Goals - I AM Building Wealth

2022 – KICKING GOALS – Monthly updates on my personal goals

I AM Building Wealth Goals March 10, 2022March 16, 2022

This post will be updated each month as I update my Monthly goals. I found this to be helpful last year to keep me on track (link to 2021 goals). Too many great ideas or goals are left in the draw, or notebook, as we don’t look back at them and keep ourselves accountable. This is definitely something I have done in the past.

Last year taught me to keep myself accountable, even when I didn’t want to check in with myself. At the end of the year, I was thankful I did.

Below will be each month’s GOAL update in order. Let’s do this!

KICKING GOALS – 2021 – Monthly Updates

I AM Building Wealth Goals December 31, 2021January 31, 2022

Looking back to one of my early blog posts REALIGNING GOALS, which was about getting my goals locked down and on paper, I am so glad I did that and I encourage you all to do the same if you haven’t already.

I started by looking long-term and decided on my goals for the next 8 years. Check out the original post for more on this. Then, I broke it down to my goals for this year, 2021.

Each month, I’ve been able to reflect back to these goals, update my progress and feel good about what I’ve achieved each month. Even a little progress makes a difference. It can be really hard to think about your goals every day when you have so much ‘life stuff’ going on, so being able to refer back to 6 clear goals and break them down, makes it so much easier to work them around every day life.

THE YEAR THAT WAS MY PASSION PROJECT

I AM Building Wealth Goals October 30, 2021October 30, 2021

On the 19th of October 2020, I published my first Instagram post about myself and linked it to my blog page. I was ecstatic.

I had a wish for years that I wanted to document my finance journey and have a central place to publish all my learnings and thoughts. I had so many notebooks and post-it notes that I wanted a place for it all. A few times I tried to create a blog page and it just didn’t look right. Not pretty enough. THEN I found the FIRE community, mainly on Instagram, and I loved the energy and posts that were being loaded. The websites and posts were so inspiring. I had to try.

GETTING READY TO INVEST

I AM Building Wealth Goals, Retirement / Super, Strategies August 13, 2021October 31, 2021

Knowing how much you have available and what your debts are is the first step. You can work through my Finance 4 U Series which goes into the foundational steps to KNOW your numbers in detail.

The series goes through some key elements to help you feel more confident with your finances and consciously be aware of where your money comes from, where it goes, and how to manage that process.

Investing is different to saving. Invested money is not as easily available as money held in saving accounts, however, some investments are accessible within a few days if needed. My intention with this post is for investing for the long term, so there are some steps you need to consider BEFORE you start moving money to investments.

The BEST tax calculator & how to use it for planning your New Financial Year

I AM Building Wealth Goals, Strategies July 16, 2021October 31, 2021

I think this is the BEST tax calculator around! It’s so easy to use AND is up to date with the latest percentages.

Have you ever wanted to know:

how much a base wage/salary is as a take-home pay weekly, fortnightly or monthly?
updated tax brackets for this year or previous years?
what the difference in taxes will be if you were to salary sacrifice?
how much superannuation your employer will pay?
The real difference between a pay rise or a job offer?

OUR 1ST ANNUAL FINANCIAL PLANNER REVIEW

I AM Building Wealth Financial Planner, Goals, Retirement / Super, Strategies June 18, 2021October 31, 2021

I AM excited about this process because normally I’d look at a lot of this on my own.

Having someone else review our financials, who has an unbiased viewpoint AND has so much more knowledge than I do about government and super regulations, made me excited to do this session.

FINANCE 4 U – STEP 10

I AM Building Wealth Goals, Retirement / Super, SERIES Finance 4 U, Strategies May 12, 2021October 31, 2021

Hooray, we are at the pointy end now. Well done.

My wish for you is that you have discovered some things along this journey that will help give you the confidence to keep going. Now that you KNOW YOUR NUMBERS you can definitely CONTROL the majority of them and when (and there will be a ‘when’) things go haywire, you will be able to refocus on what you need to do, to get out of the situation. You will be able to move forward and rebound fast as you are BUILDING your numbers to Wealth for you and your family … for FUTURE U!

I am proud of you and me for getting this all down on paper 😀 … a pat on the back all-round!

FINANCE 4 U – STEP 9

I AM Building Wealth Goals, Retirement / Super, SERIES Finance 4 U, Strategies April 29, 2021October 31, 2021

This post has been the hardest to write as there are so many different ways to building wealth. I have been thinking that there are many similarities to working towards having a healthy lifestyle at this step. The foundations of both these goals are pretty generic. Know what you put into your mouth, or in our case what you spend (Step 2-4). Understand where we are at with our inner health and current weight, or with finances, knowing what we have to work with, ie, our Networth, debts, and our possible surplus each month.

FINANCE 4 U – STEP 8

I AM Building Wealth Goals, SERIES Finance 4 U, Strategies April 16, 2021October 31, 2021

Let’s get excited. Well, you can fake it for now and I assure you, you will be later! This is where we start putting the plans and information into action.

It’s kind of like what they say in the building industry – “measure twice, cut once”. A lot of our work so far has been in preparing, collating and reviewing. Now we will start putting some steps into action to lead to building wealth and financial confidence.

FINANCE 4 U – STEP 6

I AM Building Wealth Goals, Retirement / Super, SERIES Finance 4 U, Strategies April 2, 2021October 31, 2021

Let’s talk retirement fund.

Future You will thank you for this.

A FEES

1. Have a copy of your superannuation statement or if you have a login, go to your account.
2. You need to source the Product Disclosure Statement (PDS) for the fund. The document is usually 15+ pages and in that wonderful document, you will find 2 main fees.

FINANCE 4 U – STEP 4

I AM Building Wealth Budgeting, Goals, SERIES Finance 4 U, Strategies March 19, 2021October 31, 2021

Glad you are still following along. This is the last step for the foundational phase of Finance 4 U. This step will wrap up the start of the process. Once you know where your money goes and how much you can bring in, it will help you focus on THE NUMBER.

I call this your LIVING NUMBER. To live the life you have carved out for yourself at the moment, these fundamental numbers give you a guide or starting point to move to the next levels of your money management. You are the CEO of YOU … always remember that!

Let’s do this!

OUR NEW ROADMAP TO RETIREMENT

I AM Building Wealth Financial Planner, Goals, Retirement / Super January 22, 2021October 31, 2021

As we are moving towards the last decade of planning for our retirement we have taken up the services of a Financial Planner. They will assist and guide us, with options to aggressively build our retirement fund, gain as many tax benefits as possible whilst we are working AND then the transition to retirement, with the tax benefits post-retirement.

SIMPLIFY YOUR LIFE

I AM Building Wealth Budgeting, Goals, Simplicity December 31, 2020October 31, 2021

Automate to Clear the Mind

Whilst I get some ‘chill-out’ time from work over the next couple of weeks, there are some things I will be doing to review and reset different areas in my life. I call this ‘simplifying my life’ as it lets me FOCUS on only a few KEY things, so I can give them the BEST chance to succeed in the coming year. Just like the GOALS I had set for 2021 as written up in this blog post.

THROWING A SPANNER IN THE WORKS

I AM Building Wealth Goals, Strategies December 11, 2020October 31, 2021

This post is partly to vent and partly to work out our moves going forward for the short term. Last week, my husband told me that he has been on JobKeeper (Government assistance program during COVID) since April! I had started getting concerned when work dried up about 6 weeks ago and he was at home, however, the company were still paying his weekly wage, or so I thought. No super was being contributed but I thought we could handle that for the short term. Now he tells me the government have been contributing each month about 60% of his wage and his company were struggling to top up the 40%.

REALIGNING GOALS

I AM Building Wealth Goals, Strategies November 27, 2020October 31, 2021

I feel like I really need to lock down our goals and see them in print. So many options and things to think about that I am finding it hard to focus. It is also so hard to focus when you are thinking of so much ‘life’ stuff. Life goes on and the stuff, like your FUTURE YOU wealth and health can suffer as you feel that you don’t have enough capacity in the day to take on the challenge of caring for FUTURE YOU, whilst working through the challenges of the here and now.

My challenge in this week’s post is to formulate and work through the outline of the next 8 years worth of goals for financial independence and my own growth.