2021 Financial Goals

Hello everyone and welcome back to the blog. I’ve seen many bloggers come out with their 2021 financial goals and I thought it was time for me to share mine with you. I will do a quick review of last year’s goals and then I will share this year’s with you.

2020 Review

Savings

	Goal	Dec 31st, 2020
Yearly Bills	$2,400.00	$1,621.71
Car Fund	$3,000.00	$1,078.85
Travel Fund	$2,500.00	$2,230.28
Future Housing	$5,000.00	$1,453.75

I had four goals for savings last year, and I didn’t achieve any of them lol. For yearly bills I will share with you below why I didn’t reach my goal. In June I actually bought a new car so I spent the rest of the year putting money back into the account for the next vehicle. I came really close to completing the travel fund account, I was planning on attending FinCon last year in Long Beach but due to Covid obviously it was cancelled. Future Housing account actually took a step backwards last year, in March I withdrew money and put it towards investing in my TFSA account. I will attempt to grow this account this year.

Investing

Max out TFSA contribution room – The amount I could invest stood at $19,124.38 I am happy to report that I successfully completed this.

Dividend Income of $9,500 – This was a stretch goal of mine last year, I ended the year with $8,032.88 which was a record year for me. I received dividend cuts that took away over $900 in income, through dividend increases I was able to recover around $300.

Forward Dividend Income $10,000 – I did not achieve this as well. Due to the cuts mentioned above and the Canadian banks unable to raise their dividends I finished the year at $8,300.

More Diversification – Last year my portfolio was sitting with diversification sitting at 66% Canada, 27.1% US and 6.6% invested internationally. I wanted to change this and focus more towards the US and the world since Canada only makes up about 4% of the world’s stock market. During the year I started buying iShares Core MSCI All Country World ex Canada Index ETF (XAW.TO). My diversification improved so I will give myself a tiny check mark here. A couple of weeks ago I improved greatly by selling all of my Canadian stocks in my RRSP account and investing in US ones, now my diversification currently sits at 39% Canada and 61% US & World.

Ok folks now it is time for my 2021 goals.

2021 Goals

Savings

	Jan 1st	Dec 31st
Yearly Bills	$1,621.71	$1,700.00
Car Fund	$1,078.85	$3,500.00
Travel Fund	$2,230.28	$3,000.00
Future Housing	$1,453.75	$4,500.00

So I’ve set some targets on where I would like to be by the end of the year again for these accounts. Yearly Bills has a lower amount this year compared to last year because I realized I only need to have money in there to pay my car insurance which I pay every January. This year my insurance dropped to $1,426 so I could even lower my goal if I wanted to. Car Fund my goal is to slowly build up a good deposit on my next vehicle which is hopefully many years away. Travel Fund I can’t see myself travelling this year and possibly next with what’s going on so I will top the account up to $3,000. Future Housing I am planning on adding an additional $3,000 to this account, hopefully I can achieve this and look at ways to put more into this account.

Emergency Fund to $4,500 – For the majority of last year my emergency fund stood at $2,000 I later spent some of this on a new computer and I’m currently building the account back up. Last year even though I was very fortune to remain working throughout the pandemic I felt uneasy about having my emergency fund at $2,000. This year I would like to increase this number to $4,500.

Investing

Max out TFSA contribution room – Canadians are eligible to deposit $6,000 into their TFSA this year, more so if you have unused room from previous years. Last year I maxed out the room and would like to do this on a yearly basis.

Invest $15,000 – This year I would like to invest at least $15,000 into my investing accounts this year. $6,000 would go to my TFSA account and $9,000 would go to the RRSP account that holds the exchange traded fund XAW to further help with global diversification.

Receive $7,500 in Dividends – This is a step back from last year, above I mentioned I receive $8,032 last year. When I sold my Canadian stocks for US ones a couple weeks ago my forward dividend income dropped by $3,302. My current forward dividend income stands at $6,196. I haven’t spent all of the money I received from the stocks I sold, my cash is currently sitting at US$21,600 over time I will spend this which will help close the gap to my goal.

Net Worth Increase to $260,000 – This goal is completely out of my hands since I don’t know what the stock market will do this year. I ended 2020 with a net worth of $207,771.95 so I thought if I hit $260,000 by the end of the year I will have had a successful year.

So what do you think of my goals? Did you set any goals for 2021?

Thanks for reading!

Matthew