New 2020 Goals: out with the old in with the new| January update

FIRE Goal 1: Passive Income

Passive income Milestone 1: 1270 EUR

The first goal I am setting myself is to get a passive income of 1270 EUR. I am well aware this is a high goal I set for myself. But its rather symbolic. 1270 EUR was my very first wage after graduation. If I could get this again, even before inflation, it means I have reached a stage where I could maintain myself without working

My max in 2019 was 230 EUR (before taxes), unfortunately in December I had a slight bump in the road because of Kuetzal troubles. But I feel that 2020 will really put me on track to reach this goal!

Passive income Milestone 2: 2700 EUR

The second goal I have is much higher. 2700 EUR would allow me to have a car, and pay off a loan for a house.

Passive income Milestone 3: 4200 EUR

The last goal I have is 4200. Should I ever reach this I will know for sure I never “have” to work anymore. It would allow me to never have to worry about money, and spend whatever I like (within reason of a normal life), travel as much as I like, wherever I like, do whatever hobby I like to do and still have money left to raise a family if needed.

Fire Goal 2: retirement age

As a retirement age, I have set myself the conservative goal I want to have the option to retire before I reach 50. That does not mean I will retire, but it would be good to have the option. I will review this age when I am further down the line in Fire.

Fire Goal 3: Buying a house

I know a lot of people who are going for Fire, do not buy a house. For me its really important to have a house anyway. At the same time, I do not feel rushed. I live in an apartment right now, and since I am convinced about Fire, I feel I can wait much longer to buy a house, and do not need to put myself into a lot of debt right now.

You can follow my house hunt in my blog. Check out the latest post here.

Goals by end 2019

With 2019 being over, I can say that I met 3/5 goals

Goals I met:

• 25.000 EUR invested in peer to peer lending (total): with 26.000 EUR invested I met this goal quite easily
• Make 5500 EUR in 2019 (Investment returns – unrealized + passive income): very challenging to measure. So I will not mention this goal for next year anymore. That I made this goal was mostly thanks to a huge surge on the stock market, and a lucky investments in the stock called Galapagos.
• Earn a passive income of 100 EUR / month (by December): with the Kuezal troubles this goal got really close to failing, but right now it looks even after I withdraw the expected losses I will be able to meet this goal

Goals I did not meet:

• 4350 EUR extra invested in ETFs: I did not make it, I only invested 84% of this. I do have an extra 750 EUR on my investors bank account ready to invest, but I always invest in packs of 2500 EUR as this has the optimal investment fee.
• Buy off university years (so they count as working years towards retirement age): I started the process in August, but it did not finish this year. The Belgian administration got so many requests that they are not able to meet demands in time. The status of my request did change this month to “processing”.

My goals for 2020

I had enough time to think about these

• Invest 15000 EUR in ETFs (additionally)
• Invest 15000 EUR in p2p (additionally)
• Earn a passive income of 350 EUR / month (by December) (Before taxes)
• 5% more saving rate then in 2019 (for the months where there is data)
• Buy a house
• Buy off university years (so they count as working years towards retirement age): this goal is coming over from 2018
• It would be nice if this blog reached 1000 pageviews / month (currently at above 400), its been going up slightly every month so I believe its possible!

Sportive goals for Q2 2020

I started Mountainbiking in April 2019, and would like to continue to improve my skills there. There is a tour in the Ardennen called Rock d’Ardenne. Its quite a hilly region in Belgium. So far I drove almost only on reasonably flat pathways and fields, so it will be a challenge to have bigger altitude differences. It takes places in the beginning of May. The pack I would be interested in is 90km spread over 3 days. I currently do about 50km on a flat surface most Sundays, so it would be slightly more challenging then what I did so far. Some more tours I am interested in If I complete it successfully I will be looking into more tours later on the year! I already have a few more in mind.

Friends also suggested to participate to a Triathlon in June. I am not sure yet how serious they were. I did not decide yet if I would join, I love to bicycle, I am not sure about running or swimming.

Final note

I believe these are all goals that can be achieved based on the current year. Its possible that I modify these goals slightly depending of the situation, but based on my current situation this is a good guesstimate.

Happy new year all!