I would like to sell my rental condo to get rid of the debts associated with it and reduce my exposure to the real estate market.
-Could not sell the condo, so we continued renting it with the goal of listing it in May this year.

Finish renovating the main floor of our house, and pay for renovations with cash.
-Pretty close to done, got the hardwood in, so just have to put some baseboards on and a bit of paint here and there.

Set up a TFSA for both my wife and I and put emergency savings and monthly contributions in them.
-Nope, no progress here.

Get a will drawn up for us newlyweds.
-Got this done early in the year.

Grow my self directed RRSP by 20%, not including contributions.
-With contributions, I probably hit the goal, without, not. So did not meet this goal.

Get out of my car lease and buy a cheaper car.
-Sold my leased car to a friend at work and bought a 2000 Accord that was a salvaged rebuild. 7 months and it’s been great!

Increase our net worth by 15%.
Did not meet this goal. NW increased by 9.1%.

sorry for not responding sooner. You have so many commenters I can’t see if I’ve been asked for more info. I got an MBNA car again this year. Last year it was 12 months 0% interest and 0.5% fee for the balance transfer. I negotiated the reduction in the fee.

This year it is 15 months 0% and 1% fee. I received approval for $25k. I’ll put most into TFSAs.

There is a thread at RFD in Personal Finance forum that talks about it. Don’t walk – run!

It’s great that you are giving to charity, and putting your own time towards helping out, but I am wondering, and curious bout something… are there any tax benefits by giving to charity? Would be great to know.

Till then,

Jean

I’m especially impressed by your mortage balance effectively being chopped by 75%. Kudos to you sir!

Great job paying down the mortgage. Fantastic actually!

Just one little thing. Isn’t it a Smith Manoeuvre mortgage? What about the tax refunds helping to pay it down?

I don’t remember all of my goals for last year but I did have a few.

1. Take out a loan for 2009 RRSP contribution for both my wife and myself. I don’t usually do this but the interest rates were so low. And that forced loan payment eliminated the last minute topup.
2. Get another 0% credit card to borrow $20k for only $100 fee good for 12 months. I used this to pay down our SM mortgage.
3. Build a SM portfolio paying $24k in dividends annually. Came up short as some stocks slashed (eg Manulife) or eliminated (eg Teck) their dividends. It is a little more than $20k … for now.
4. Maximize RESP contribution to get the CESG.
5. Maximize RRSP contributions. This we do every year.
6. Open up a TFSA for myself. There wasn’t enough money for both of us. I’ll correct that this year.
7. Implement a monthly cash donation to our local foodbank rather than weekly food donations when grocery shopping.
8. This was temporary when things looked dire early in the year – eliminate ALL discretionary unscheduled spending. We really tightened our belts (which were made from some twine I found).
9. Keep my 14 year old car on the road. That one didn’t work out. The rust was too much. I must say we both love our newer car (it’s a 2005). It even has cupholdera and variable speed wipers and a CD player!

For 2010? Check this space for what is sure to be an odyssey.

Great work and great goals.

Thanks, it’s the honesty in your approach that has started me tracking my own net worth and thinking about setting specific financial goals again.

Why don’t you start by just writing down what your goals are first.

I think it’s pretty hard to plan out what your goals are unless you write it down. If your goal happens to be saving money – then you should definitely take a look at your budget and see what you’re spending. That way you can kind of have a road map and track where your money is going.

I find it best to just use excel.

Good luck :)

1. Start writing Financial Goals :)

Admittedly, I often come up with goals but fail to write them down which is detrimental to determining how well I am doing against them. For this year I WILL write down my goals and start tracking my progress against them.

Anyone know of a good “goal tracking” program? I am a very visual person so something that shows a progress bar of some sort would be useful for me.

Here’s how I did:

My goals – starting from easy to hard.
1. Increase net worth (2008 was brutal).
2. Make a will for wife and myself
3. Contribute $5k into each of 2 TFSAs (hehee, transfers count right?)
4. Finish portfolio restructuring (dump investments with high MERs)
5. Pay $15000 above base payments into mortgage
6. Increase passive income to $2000/month

I did pretty well.
1. Yes – by 24.5% – woo hoo!
2. No – really really got to get this done
3. Yes – about $13500 in there (REITs and income trusts)
4. Yes – only a few mutual funds left – 90% done
5. Yes – paid $16.8k above and beyond our accelerated biweekly payments
6. No – have to rethink this one (I had originally considered rental income as passive). Annual dividend income increased from $3700 to $4900.

When you describe what you’re doing/have done it seems like you have significant cash flow. Out of curiousity, what is your household income?

No rush on the TFSA – the contribution amounts aren’t high enough in the first couple of years to make it a priority.