2018 Personal Goal Setting and Review

2018 has just started to set in and I told my colleagues yesterday that it feels like nothing much has changed – at work at least. Life still goes on, work still goes on, CPF interest is in, Nikko AM STI ETF went XD two days ago… Yeap pretty much the same…

…except that there’s actually a lot more stuff going on now as compared to the beginning of last year.

2017 to me was a great year, in fact, much greater than what I would have expected myself to achieve.

Financial Literacy Starts From Home

My parents aren’t exactly the brightest bunch when it comes to their finances. I certainly was not born with a silver spoon in my mouth, and they did the best that they could to bring me and my brother up with whatever that they could afford while surviving from paycheck to paycheck. This includes being able to provide for my education up till my degree. I can’t express how much gratitude I have to them for allowing me to graduate debt-free.

With just a few more years left until the end of their housing loan of 30 years, both of them are far from retirement.

Being stingy V.S being frugal

This blog entry is inspired by some of the comments on the Facebook post that made Richmond “famous”. There was a small debate going on about the difference between being stingy and being frugal, and I would like to supplement my point of view to the two concepts.

Let me tell you more about Richmond and his character. I didn’t think there was a full introduction about him in the previous post, because it only mentioned his frugal habits.

Passive income of $3000 per month – How did I arrive at this number?

Yay! Another blog entry with Excel again! I’m telling you, this obsession with spreadsheets of mine is really hitting through the roof. BF has been complaining about the number of Excel sheets that I have and requested me to consolidated all of them into 1 master sheet.

Oh well. Guess it’s his fault for dating an Engineer. LOL.

Anyway, I previously blogged about my personal financial goals and one of them was to achieve a passive income of $3000 by age 40. You could be on two ends of the spectrum.

Passive income isn’t THAT passive

You’ve heard the rave about passive income. You probably Googled “How to make passive income” and “ways to get passive income” before chancing upon this blog.

I’ve been there, done that. After going through many articles and YouTube videos, I am only able to conclude one thing. And I’m about to tell you the sad truth.

Passive income isn’t THAT passive.

Well, majority of the ways at least. What do I really mean by that, anyway? It’s simple. You can’t just get more money by not doing anything. You have to do something. And you have to know what you are doing. Otherwise, you wouldn’t get too far, and your money won’t grow at the rate you want it to.

Let me provide you with a few examples.

My personal financial goals

Seeing how hard it is to actually accumulate the amount of wealth needed to retire at 40 as an average working class, I think it is time for me to define my financial goals. Well, in fact, I’ve already defined them earlier this year, but I’ve decided to record them down in my blog so I can use it as future reference.

So here they are! *drumrolls*

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1. At Age 30, achieve a net worth of S$350,000.
2. At Age 40, achieve a monthly passive income of S$3000.
3. At Age 45, achieve a retirement portfolio of S$1,000,000. (and probably be able to retire)
4. At Age 55, have no more financial obligations. And (fully) enjoy retirement!

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I’ll refine the list as I go along.

These goals are important. They set a clear direction for me, and will determine if what I have been doing is working for me. I’ll come back to them frequently to track my personal progress.

That being said, I want to explain my goals in detail, and what I have achieved so far.