Happy New Years- hope everyone had a good one.
I can’t believe it’s 2010 already. When I was younger, I always thought we would be flying around Jetsons style already by 2010. With a new year, comes new resolutions. New goals and hope for a new year.
I know, I know, new years resolutions are kind of lame. No one REALLY keeps them anyways.
But maybe financial resolutions are easier to keep. Somehow for me, it’s easier to work on financial resolutions e.g. save 10% of your monthly income than to remember to go to the gym three times per week, or to floss every day (uh oh, was that too much information?)
I think I’ve come a long way since last year’s financial resolutions. I told myself I would automatically move a certain amount of my monthly income to a savings account (the advice David Bach’s Automatic Millionaire talks about) and I got my butt together and did that. It was pretty easy too. Just put seperate it and forget about it. I wanted to buy a place last year too, but didn’t end up doing so (despite the all time lows of mortgage rates) because I wanted to save more for a downpayment.
For 2010, I have a few more financial resolutions:
- Continue to calculate my networth every month (knowledge is power! I have asked for all the client access log-ins from my financial advisors- to their dismay- so am tracking my finances much more closely)
- Regain the money I lost in bad investments- I had entrusted my hard earned cash to some risky investments when I didn’t know any better (venture mutual funds, flow through shares, Investors Group mutual funds) and want to regain it. In total I think I am down about $10,000. I hope to do this by being more active and aggressive in my equities.
- Max out my RRSP and TFSA Iam hoping to max out my RRSP I can utilize the $25,000 allowance for First Time Home Buyers
- Reach a Networth of $100,000- This should give me enough leeway for a downpayment and extra money to play with
- Buy my first home – Hopefully the mortgage rates won’t skyrocket next year and hopefully the prices of Vancouver homes will come down to realistic prices (check out MLS.ca to see which closet you can get for $350, 000).
How about you? What are your financial resolutions for next year?
I already broke what I considered my main financial new year’s resolution:
not to buy individual stocks and only ETFs.
I could not help it and bought Apple (I succumbed to the hype surrounding the imminent launch of the tablet).
lol aren’t resolutions meant to be broken? When price did you buy Apple at? Because if you bought it recently, that’s not too bad, but if you bought it at the beginning of the year, it’s down a bit from that it seems.
I heard that there was hype that Steve Jobs was leaving (because he has pancreatic cancer and isn’t doing too well) and that would potentially hurt the stock, but it hasn’t has it seems. Yes, that tablet rumours are all around us, i swear I saw the tablet the other day on the streets… it looked like a square and boxy digital photoframe…maybe I saw it as a prerelease? Not sure.
I think buying individual stocks isn’t a bad idea at all, there’s a lot of potential to gain a lot (but then again, i guess a lot of potential to lose a lot). At this trading seminar I went to (I’ll talk about that in a later post) they said that if you’re disciplined (e.g. not panicking and selling when it’s down a wee bit, setting the maximum amount you’re willing to lose as an automatic sell, and not having a set gain that yo want to sell at) then you can be profitable buying individual stocks.
I’m off to a bad start this year too! =) I am down about $500 so far… I accidentally sold suncor at a loss when it was a gain (Questrade’s wonky webtrader system).
Thanks for visiting!
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