What Kind Of Financial Goals To Make

As I mentioned in my post about the Autumn issue of Informed Investor, my partner and I keep our finances separate and it works for us. We do have a couple of financial goals we are working towards together (mainly house related), and then we both have personal goals as well. I will be dedicating a separate post to our house related financial goals later on.

Some of my financial goals are:

• Emergency fund
• Savings targets
• Doubling my investment portfolio
• Qualifying for the full government contribution to KiwiSaver

Emergency Fund

I’m currently saving a so called starter emergency fund, again. Starter emergency fund is often recommended at $1000 because while it won’t cover everything life might throw at you, it should cover most, and should give you some peace of mind.

You could then leave your emergency fund at that or increase it to levels you’d like (for example 3 months’ expenses, or 6 months’ expenses, or even a year’s expenses).

A while ago I had managed to save past the $1000 starter emergency fund, but ended up being silly and spending it after we bought our house.

It wasn’t emergency spending either. I guess after reigning our spending in so tightly for so long to get a mortgage, the relief of finally getting there put me on a spending spree, and no savings were safe from it!

How to save an emergency fund with no spare income?

My main way of adding to my emergency fund is money from my $250 project. It is a smaller version of Canna Campbell’s $1000 project, and if you haven’t heard of it, the main idea of the $1000 project is to save money by other means than your main income.

This could be a side hustle, selling things you no longer need, possible refunds or other little windfalls etc.

The point is to accumulate all that extra money into a separate account instead of letting it disappear into mindless spending.

Once you reach your goal amount on the account ($250 for me, $1000 in the original version), you transfer it towards your goal, be it investing, debt reduction or savings.

You can find more information on Canna’s YouTube channel, she also has a book dedicated to the $1000 project (you can find my review here).

Other Savings Targets

I have other savings targets on top of the emergency fund, mainly short to mid term goals.

I’m turning 30 this year and would love to visit the South Island for the first time. So, I’m saving to do a birthday trip to Christchurch later this year.

My target amount is $1500, but I’m not sure it will be enough for two kids and two adults. Although I’m not planning for more than a long weekend away.

The only problem is that my partner and I have a little bit of a different idea of what we want to do. He wants to drive, I want to fly. I want to stay in a hotel, he wants to camp. So we’ll see!

Since I’m hoping that this trip will happen this year, this savings goal is a high priority and I transfer money towards it weekly.

Another savings target I have is a trip to Finland, to have my daughters meet their relatives and experience where their mother is from.

My goal is to save about $7000, at least one adult and two children’s plane tickets. I’m not sure if my partner will come with us as I’m hoping to go for a few months. I also want to have a good amount of spending money to do travel within Finland and hopefully go somewhere else in Europe as well.

I’m aiming to go for Christmas 2023 or mid 2024 (the Finnish summer), so I have a little while still to save, so it’s not the highest priority at the moment. I transfer a small amount towards it every week and will ramp it up at the start of 2023.

Investing more is the most important out of my financial goals

At this stage I’ve decided that I won’t share the exact figure I currently have invested, but I will say that it’s under 10k.

My goal for this year is to double what I have invested, excluding any capital gains or dividends.

This simply means that only the money that I transfer to my investment accounts counts towards this goal. I’m invested pretty much half and half (excluding KiwiSaver) between Sharesies NZ and Hatch NZ, and hold mainly different ETFs, with a few individual companies for good dividends or because I personally believe in their future.

I’m doing pretty well with this goal, as I’m sitting at 39.8% completed and it’s only April!

KiwiSaver

For those not in New Zealand, KiwiSaver is our government endorsed retirement savings scheme.

You can choose your contribution percentage and it will be paid from you wages, your employer puts in at least another 3% of your wages and once a year, the NZ government will contribute 50 cents per every dollar you’ve put in that year, up to the maximum of about $1042 contributed.

Since being on maternity leave twice, working part-time etc, the two previous years I didn’t qualify for the full amount from the government and had to top up.

This year, knowing that I will fall short, I’ve been making regular extra contributions the whole year and my aim is to reach $1042 contributed. I think I’m doing pretty good with this, all though I might have a lump sum left to contribute before the cut off.

What kind of financial goals do you have for the year 2022? I’d love to hear so please share below!