Welcome to our ways to build wealth in 2017. Happy New Year everyone! Welcome to my 2017 financial goals post. As I do every year, I’ve been thinking about how we fared this past year in terms of our financial goals and about where I’d like us to be in 2017.
2016 Financial Goals in Review
Last year, we laid out 7 financial goals. So let’s see how we fared.
1. Pay off HELOC. At the start of 2016, we had a large balance on our HELOC that we used to buy a rental property and for our home renos. It was a big priority to pay this debt off so we focused for the first half of the year on paying it off completely. We achieved this by mid-May, only to draw on it again for another rental property.
2. Grow our net worth above 800k. When I wrote this goal down, the markets were the lowest they’d been in years and we had a massive line of credit to pay off. I really thought that it was a realistic goal given where we were financially and how I thought our finances would progress throughout the year. This is precisely the problem that we humans have with “short-term thinking.” Things rarely turn out the way we “think” they will. I’m pleasantly surprised that we crossed the 900k mark in our November 2016 net worth report. Not only did we manage to meet the 800k goal, but we exceeded it by about 125k!
3. Max out RESPs. This we managed to do by mid-year.
4. Max out my RRSP and resume $500/month contributions to my wife’s. My RRSP is maxed out which will help us on our taxes. We did not manage to resume monthly contributions into my wife’s RRSP. We’ll try to make a lump sum payment early in the new year to help with taxes.
5. Transfer more of our non-registered investments into our TFSAs. I’m happy to say that we managed to take advantage of the big market correction early in the year to move some of our dividend stocks to a tax-sheltered account like the TFSA. All of our cash was going towards paying the HELOC so it made sense to move our shares at a loss so we don’t have to pay taxes on them. This move also sheltered some of our dividend income from the tax man.
6. Pay at least $10k off our mortgage principal with lump sum payments. Well on this goal we fell short. We managed to pay about 6k in extra payments this year.
7. Grow our Passive Income to over 10k. I thought I was being a little ambitious with this goal, but the rental properties added quite a bit to the monthly investment income. Our total passive income came in at over 16k!
Our Plan to Build Wealth in 2017
Well we’ve experienced our share of setbacks this year, but I’m very pleased with how things turned out. I feel like we’re in a great position to start off 2017. So here are our financial goals for 2017.
1. Continue saving, investing and paying down debt so that we become millionaires in 2017! I expect that with our investing plan, we’ll cross the $1 million mark in net worth, which means we’ll be paper millionaires. For many people, this is an important financial milestone and I’ll be happy to reach it before we turn 40. But net worth alone doesn’t equate to financial freedom. To reach that goal, we need to continue to focus on building up our passive investment income.
2. Earn 25k in passive income. This should be achievable if we invest in our registered accounts, continue to re-invest our dividend income and the profit from our rentals, as well as get some nice dividend increases.
3. Max out RESPs. Our children’s future education is important to us so we will continue to save towards it.
4. Max out our registered accounts. Our retirement accounts and other tax-free accounts will be maxed out this year.
5. Pay down 35k on our mortgage so that it goes below the 400k mark. Sooner or later interest rates will rise and I don’t want to be caught with a monster mortgage.
Those are our 2017 financial goals and our financial plan for the year. Do you have any financial goals or resolutions for 2017?
Thanks for reading our build wealth in 2017 post.
Image Credit: Stuart Miles / Freedigitalphotos.net
TheFIexplorer
Friday 6th of January 2017
Thank you! And to you too!
I have not seen that one, but it looks fascinating, I'm going to download it and give it a try. I'm a little worried it will tempt me to become an activist investor...all that data.... :) Will look forward to your review.
TheFIexplorer
Sunday 1st of January 2017
Congratulations on your progress! As a fellow Gen Xer, it's really fascinating following your path from afar (Australia)
I had a similar experience to yours, with markets meaning that 2016 ended more positively than expected. This got me to thinking about setting goals as fixed sums, or trying to just focus on the 'inputs', or my actions/contributions. I can see the power of both approaches, and think that targeting a specific passive income goal is the right way to balance this.
One of my goals is trying to explore the opportunities that fintech offer, without losing focus on my core FI target, but I suspect that Canada and Australia are a little alike, in that our friends in the USA have a wider set of exciting tools to draw on at the moment - hopefully this is changing!
GenXinvestor
Monday 2nd of January 2017
Thanks for stopping by! I do think setting realistic financial goals is important because it gives us a path forward and is something that we can use to measure our progress. Fintech is an area that I also find interesting. I recently had a chance to check out an Australian Fintech company called Simply Wall ST. I'm sure you're familiar with their platform. I have a review that should be published soon.
Thanks for stopping by and I wish you all the best in the New Year!