I am making this it’s own page rather than a blog post (although the original still exists). While I’ve accomplished several of the goals I set out for myself I’ve noticed recently that they are not as front and center as I’d like. Given that they are the cornerstone of why I put this site up in the first place I think it wise to feature them more prominently on the site. I’ll be updating this page on a more regular basis now that it is located someplace where I cannot forget about it.

My Goals both past and present

I am posting these here to keep myself honest. If I’ve let the world know what my goals are I am more inclined to work harder to make or beat them… It’s one thing to let myself down, another entirely to let others down. (Not that you all have a personal stake here, its mainly a mental thing.)

Short-Term Goals (less than 1 year)

Complete - Get a clear picture of where our money is going Complete. MS Money has actually made this one pretty easy. The answer is that we’ve got a fair amount of variable expenses, mainly related to the horses. The rest of our expenses are somewhat predictable. I’ll put together a post shortly outlining where our money goes (at a high level at least).
Failing - Set up a budget based on those numbers - I’ve tried budgetting, it doesn’t work for us due to too many non recurring expenses. I will likely make another run at this though, focussing on items we do have some control over (dining etc).
Failing - Reduce month to month expenditures by 5% - Failing so far. Even after removing extraordinary expenses our monthly spending has actually increased. This will likely change as we enter summer due to a reduction in energy costs as well as significant reductions in horse feed (they eat my lawn instead…
Complete - Build up emergency fund equal to 3-months’ income (take home) - Thanks to my wife’s severance this was easily accomplished. Now to stop spending it…
Overall Status: Yellow. While I’ve got a good handle on what we spend I have not made much progress in budgetting and cutting expenses. At the present time we need to cut about 10-20% of our expenses in order to get back into savings mode. Either that or my wife needs to find a job soon. Overall I’d much prefer to be living off of one paycheck.

Medium-Term Goals (5 years)

Progressing - Generate 15% of our income passively (through real-estate or some other cash-flow based investment or business) - Between the interest we’re earning from 0% balance transfers, my web hosting business and Prosper.com we’re on our way. In fact last month 15% of our income (not net of related expenses) was generated passively. Two factors were related to this, first the loss of my wife’s paycheck reduced our income by nearly half making 15% much smaller than it used to be. Second, my hosting business is cyclical from a quarterly standpoint. I don’t normally bring in as much as I did in April. Real-estate investing is probably not for us at the moment so I will be attempting to build my business further as well as investing more in Prosper.
Progressing - $750K in assets (including 401K, not including our home) - We’re a bit under 50% of this goal right now. Our non real-estate assets (cash, brokerage and retirement) have increased by nearly 28% since the end of September of last year. Still a ways to go, but we’re making progress!
Delayed - Move to New Zealand - NZ will be our retirement home. We will likely not move there in 5 years but will do so once we’ve met our retirement savings goals.
To Early to Tell - Reduce overall spending by 10% despite inflation (my baseline will be the next 12 months) - Based on the past 9 months’ activities this is going to be difficult without some major lifestyle changes.
Overall Status: Green. We’ve made great progress with regards to buidling both our non retirement and retirement savings. This will slow down significantly now that my wife is not working. Once she finds another job my hope is that we will be able to continue to live at our current level of spending and make even greater strides towards our savings goals.
Moving to New Zealand is still something we want to do for retirement. Our view of retirement has changed somewhat however. It is no longer a cessation of work, rather it will be a transition into more rewarding careers where income is of secondary importance. More on this below.

Long-Term Goals

NEW! Progressing - ‘Retire’ by age 55 45 - Our goal for retirement is now to quit our current careers in 7 to 8 years. We’d be roughly 45 years old. We would continue to work, bringing in a substantially smaller income, but enough to avoid drawing on our savings for several years. The following represent the goals required to achieve this.
- $1.2M in assets (including 401K, not including our home)
- $350K in non-retirement assets
- Mixture of Passive and active income of roughly 60% of current income
- No reliance on Social Security or Pension funds (wife’s, I don’t have a pension)
- Debt free in twelve years (including mortgage debt)
- Purchase of a retirement home in New Zealand of approximately the same value as our current home. We may do this prior to retirement and just pay off the mortgage on the retirement home upon the sale of our home here in the US. Using the Equity in our current home would also simplify the process of buying real estate as a foreigner. Ideally the retirement home would be able to generate rental income as well in the interrim.
Overall Status: Green at the moment. Building that level of assets may be a stretch but thats the idea behind setting goals in my opinion…We have under 12 years, one month left on our 15 year mortgage (5.375%) and nearly 50% equity (based on approx current value) of our home. We carry no other debt (outside of 0% credit card debt which I don’t count since we have the money set aside. (I don’t count that money as savings either)) While I am fairly confident that we’ll be able to accellerate our mortgage payments to the point where we can pay it off in the 7 to 8-year time allotted we may not do this considering we can earn better returns elsewhere.

There you have it. Any comments are more than welcome…