2021 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, and reach my financial freedom with passive dividend income. These are my long-term financial goals.

Every year, I set a few new yearly goals (short-term goals), and these short-term goals are just a simple breakdown of my long-term goals.

Therefore, I will get a little closer to my long-term financial goals when I reach these short-term targets.

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

For a quick recap for new site visitors

Long-term readers know that I immigrated to Canada from a financial-poor third-world country, completed my undergraduate degrees in Canada with the help of a 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 started to build my assets instead of paying down debts. I still have massive debts, but the value of my assets has increased significantly higher.

I can ultimately pay off my debts, but it is not my interest as interest rates are at a record low.

Thus, I like to keep my debts in a specific range and take advantage of this current interest rate environment to continue building my assets.

2020 achievements

I successfully achieved one of my 2020 financial goals and failed to reach the other two.

• Increase my estimated passive income (EPI) to $14 000 or up – yes, I successfully reached it. My EPI reached to $16991 by December 31, 2020.
• Receive over $13000 dividend income – No, I failed to achieve this goal. I received only $12691.21 dividend income in 2020 and missed by around $300
• Reduce my debt level to below $310 000 – No, I failed to achieve this goal. My debts ballooned to $364 200 by December 31, 2020. No big deal as the interest rate is the record low, so the debts related expenses are much lower than a year ago.

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

2021 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 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 the year 2021:

• Goal 1: Increase my estimated passive income (EPI) to $18 000 by December 31, 2021
It is $4000 higher than my 2020 target. I am ahead of my schedule with my EPI growth; thus, I plan to slow this down and focus on portfolio clean up and portfolio quality in 2021.
• Goal 2: Receive over $17 500 dividend income for the year 2021 (by December 31, 2021)
It is $4500 higher than the year 2020 goal.
• Goal 3: Reduce my debts to $350 000 or below.

My debts were $364 200 by the end of 2020. However, I don’t have a big concern about my debts growth. Lower rate and possible higher inflation are positively help me to build massive wealth in the longer-run.

If I can achieve these goals, then next year’s goal will be $20 000 estimated passive income.

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