2012 financial goals

For the first time in several years I sat down and wrote what my goals were for the year. Also for the first time they were not all with a career / advancement / get ahead type of flavour. When I thought about the last couple of years I realised how much I had not yet done from a personal point of view.

After taking into account all my personal goals I then looked at my financial goals for the year. What I realised was that to fund some of my personal goals my financial goals would suffer. I am still going to set aggressive financial goals however they have been scaled back significantly from what I originally had in mind.

With that in mind my 2012 financial goals are

• Invest a further $40,000 into the stock market (i.e. $3,300 per month)


• Pay down my investment property loan by a further $30,000 (i.e. $2,500 per month - note however that some of this repayment will go towards interest costs so the actual paydown will be ~$20,000)


• Limit my personal expenditure to $1,500 per month averaged over the year ($18,000)

While this accounts for most of my wage per month I get a significant amount of income each year from my bonus. This year, however, I have decided to spend my bonus on a sports car. Whilst this may seem like the silliest thing to (i.e. buy an expensive depreciating asset) I have come to realise that life is very short and I dont really want to be an old man driving a sports car. Any excess will be used to fund a reserve cash account which I have been meaning to set up for a while.

Going through this process was a very valuable experience. I cant recommend strongly enough the importance of going through this exercise, not only from a financial point of view but also from a personal perspective.