Goals

The overall goal of my long term saving is to reach financial independence. It means having enough F-money so that I always have options to do what I want, not to do what others want me to do. The end goal is not to retire early on a beach reading a book and drinking mojito’s. For that, I have to much the need to be busy, to be working on something, to have action. Some of the options that I want to have later already have a concrete date and amount 

1-show the world to my girls: I want them to explore the world and to experience other ways of living. I hope that this will give them a sense of relativism, teach them that the journey can be equally nice as the destination,  encourage them to explore and go off the beaten track. This goal will be supported by my travel fund.

2- Give my girls a good start in life: I want to be able to give them the education they want and a to give them an extra push when they go out and become independent. This will be the kids fund.

3- Maintain our home base: keep our house in a good shape so that it will not need major repairs in retirement, or that it is in a good shape when sold when we plan to move. This is the house fund.

4-Prepare my early retirement: this is for all the rest: have options to do what I want.

In Order to reach these 4 goals over the next 15 years, I break it down year by year

For 2016, these are the goals

1- Live below our means

The goal is to have an overall in savings rate of 55 pct and a core savings rate of 30 pct. The first one includes the mortgage and some other savings, while the latter one is the core savings rate: the money we actually put aside in our asset allocation.

2- Net worth

Reach an overall amber index of 27,6pct.

The first years of investing, my focus is on building wealth. I can decide later on to keep it as is in index funds, or transfer it to dividend stocks, annuities or a rental unit,…

3- Need for Speed income

As I plan to balance my patience and core stargegy with adrenaline and the feeling of speed that comes with trading, I will add a goal on this one.

Generate 1000 EUR of income out of my play money via dividends and option premiums. That is approx 85 EUR per month. It is lear that the vast majority needs to come from premium.

This will be a real challenge to reach this goals. It means I need to trade actively options, every month. I look forward to this.

At the time writing, the Belgium government has put in place a speculation tax. I need to see what/how I will deal with this.

Personal goals to evolve as a person

1- Run twice a week and try to run a race

In order to stay in good shape, I want to run on a very regular basis. I have found out it relaxes me and makes me feel good. I want to continue doing this.

I also aim to run a race to make sure I have a real goal to work to.

2- Read 3 personal development books

The goal is to read 3 personal development books this year. I exclude books on financial topics, as that would be too easy to do so.

 

Here are my 2015 goals  

1- keep the blog alive: Now that I have the blog, I need to keep myself motivated and keep it alive. I plan to post at least twice per month. To have a stretch goal, I should post once every week. So, the goal is to have at least 28 post by the end of the year.

2- Work out how to calculate/report in a decent way my savings rate and net worth. the limitation here is that I want to stay Mr AmberTree.

3- Have a 55 pct savings rate (me and my wife combined). Based on some preliminary calculations, this should be a realistic goal

4- Explore options (covered calls/buy puts) to protect my portfolio and enhance the returns. I started to read on this and following some people that describe their approach. Sounds like a good plan.

5- Define my lazy investment portfolio. After some research, the core of my portfolio should be a lazy portfolio. I plan to have 3 ETFs to achieve this. –> my asset allocation

6- Reach an overall amber index of 24,74 pct. I still need to define this number. It depends on Goal nr 2

7- Run twice a week and try to run a corrida by year end

2015 goal review