This blog is all about my own personal finance journey to become financial independent. My ultimate financial goal is to become a self-made millionaire by December 31, 2024.
As Canadian immigrants from a financial-poor third world county, we won’t get any inheritances or financial supports from our family.
In fact, I completed my university degrees using Canadian national student loans (called OSAP) and ended with over $56 000 debts along with two undergraduate degrees.
Recovering from a deep debt was a difficult task without any supports. After landed in a decent job, I had two choices – either pays my debts or accumulates assets and pay the debts later.
Financial experts usually advise to pay down debts first and invest later, but I decided to do differently and started invest in income producing assets (aka dividend growth stocks) using debts.
I would say luck was on my side. Stocks were cheap and interest rate was ultra-low. In addition, I bought a house using around $200K mortgage and also added more debts for investment purpose. In results, my debt level kept climbing over $330 000 in 2017 and it becomes over 5 times bigger than my initial student loan.
At the same time, my investment assets with a high quality dividend growth stocks also climbed over $200K.
By end 2017, I have over $520 000 assets (including our home) and over $327 000 debts. I like to keep building my assets values, at the same time I just wanted to control my debt growth.
Currently, I don’t have any idea to eliminate my debts completely. I just wanted to reduce to my debts in my comfort zone of less than $300 000. I am very comfortable to having less than $300 000 debts with my current income level.
I mentioned this many times in the past but ignored it, but this time is different. I am going to put this in my 2018 & 2019 goals, so I won’t miss it.
All I wanted to do is bring my debts to below $300k and then keep maintaining the range until I build a million dollar investment assets.
2018 Financial goals
I have been setting yearly financial goals each and every year for last couple of years and sharing them publicly in this blog.
I noticed that when I share my goals and targets publicly, I am getting a powerful internal pressure, which forces me to think and take necessary actions to achieve the goals.
In the past, I’ve successfully accomplished some goals and failed in some other. Even though I failed few, I tried my best and reached somewhere close.
Also, I realized that predicting the net-worth gains for short-term is impossible. As a single family income earner, my net-worth gain is mainly depending on capital gains from my investments.
Therefore, I am going to set three financial goals for 2018, which are more predictable and can be controlled by me. I believe that my net-worth eventually move up in long-run if I keep building my dividend income while controlling my debts.
- Goal 1: Increase my estimated passive income (EPI) to $9600 by December 31, 2018
- Goal 2: Receive over $9000 dividend income for the year 2018 (by December 31, 2018)
- Goal 3: Reduce my debts to $315 000 or below.
It is $1200 higher than year 2017 goal. This can be reach easily if I can able increase my EPI at least $100 per month.
It is $1000 higher than year 2017 goal.
My debts was $327 100 by end of 2017. I just need to reduce at least $1000 per month.
If I can achieve these goals, then my 2019 goals will be $11 000 estimated passive income and bring down debts to $300 000 or below.
Check my progress and previous yearly goals in my financial goal page.
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