pain” away from owning rentals.
Do you see rental properties as a bad investment idea? Do you 100% prefer a REIT over an investment property?
I’m curious to know if you have any plans to get back into the real estate game.
What can I say Frugal, but well done on the goals!
WOW, to be mortgage free later this year…I can only wish. We have 5 more years to go, but we are contemplating moving in 2011. We’ll see.
I also think the 15,000 readers is in reach for you within the next year. Keep up the great work. You continue to be one of my favourite blogs and motivated me to start blogging myself. Cheers!