Is a year ever a long time? 2020 being an extraordinary year in many many ways, with all of the ups and downs through covid, the ensuing stock market crash and recovery and the tanking of oil that led to layoffs in my workplace by the time we’ve reached the finish line I honestly can’t even remember what the goals were for this year.
That being said as I recap them now I see that we really did quite well!
Once we’re done recapping these 2020 goals it’s going to make setting our 2021 goals that much easier.
So let’s get into them.
Goal #1 – Max out TFSA’s: COMPLETED
This one was probably the easiest and most predictable of the bunch, we were able to top up both of our TFSA’s right at the start of the year. This will be a very obvious starting point for our 2021 goals as well.
Goal #2 – Max out my RRSP: INCOMPLETE
This was a miss, but an intentional one. Our goal actually changed on this front – we did max out our available space for the 2019 tax returns we did in the spring of 2020 but we have not used any other space for our 2020 tax year (at least not yet).
This one could be revisited if we decide to top these up in the spring but for now it is incomplete because this was a lower income year for us so we’ll save the room most likely.
Goal #3 – Increase our net worth by $50,000: COMPLETE
If you checked in with us for our last net worth update for December you’d see we actually smashed this goal fairly handily thanks to the stock market rally.
We actually ended up increasing our net worth by $100,000 for 2020!
I’ll have to give a good think to what number we want to strive for for 2021 but this is the most fickle of goals as so so much of it relies on luck (market returns).
Goal #4 – Receive $8,000 in dividends: COMPLETE
There are still a few days left in this year where we could receive a couple payouts still but either way this goal is already achieved.
We’ve done a quick tally for December and it has brought our total for the year to $8,080.29/$8,000.00 so that actually turned out to be a great set point as a goal.
In my opinion this is exactly how a goal should end up, it should be achievable but also a challenge – this year everything went pretty good outside of a couple dividend cuts and we were able to just barely scrape past the goal.
Goal #5 – Get projected income up to $9,000: COMPLETE
Again, same as goal #4 it seems we made a very good guess at how this would end up. Our projected income as it stands right now is $9,349.49/$9,000.00 so we’ve surpassed this goal by $349.49.
I’m really looking forward to crunching some numbers and coming up with targets for both goals 4 and 5 for 2021.
Goal #6 – Try out WealthSimple Trade: COMPLETE
This was another worthwhile goal, we’ve been with WealthSimple Trade for a few months now and so far we’ve really enjoyed their product. They’re now moving onto desktop as well so that’s another big plus for us. We highly suggest you give them a shot if you’re into commission free investing!
Recap:
So there you have it, 5/6 goals for 2020 were completed! We’ll have to come up with some good challenges for the 2021 calendar year.
Stay tuned as we’ll be rolling those out in the near future.
If you have any questions or comments leave them below or over on our INSTAGRAM @FindependenceCanada and we’ll be sure to get back to you.
Thanks for stopping by,
FIC.