Monday 6 January 2014

2014 Financial Goals

I have been mulling over my financial goals for this year for quite a while.  When I first wrote my post about thinking about your financial goals for 2014 I thought I would have my goals set well in advance of the new year.

What ended up happening was that I really sat down with my pen and paper and started thinking about what I wanted from my life and from my finances.  I have written about how your financial goals and life goals are inherently intertwined.  I also wrote about how I keep putting off my personal gratification in order to achieve a better savings outcome.  I am lucky enough to have saved a lot over the last few years and this year I decided to take a different approach.

2014 will be unconventional for me...savings / investments will stay flat and I will do everything I wanted to do

I probably signalled in my post on not putting off your gratification for too long that I was thinking about doing things I had been meaning to do for a while.  At the same time I hate taking money out of savings.

I came to the decision, therefore, that in 2014 I would save very little but I would achieve everything that I had been putting off and that I wanted to do but which cost significant sums of money.  I will not dip into my savings to achieve this, but rather will spend what I earn and continue to invest the investable assets that I currently own (which are getting up around $300,000 so there is a fair amount I can do without saving more from my wage).

My expenditure tracker is changing to reflect these changed goals

Anyone reading this blog would have seen the format of my expenditure tracker - I track how much I save into shares, into my offset account and into personal expenditure.  Because this year so much of my expenditure will be in personal expenditure, I decided to split this into several different categories in order to better track and control my personal expenditures.

This was a useful exercise in itself because it forced me to think about how much I actually spend on different things.  Some of the spending categories really surprised me.

What are these 'big goals'?

Normally I don't put much about my
personal life on this blog.  I try to keep it about the financial aspect of my life.  However as my financial and personal goals are intrinsically linked I thought I would put some of the bigger goals up here.  On a month to month basis I will not split out how much I am saving towards these goals however I will be tracking it very carefully.

My 'big' goals for 2014 are as follows:

  • Moving into an apartment on my own (including setting it up)
  • I want to buy my sports car
  • I want to go on a holiday to walk the Inca Trail
  • I want to get engaged later this year so I need to save for the ring (the original reason I started my expenditure smoothing technique)
  • Although I will not be getting married (if everything goes according to plan) until 2015, given how much weddings cost I am starting to save for it now
If I manage to achieve all of the above without ever touching my savings / investment pile I will be incredibly happy.

What are my financial goals for 2014

Putting some numbers to broad categories my goals for 2014 (on a monthly and annual basis) are:

Item Monthly Annual
Accommodation / Living expenses $2,268 $27,210
Car expenses $692 $8,300
Health / Well being expenses $566 $6,790
Entertainment / Personal expenses $1,230 $14,764
Travel expenses $675 $8,100
Other 'big' expenses $3,508 $42,100
Savings / Investments $971 $11,653

If anyone adds up all of the totals and compares it to last years numbers they will notice that there is a significant difference in the amount that I seem to be receiving.  The difference is that in previous years I have not counted my bonus in my budgeting process, however I was forced to think about this when I saw all the goals I wanted to achieve.

I actually don't have a lot of fat in these estimates at all so I want to see if I can really control how I spend my money this year.  Given how much I am allocating to 'treating myself' if I can't achieve this I will be pretty disappointed.

Have you set your financial goals for 2014?  What are you doing this year?

You May Also Be Interested In
Start thinking about your 2014 financial goals
Delayed gratification is great...but can we take it too far?
House sharing vs going it alone
Are you an over spender or an over saver?
2013 Financial Goals


4 comments:

  1. Wow big decision, good on you for doing so.. Similarly to you I enjoy saving/investing however sometimes you have to "live life" as well..

    When are you planning on doing the Inca Trail? I'm doing this with 3 buddies in July, also managing to see the World Cup 1/4 final in Rio.. Will be awesome

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    1. Thanks JM - it was actually a pretty hard decision to make (i.e. the deciding to spend on things this year) as I'm naturally wired to save and invest. I thought it would be a good thing to do.

      I really wanted to go around the time of the World Cup but the cost at that time meant that I wouldnt be able to do some of the other things I want to do so I'm thinking of going a bit later.

      The 1/4 in Rio would be amazing! Did you go in the draw or pay for the corporate tickets?

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  2. Ohh what sports car? I need to know ASAP! Going to a place with no internet connection soon.

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    1. I'm thinking of getting a cheaper second hand Japanese sports car. I haven't yet settled on one though.

      I don't think I could justify spending a significant amount of money but you can get some decent 5 year old sports cars for around the $25k mark.

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