Establishing Goals And Dreams

Yesterday I posted a recap of 2012.

Mr SMG looks up from his iPad in surprise that I finally updated this blog, reads it and then grumbles about how going snowboarding in Canada and Colorado is unfeasible due to our commitments and plans for 2013. It is rather disappointing to know that we may be missing a few snowboarding seasons.

We will be going away to Singapore in a few weeks time, having returned from Europe not long ago. So can't afford to jet off to multiple holidays plus an overseas wedding in addition to buying a freakingly expensive house in Sydney.

I'm rather trepidacious about the potentially monstrous mortgage and have compiled several what-if worse case scenarios if anything goes wrong - what I'll liquidate first (the emergency funds in the mortgage offset), liquidate secondly (my stock portfolio and his managed funds) and liquidate as last resort (my apartment).

I'm being overly dramatic though. We can still afford the potential house mortgage for approximately two years with both of us not earning any direct income from employment before we hit the wall and need to liquidate the illiquid assets such as my apartment. So yeah, haven't bought the house yet but have already crunched the various scenarios into a pile of crumbs already. 

So here are my rough goals(again) going forward into 2013, reposted with edits:

1. Something massive x 2 (could I be more 007 like? lol)
2. Buy a house
3. If time+budget+life permits, travel South East Asia (Thailand/Cambodia/Vietnam)
4. Work on side hobbies (photo props/card designs/iPhone apps) and get them launched

Just remembered that I also did a recap of 2011 goals which you can read about here.

Oddly enough, the goals that I hadn't fully achieved in 2011 were all achieved in 2012.

The goals that I haven't fully achieved in 2012 will undoubtedly be achieved in 2013.


Below is a how-to guide on how to set goals and objectives if you don't know how or you wish to learn how. Remember, that all goals must meet the S.M.A.R.T criterias of being specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and timely. You can always sneak in some pie-in-the-sky goals like I always do...you just never know what may come true ;)

Setting Goals And Objectives:


1. What do you want to achieve in the long term 5-10 years from now?
2. What do you want to achieve in the medium term 3-5 years from now to achieve your long term goals?
3. What do you need to do in the short term, today-3 years time to achieve your medium and long term goals?
4. Establish your dreams and goals for various categories such as: family, friends, personal relationship, career, health, finances. For each of those categories, break them down into what you want for the long term and what you need to do in the short to medium term in order to realistically achieve those long term goals.

Note that the time periods are just a guidance and you don't have to set long term, 10 year goals.

However Robert Kiyosaki writes that you need to start off with what and where you want to be in 5-10 years time before you know what you need to do for the next few years to get to where you want to be. (It's blatantly obvious that I've been reading Kiyosaki's books eh?!)

Example Of How To Set Your Goals

A friend of mine tells me that he wants to buy a house. I asked him when does he hope to buy one? He says he doesn't know when and he's got no idea when or how he can afford one. I asked him a few questions to sort out what he wants:
* Which area does he like and wish to buy a house in? Coastal
* What type of house does he want? At least 3 bedrooms, 1 bathroom and 1 carpark
* What are the prices of houses like that in the area he wants to buy in? $500,000

From those answers, we deduced that:
1. He'll need to save up 20% of $500,000 as a deposit
2. He'll need to save up 5% of $500,000 for the miscellaneous expenses such as legal fees, stamp duty, mortgage duty, pest and building inspections, settlement fees etc
3. Therefore he'll need to save up at least $125,000 to buy a house
4. How much can he save each week? $125,000 divided by what he can save weekly or monthly will determine how long it will take him to realistically achieve his long term goal. 

Example: If he can save $800 per week, then his goals would look something like:
$125,000/$800 = 156 weeks worth of savings = 3 years worth of saving

1. Long term goal-  buy a $500,000 house in 3 years time
2. Medium term - save up at least  $41,666 annually
3. Short term - save up $800 per week     

 So instead of drifting along with the idea that he wants to buy a house in the near future, he can set realistic goals and KNOW that he can buy one in three years time IF he saves $800 weekly. 

Birthdays And More Birthdays

Tis' The Season To Be Birthdays
It's been birthday season for the past few months going into Christmas.

Haven't even had time to contemplate the Silly Season because of Birthday Season.

What have you been up to? Christmas shopping? Just to let you know in advance, this post has a little bit of everything to compensate for the weeks I haven't been prolifically blogging.

The Aussie Economy
Our Aussie economy is in a slump right now and it would be foolish of me to ignore the potentially darker economy heading our way. Maybe we're in a slump because we mutilate ourselves, economically speaking. We buy goods online from overseas and that means local retailers(one of the biggest employers in Oz) are struggling and this translates to cut labour hours and reduced income for retail employees. All this flow on effect leads to reduced consumption. It's the circle of economics 101.


Travelling and More Travelling
Mr SMG and I will be travelling again in a few short weeks to Singapore. We're actually driving south with a group of friends next weekend. So much happening. There was a looooong hiatus from blogging because we were in Europe for several weeks. I can't even disclose exactly when we'll be travelling because there are other third parties out there who know where I live. That's what happens when you post under your real name duh, *smacks forehead*.

I had good intentions of posting up some holiday snaps but it's been crazy busy even though I supposedly have almost all the time in the world. Over the last few months, I've been thanking my younger, sagacious self for looking after my older self. I could not be in my current position of relative comfort without my younger self prudently investing madly(juxtaposition intended lol).

Coulda, Woulda, Shoulda
Yours truly has been preoccupied with an iPhone app idea. Will that venture take off or crash and burn?

I won't even shed any tears over how my dear friend Mr Z and I could have been gazillionaires already if we had bought Apple shares back in 2006/2007. He and I could have had ten million each under our belts if we had chosen that route but when the road is forking, you never know which road to take until it's too late. Who could have foreseen the successful, phenomenal Apple product releases of the iPad and iPhones? We knew Apple's imagination and creativity was starting to ignite back then, but as you know, coulda, woulda, shoulda. Oops.

An Early Christmas Pressie For You
What can I give my readers for Christmas? Maybe a wry comment to go easy on the credit card and Christmas gifts if you think you may end up with a financial headache in January. Go through your recurring bills and find more competitive offers out there, ask for a price match and save yourselves thousands of dollars. What else hasn't been said?

New Years Eve Resolution For 2013
Okay, so I'm one month early =) Why wait?

If you've got NYE resolution from back in January, maybe reflect on those and what you've achieved?

I look back at what I posted in January 2012 about my NYE resolutions:

"a huge promise to make, a house to buy and a few travel destinations"

1. Yep; the huge promise was made
2. Nope; didn't buy the house
3. Yep; few travel destinations were travelled

Two out of three ain't bad I guess. It would have been sweet to achieve all three but I'm still happy overall about 2012 =)

Got some MAJOR plans for 2013:

1. Something massive x 2 (could I be more 007 like? lol)
2. Buy a house
3. If time+budget+life permits, go snowboarding in Canada/Colorado
(Mr SMG says this is pie in the sky and I should have omitted this one  >.<)
4. If time+budget+life permits, travel South East Asia (Thailand/Cambodia/Vietnam)

5. Work on side hobbies (photo props/card designs/iPhone apps) and get them launched

What about yourself? Are you happy with 2012?

Reflecting on 2011

Most people reflect back on 2011 on the 1st of Jan but I haven't really had a moment to take a breather.So how did 2011 hopes/dreams and goals compare up against the reality of 2011?

Firstly, I never really wrote extensively about my hopes, dreams and goals. It's one thing to harbour an idea about what I want and another thing to actually confess and share them with other people.
If you have previously checked the four public progress bars on my navigation panel - I outlined some progress goals. Let's recap:

Donations to various charities:
Status at 31/12/11: 100% achieved.

I never put a figure to that goal but I will admit that it was $500 and I've surpassed that goal so count that as achieved. The excess beyond what was donated to these organised charities have been set aside to be donated to my poorer relatives in Cambodia when I visit them. I've taken screenshots of the various donation receipts but have been too time-poor to make a collage out of them and post them up. Time is valuable and I'm already burning the candles at both ends as it is.

Recipients:
$50 National Breast Cancer Foundation
$50 RSPCA
$60 Doggie Rescue
$50 World Vision for one goat and one chook for Africa
$80 WSPA
$50 Red Cross
Total $340.00

Edit: On the subject of donating, I realised that I had donated $25 to The Tunnel's 135K project for the Arts/Entertainment industry, $10 to Wikipedia for their fundraising plight and $10 to Getup.org.au which is the voice for the Australian public thus far. Maybe I forgot about them because they're not tax deductible ho ho ho. That brings up the total to $385 which looks pretty dismal (plus what is reserved for charity for poor relatives). I've roughly donated about $1k in total now to WSPA but they are no longer my charity of choice - too much is spent on advertising.

HELP HECS Student Loan
Status at 31/12/11: 100% achieved.

I never put a figure for that either but it was almost $30k (with interest indexation) and due to the Government changing the legislation for lump sum payment discounts being reduced, I decided to just pay my HECS off with a lump sum payment instead of leaving it lingering there.

Investment Capital
Status at 31/12/11: 70% achieved.

This one will have to be changed to 'House deposit' because of a few changes in my personal life last year which means that I'll be buying a house instead of using the funds to invest in whatever I fancy. Although the goal says "To save $X by December 2011", I already knew I wouldn't achieve that goal because it was highly improbable in the first place since it didn't meet the SMART goal setting criterias. That is, goals should be 'Specific/Measurable/Attainable/Realistic/Timely'. It was utterly unobtainable and unrealistic in the first place but I like to have those pie in the sky type of goals sometimes!!

Holiday Fund for Europe
Status at 31/12/11: 0% achieved.

Ouch huh? The goal was to save $12k by late 2012. If you've read my other post about my accounts not being split up into millions of individual accounts, you'll realise that I have everything across three high interest savings accounts and the separation/categorisation is in my mind only. Funds earn higher interest when there's critical mass as opposed to having a little bit here and there such as 'travel funds', 'bills fund', 'Christmas funds' and whatever it is that people like to split their funds into.

When the holiday comes around it will be coming out of the 'Investment Capital'(soon to be 'House deposit') bucket and that's the way I operate >.< ...meaning I essentially don't have a travel budget really... should a PF blogger really be confessing about that? Well I've already confessed that I don't really have a budget at all in previous posts. My modus operandi is to just spend less than I earn. What goes out MUST be less than what comes in. Simple.

That wraps up my Progress Bars for 2011. Stay tuned for new 2012 aspirations and dreams or maybe just travelling plans...whichever way the wind blows...

Uncertainty over courses and work choices

My friend's cousin A was tossing over whether to pursue a career in IT or in science. He mentioned that IT came naturally to him and it was easy and cruisy. Science was harder and it wasn't as natural for him but it was more interesting. It's a common dilemma for most of us. Choose the path that's easiest or the path that may be more challinging but is more interesting to us?

I've included a few useful pointers from an article written by Judy Barnsley. By completing the following sentences, you may find out what your interests are:

* I can ...
* I find it easy to ...
* I have a flair for ...
* People have told me I am good at ...
* I have done well in ...

Which area of life do you ...

* Get the most satisfaction and personal enjoyment from?
* Spend the most time on?
* Put the most energy and effort into?
* Feel the most positive and excited about?
* Gain a positive or confident self image from?
* Experience peace and harmony from?
* Wish to invest more time or effort on?

Many people start studying courses that their parents have pressured them into studying or they followed their friends into courses. The problem with not quite knowing what you want to do isn't a huge problem - it may result in you pursuing a few career changes across your life but that's not a big deal unless you're going to end up with a huge student loan once you've finished your degree. In that scenario, it's best to stop and think first before plunging into your degree.

One of our friend is studying his third degree, from accounting to phsysiotherapy to medicine. And he's young so that does raise questions about whether he'll have any more career changes in the next 35 years before he reaches retirement age.

We all change as we get older and what may interest us in our youths doesn't necessarily mean it will interest us as adults. I read the interview of a certain DJ who flew all over the world to DJ at various events however as he got older, he no longer desired the late night hours and he longed for more normality in his life. Music and being a DJ was still his passion but the joy that it gave him no longer outweighed the negatives that came with the hours.

Anyway, when trying to decide what line of work you want to do, consider a few of the following points:

 * Ability to progress and advance, creativeness, job security, team work and how important that is to you, autonomy and ability to work without supervision, financial rewards/remuneration, the contribution to society from the line of work, professional status, challenges on the job, the complexity of the work and whether the work is dynamic or static and never changing, co-workers and their attitudes

That said, our interests are always changing and evolving and it's not uncommon for most of us to have a few career changes in our lifetime.