2020 Financial goals

The purpose of this blog is to document my journey toward financial independence.

In 2014, I set a financial goal to become a self-made millionaire by December 31, 2024.

I learned from my own experience that when I share my goals publicly, I have been getting a powerful internal pressure, which forces me to think and take necessary actions to achieve the goals.

For a small recap

Long-term readers know that I immigrated to Canada from a financial-poor third world country and completed my undergraduate degrees in Canada with the help of student’s loans program, and ended up with over $56 000 student loan debts.

Recovering from this deep debt was a difficult task without any supports. After landed in a decent job, I had two choices – either paying down debts or invest in assets and pay the debts later.

Financial experts usually advise to pay down debts first and invest later.

I decided to handle the situations differently – reverse engineering. I started to invest first without reducing debts.

I used some debts to buy income-generating assets (dividend growth stocks). And I bought a small house using a mortgage.

Therefore, I started to build assets instead of worry about debts because the interest was cheap enough so the debt service payments were low.

As a result, my debt ballooned to over $330 K.

Progress toward my debt reduction

However, the situation changed in 2018. The rate started to move higher, and my debt service fee started to increase.

Therefore, I decided to reduce my debts in 2018.

I set a goal in 2018 to bring down my debts below $315K, but I couldn’t achieve the goal; however, and reduced my debts from $327 100 to $322 700 – reduced by $44 00. It is not a significant reduction, but I made some progress.

Moreover, in 2019, I set a goal to bring down my debts below $310 000, and I successfully did it, thanks to the sale of my two holdings (CGX and PWF).

But I just wanted to reduce to my debts in my comfort zone of less than $300 000. I am very comfortable with having less than $300 000 debts with my current income level.

In 2020, I will continue focusing on assets accumulation and income growth, at the same time I will keep cutting my debts.

2019 achievements

I successfully achieved all three goals I set in 2019.

• Increase my estimated passive income (EPI) to $11 500 or up – yes, I successfully reached it
• Receive over $10800 dividend income – yes, I received $10844.02 dividend income in 2019
• Reduce my debts level to below $310 000 – yes, my debts ended up at $309 400

I will continue to make yearly goals, so I could get a few steps toward my ultimate goal of financial freedom in 2024.

2020 Financial goals (new short-term goals)

As mentioned above, my two long-term financial goals are to build a million-dollar net-worth and generate a minimum $25000 dividend income from my investment by December 2024.

To make progress in the right direction, I have broken down these two long-term goals into multiple short-term goals.

Therefore, when I complete these short-term goals, I will get a couple of steps closer to my longer-term goals.

Once again, I am going to set three financial goals for 2020:

• Goal 1: Increase my estimated passive income (EPI) to $14 000 by December 31, 2020
It is $2500 higher than my 2019 target. This can be achieved by increasing my EPI by around $200 per month.


• Goal 2: Receive over $13 000 dividend income for the year 2020 (by December 31, 2020)
It is $2200 higher than the year 2019 goal.


• Goal 3: Reduce my debts to $300 000 or below.

My debts were $309 400 by the end of 2019. I just need to reduce by around $790 per month.

If I can achieve these goals, then next year's goals will be $17 000 estimated passive income and maintain my debts at $300 000 or below.

Check my progress and previous yearly goals in my financial goal page.