Professional football players are able to make oodles of money because they always have a goal in mind. 😀 But only 65% of Canadians feel confident they will achieve their financial goals in 2015, according to a recent CIBC poll. This is down from 76% in 2014. It appears we’re entering the New Year with a less optimistic financial outlook than last. Nevertheless it is still important to set those goals.
When we have goals to guide us, we’re happier and achieve more than we would without having them. It’s a psychological thing. 🙂 But it’s not always easy to come up with goals for yourself. That’s why I have asked some other personal finance enthusiasts from around the web to share their goals for the New Year and I have compiled the list below. So if you are having trouble coming up with your own goals, here are some ideas to consider. My own goals are listed at the bottom.
Financial Goals Compilation
“My goal for 2015 is to take up smoking, and then immediately quit. Not only is quitting smoking one of the toughest things you can do (personally, I’d rank it slightly below figuring out exactly why your girlfriend is mad at you) but I’ll also save thousands in cigarette costs.”
Nelson from Financial Uproar
“I plan on doing my best to avoid homelessness. That’s about it.”
The Starving Artist Canada
“Start a new stream of passive income that has nothing to do with my personal finance blog.”
Jessica from Mo Money Mo Houses
“Keep the momentum of 2014 going in 2015. That means a savings rate of 70% on average for the entire year and over €500 in dividends.”
No More Waffles from Belgium
“I’m not much of a goal setter.”
Crystal from Income Journey
“My goal in 2015 is to find a good accountant. One that can tell me how to reduce taxes , listen and giving advice on my investments. That’s more important to me than making a few more bucks.”
Asset-Grinder
“Focus more on different revenue streams. I earn a good amount from writing for others, but my revenue streams could use a little more diversity so that I don’t find myself stuck if something doesn’t work out.”
Miranda, freelance journalist
“My financial goals for 2015, in conjunction with my spouse, are to fill our TFSAs, from nearly zero, and to add $40,000 to our unregistered portfolios.”
Anne from Money Propeller
“Take at least one finance related e-course. There are many free e-courses available online from the best business schools in the world. I had taken one such course via Coursera in 2013 and want to take at least another course in 2015.”
Sabeel from Roadmap 2 Retire
“Increase my net worth by $29k in time for my 30th birthday (which happens to land close to the end of 2015)…. I plan to reach my net worth increase by paying off the remainder of my debt ($13k), increase my Emergency Fund by $5k, and increase my retirement savings by $11k.”
Dr. Alicia from Financial Diffraction
“My biggest goal for 2015 is to build enough liquidity that I no longer care about money again. I spent a lot in 2014. It’s time to preserve capital and save.”
Sam from Financial Samurai
“One is to increase my net worth to $400,000 and the other is to read 4 financial books :)”
Young from Young and Thrifty
“Further stabilize my self employment income and get much better about proper accounting. Since self employment can be rather unstable I want to do what I can to safeguard my income and diversify.”
Jeremy from Modest Money
“Increase my net worth by an average of $100/day — or $36,500 for the year. No small feat, but I have a plan that consists of maximizing my income, diligent saving, and aggressive investing.”
Bridget from Money After Graduation
“Raise my net worth my $250/day for a grand total of $100K over the course of the year.”
Financial Underdog from Money Ramblings
“There’s a lot of instability at my workplace right now and my job situation may change. So for 2015, regardless of whatever happens and whatever budget I decide, I will stay on budget every month. I will NOT go over-budget.”
The Asian Pear
“Though I never have set a dividend income goal before, I aim to reach $4,000 in passive income from my taxable and ROTH account for 2015.”
Keith from DivHut
“Create more income through option trading: $5000!”
PC from Pennies at Play
“Receive $7,200 in passive dividend income. That goal puts me on pace for financial independence by 40 years old. I’m currently 32.”
Jason from Dividend Mantra
“My financial goal in 2015 is to seek a happy balance between having, spending, giving and saving.”
Melissa Leong, personal finance writer for the National Post.
“Solidify our savings and cut back on unnecessary spending. We realized that we have been a little too free with our credit cards the past year so we aim to scale that back.”
Glen from Free From Broke
May from Messy Money
“Watch our spending so that we can save up for a down payment for our next home. We are not exactly sure how much we would like to save, so our goal is really just to save as much as we realistically can so that we can be preparing for the down payment, closing costs, moving costs, and more.”
Michelle from Making Sense of Cents
“Grow my portfolio by $100K overall. I did it for 2014 with more than half coming from dividends and growth and I want to do it again! I also want to reach $11K in dividend income.”
The Passive Income Earner
“For mine, it’s to save $100,000 in actual net savings this year, or $250/day. My NW should be over $400K at the end.”
Save Spend Splurge
“Max out our investments now that our mortgage is gone. We’d also like to save enough money to diversify and purchase an investment property.”
Canadian Budget Binder
“Put $300 lump sum payments on our mortgage every month. Save $5,000 for home improvements. Do not incur any new debt.”
Mark from My Own Advisor
“In 2014 we accomplished our dividend income goal of $8,000. In 2015 we’re setting the bar even higher at $10,000.”
Tawcan
“Save at least $15,000 that we’ll use towards the purchase of a new to us car for our family. The car savings is a stretch goal for us as we’ll likely be needing a bigger car for our growing family in the next year or two and want to be able to buy it in cash so as to not have to take on a car payment.”
John from Frugal Rules
“Start *living* more. I get so consumed with the online world that I tend to forget I have a real life offline too! So it’ll be less computer time and more time with my wife and two baby boys… I can’t wait :)”
J. Money from Budgets Are Sexy
“I don’t usually make New Year’s resolutions or goals for the new year. Instead, I prefer to do them throughout the year, since January 1st is just an arbitrary date. But since you asked, I will say that my ongoing goals are to max out my RRSP, and to read 1 book on personal finance or investments every 2 months.”
Brian, Financial Advisor
“Our 2015 SMART goal is to invest at least 50% of our overall cash amount in income producing investments (public or private companies). As I can only justify deploying cash when valuations are attractive, 50% may prove to be a challenge, or it may be easy if we get a large market correction this year.”
Frugal Trader from Million Dollar Journey
“Devote 100% of my free capital to paying off my mortgage. If I can get really hardcore, my mortgage can be gone in 2-3 years.”
Brian from Long Term Mindset
“We want to save $72,000 in taxable and tax-deferred accounts. A majority will be diversified into our Permanent Portfolio. If we save this much and average 7% interest we can be financially free in about 5 more years!”
Steve from Steveonomics
And now, here are Liquid’s financial goals for 2015.
- Increase net worth to $400,000. This would be a 25% annual increase. Even if I don’t save any money this year and spend 100% of every paycheque, I can still reach this goal if my current investments grows by 7% on average.
- Make $16,000 in passive income. This would be a combination of dividends, interest, and rent.
Stretch Goal: Create a $12,000 car down payment fund. My current car is getting old so I’m thinking about replacing it with a 2015 Tesla Model S P85 or equivalent. It’s not the most frugal choice for a vehicle but once my $12K car fund is complete I’ll have a decent 10% down payment ready to go. 😉
Goals provide focus, a guiding vision or plan that enhances our productivity and increases our self-esteem. Whatever your goals are, make sure to write them down on paper, and you’ll be more likely to achieve whatever you set out to conquer. 🙂
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Random Useless Fact:
Every loaf of bread is a tragic story of grains that could’ve become beer, but didn’t.
Thanks so much for including me. I hope you have a successful 2015.
Cheers. Same to you. They say 80% of success is just showing up lol.
Any idea how a person without much money can invest in Canadian farmland? Agcapital has minimum income requirements that I cannot meet and Bonnefield won’t return my emails. I am going to call them on my day off.
My goal for 2015 is to reduce debt by $10,000 and save $10,000 in my RRSP. My take home will be $34,000 net.
Great goals, Beth. Unfortunately farmland is like the housing market. You need to have a lot of money, even for a downpayment to directly get into the land owning business. I don’t qualify for Agcapita’s high income requirement either so I had to sell my stocks to buy my farms. You can check out Gladstone Land Corp, which is a publicly traded company on the Nasdaq so buying it with U.S. Dollars would be ideal. Gladstone is traded under the symbol, LAND, and is basically an agricultural real estate company that owns and leases farmland with a 3.4% dividend right now. However the company’s recent financial report is quite disappointing as it’s net profit margin was negative 30 percent. I do NOT own or have done any real research into this stock, but it’s an option for people who don’t have a ton of money to invest all at once. You can also Google farmland REITs to find other stocks similar to this one.
Another way to invest in farmland, albiet indirectly is through companies like Monsanto, Agrium, or Potash Corp. Unlike smaller companies, these larger names are pretty stable.
Wow that’s a nice list of goals. A really great idea to do such a compilation!
I thought maybe half the people I asked would take up my request. I know people are usually busy over the holiday season. But I’m surprised most people I asked actually replied. :0)
Love to read everyone’s responses to goals… everyone is at different stages of their lives. Haha, you found my new blog. Thanks for the link.
Everyone is progressing through their finances differently. I enjoyed reading all the responses too. They’re so diverse.
This is awesome to see where everyone else fits in with their goals. Also, I’m dreaming of a Tesla too, but I don’t think it’ll happen.
Maybe one day electric vehicle technology will become cheap enough for the average person to own one. :0) But for now the model I’m looking at has a base price of $80K. But it will probably be more like $120K after adding on some options and taxes.
I’m glad some of your respondents replied like I did.
It’s always fun to have a sense of humour. :0)
Thanks for including me Liquid! Great to see such a diverse response; shows you the different priorities and stages of life that people are in.
I’m also dreaming of a Tesla Model S. One day…
I get really charged up at the site of a Tesla. 😀
Thank you for the inclusion of DivHut. This was a great read and I anticipate a follow up in January 2016 to see how we all did.
That’s a good idea. I’ll keep that in mind for something to do near the end of this year.
Thanks much for including me Liquid, I appreciate! It’s cool to see the various goals and excited to see how they all unfold. Best wishes for a successful 2015!
You too. :0) We’ll check back in a year.
A very impressive list by these folks. Thanks for asking 🙂
I will be sharing on Twitter this weekend – good stuff.
Mark
Thanks for sharing. 🙂 Go Sens!
Wow, this looks like it took a lot of work. Well done!
Thanks. It took somewhat longer than a normal post to put together.
Thanks for the mention, some great list of goals from PF bloggers.
Yeah, this post turned out to be longer than I originally thought. I liked the part where that person listed a financial goal. 😛
[…] Here is a collection of personal finance goals from various bloggers and financial experts, courtesy of Freedom Thirty Five Blog. […]
[…] Freedom Thirty Five blog collected financial goals for 2015 of many bloggers and journalists and compiled it in a post. What’s amazing is that even with […]
Great goals from the PF community and great compilation, too! I believe goals are important in every person’s life as it gives you direction and purpose. It can be of any size as long as you work hard for it.
Direction and purpose is the main reason I set goals for myself. And sometimes what we get by achieving our goals is not as important as what we become by achieving our goals. :0)
Wow, I feel like everyone put my answer to shame!
Your answer was unique, just like everyone else’s. 🙂 Besides, Steve from Twitter seems to like it and is rooting for you. Good luck with your new side hustle.
What a great list of goals from so many amazing personal finance bloggers. Thanks for including CBB! Happy New Year.
I think we’ll all do well this year as long as we stay focused, go after our dreams and keep moving toward our goals. :0)
I loved this. It was interesting to see everyone’s take on it. I wish I can be more aggressive with earnings and/or savings but we’ll see what 2015 holds. Thanks for including me!
We tend to set goals based on what we feel comfortable we can achieve. And it also depends on where our values are at. :0)
[…] Great list of PF resolutions compiled for your perusing; mine this year is to save $250/day in net income / actual savings for $100,000 in net savings at the end of the year. […]
[…] over to Liquid Independence where you can read what my a couple of my goals are for 2015 plus what many other personal finance […]
[…] 2015 Collection of Financial Goals by Freedom Thirty Five […]
Aw man, I didn’t make the cut? Jk! I love this. It’s fun to read about what other people are planning to achieve this year!
From people starting out with nothing to multi-millionaires, there’s a lot of variations in people’s plans. It’s almost like one’s level of wealth affects his new year resolutions about money. Which makes sense. But maybe it’s also due to the aggressive goals in the first place that has made the person wealthy.
[…] I don’t always publicly share them. After reading the goals of some fellow bloggers over at Freedom 35, My Own Advisor and Boomer & Echo, I though I would put mine in […]
I’m curious what kind of incentives are the Federal and Provincial governments offering on electric cars?
Good question, Matt. I think it depends on where you live. In B.C. there is a rebate of up to $5,000 for the owner of a new electric vehicle. In Ontario the rebate varies between $5,000 to $8,500 depending on the car’s battery size, and is only granted to the first 10,000 who qualify for the rebate. There are also other government benefits. More info in this wikipedia paragraph.
I went on the tesla website and they were automatically applying a $8500 credit to all there vehicles.
Wow, excellent. 🙂 That’s like 10% of the cost for the 60 kWh battery version.
No prob. Thanks for participating.
Great list, Liquid! Awesome collection of goals for the new year.
Thanks for including me,
NMW
No problem. Your savings rate is incredible. :0)
F35,
Awesome compilation. Very diverse list as well. Thanks for including me!
Best regards.
Any time, DM.
Great set of goals from many of the best out there. Thanks for taking the time to put this compilation together. Very insipring!
Bert, One of the Dividend Diplomats
Learning from the best of the best is a great way to improve one’s own strategies. Thanks for stopping by :0)
[…] Freedom Thirty Five Blog collects financial goals of Canadian bloggers, here is the list for 2015. […]
[…] Freedom Thirty 5 Weblog collects monetary objectives of Canadian bloggers, right here is the list for 2015. […]
Great complilation!
Maybe I missed it liquid but did you have a stated pre-tax income goal for 2015?
Thanks! 🙂
Hey Edwin. I don’t normally reveal goals for my gross income. But my pre-tax passive income goal is $16K for this year. Passive income is universal and anyone who buys the same investments me will also reap the same profits so there’s nothing to hide there. But I don’t reveal my active income because people at work might read my blog too and I don’t want them to be comparing salaries. 🙂
Point taken, completely. I was just wondering when your active and passive income combined would reach the $100,000 mark! lol no pressure 🙂
This is pretty exciting stuff, I’d be willing to bet you would be so excited about the accomplishment you would write about it anyway and we’d be able to figure out..100,000 – passive = gross income lol
Cheers mate!
[…] update has to be $427,763.55 or higher. I felt pretty confident about it and even put it next to other personal finance bloggers’ goals. Now it sounds like a giant stretch, but I’m sticking to […]
[…] 2015 Collection of Financial Goals by Freedom Thirty Five […]
[…] Great list of PF resolutions compiled for your perusing; mine this year is to save $250/day in net income / actual savings for $100,000 in net savings at the end of the year. On average of course. I don’t work every day of the year, nor even from year to year. […]
Congrats for your success. I hope I will achieve one day. Thanks for sharing this with us.