Final Tally – New Year Goals For 2017

I am glad I did not include punctuality as one of my new year goals for 2017, as January disappeared before I could set aside any time for this blog. But the time has come, and now it is time to look back on 20917 and see how our goals from 2017 went.

Following that I need to release my 2018 goals out into the world. Hopefully that will once again help to hold me accountable, and speaking of accountable, lets see how I did in 2017:

Score: a total of 3 out of 7 (or 43%) for my 2017 goals. Overall that is probably one of the lower scores I have ever received in my life. Hopefully I can at least achieve half of them next year.

 

Goal 1: Increase Net Worth By $100k

Goal: Success

Despite having a lower income for part of 2017, we still managed to save just over $140k. That is 40% over expectations. I really did not anticipate anything like that, and think that I will need to increase my goals for 2018!

• House
  • Only a projected $6k rise over 2017. Defiantly not the main source of increase.
• Super
  • A $70k increase is the reason for half of the total. This includes both contributions and asset performance increases.
• Additional Savings/Income/Shares
  • A $65k increase here is nothing to sneeze at. I have grouped shares and savings together as money will often move between the two during the year. So while our shares actually decreased this year, it was by choice (or lack of reinvesting).

 

Goal 2: Sell Our Grandparents Land

Goal: Fail

This one of my new year goals is likely to remain sitting on the back burner as we are in no rush to sell given the current market conditions. Nothing was done for this goal this year. Who knows, my lack of action may be a good thing and we could strike gold on the block in 2018!

Goal 3: Max Out Super

Goal: Success (and a little too much)

Due to some unexpected calculation errors, I accidentally broke my super cap be a couple of thousand. Thankfully the government makes it easy for you to fix the error in one of two ways:

1. Remove the excess amount, pay appropriate tax on it and put it in your pocket.
2. Pay the extra tax to turn it into an post-tax (aka non-concessional) contribution.

I chose the second option, as the amount of money won’t make that much of a difference in or out of super, and it was easier to just pay the top-up tax.

Goal 4: Renovate The House

Goal: Success (bathrooms)

It was later in 2017 than I wanted, but eventually we managed to find someone we trusted to renovate our bathrooms. We now have toilets that don’t leak, and taps that don’t drip. Not to mention some nice new clean and light bathrooms. It was a long time in coming, but now that it is here I am very happy we achieved this.

It may just be me, but changing from green and brown tiles to white ones seems to have made the bathrooms seem much larger. I am just very grateful that the people who ended up doing the work did (mostly) a really good job. With hindsight there are things I would do differently, but thankfully I seem them more as learning experiences than failures or problems.

Goal 5: Maintain Charitable Giving

Goal: Fail

Last year my partner and I set a goal of giving 20% to 25% of our after tax income to good causes. Last year we hit just over 20%. We started off a while ago at 10%, and have been slowly increasing it to where we are at today.

Last year we managed to be in that 20-25% range. This year, we have been reassessing charities and partly for that reason, and partly because of the renovations we have missed our target. We hit 15%, which we are still happy with, but would like to have achieved more. At the half way point we thought we were on track, but it turns out we were a little behind. Over the last 6 months this got slightly further behind and landed us at the 15% mark.

Goal 6: Increase Fitness & Lose Weight

Goal: Fail

So I originally had 2 goals in one here:

• lose 5-10kg
• be able to run 5km

I can almost say I hit the weight goal. I lost 7kg, but then put back on about 3 to 4kg. So I am going to call that one a partial success.

However the goal of being able to run 5km is a complete failure. My exercise started off well, but stalled and then never managed to get going again. I think I need some more motivation or reasons to improve this area. I am open for suggestions and experiences that others have had. So feel free to leave a comment below.

Goal 7: This Blog

Goal: Fail

So, here is what I originally stated for this goal:

“I started this blog in 2015 with a whimper. A post here, a post there. 2016 was the first year I really took it seriously. My posting frequency wavered a little at the end of the year, but didn’t die. I want 2017 to be a step up and not a step down in my posts.”

Unfortunately 2017 was worse than 2016. I could give a bunch of excuses, but in the end it doesn’t change the result. We will see if 2018 can be a step up.

The specifics:

• more frequent posting
  • fail
• changing how I put advertising on the site
  • fail
• create more posts using the financial statistics we have been capturing over the last 10+ years
  • fail
• create another, hopefully useful, tool of some sort similar to the Early Retirement Calculator
  • fail
• get to know more Australian finance bloggers!
  • fail

Quite simply I did not put in the time required for this one. But like I said up front, this is a hobby. Just because I don’t blog doesn’t mean I am not doing other financial activities, I am, just not writing about them. Hopefully I can try and change this in 2018.

 

Now it’s time for me to go and set some goals for 2018!