2022 Personal Finance Resolutions Mid-Year Review

Half of 2022 is already over.

Time for a mid-year check in to see how I am doing with my goals and whether I need a kick in the butt.

Reviewing my resolutions was a great exercise for me.

For example, I totally forgot about my Twitter resolutions of limiting it to just 30 minutes a day. I did well for the first few months of 2022 and then I just completely forgot about it. Now I will give it another go again.

Here are my personal finance resolutions for 2022 with a look at whether I am on track or not to meet this expectations of mine.

MAX OUT TFSA

The 2022 TFSA contribution limit is $6000. This will be an easy goal because it just involves transferring money from my non-registered account into my Questrade TFSA, and this will be done in January 2022 to maximize the magical tax free compounding.

Here’s the total TFSA contribution room if you were of minimum age (age 18) when the TFSA started in 2009. $81,500 is the total contribution room if you had never contributed to your TFSA in 2022..

Accomplishing this easy goal in January will help me feel more positive about achieving the other goals.

According to James Clear from Atomic Habits, achieving goals and changing your habits must help you feel good (so you will continue to repeat them because of positive reinforcement).

These easy wins help prepare me for more difficult tasks.

Completed. This was easy. Before I rolled out of bed on January 1, 2022, I transferred $6000 from my non-registered account to my TFSA. I recall having a positive mood, hopeful and excited (or maybe bull market drunk and delusional) about the continued bull market, but then disaster struck with my TFSA portfolio (it’s not too bad actually because it is mainly filled with TSX but it could be better!).

MAX OUT RRSP

As with other years, I’m not sure what my RRSP room will be. This goal will be done once I find out what my RRSP contribution room is from the 2021 Notice of Assessment after my taxes are done.

My RRSP contribution room is on the lower side (typically it is 18% of earned income from the previous year) because of my defined benefit pension adjustment.

Completed. This was another straight forward task. I debated whether or not to transfer cash from my non-registered to my RRSP but in the end I transferred US dividend paying stocks from my non-registered into my RRSP (I transferred in kind).

Why did I do this instead of transferring cash?

Well, the US dollar dividend income is taxed at your marginal rate, some people say don’t let the tax tail wag the dog, but I feel that I am doing this in moderation. The capital gains resulted from the transfer in kind were minimal, but the future tax in the dividends will be reduced.

Here’s some tax efficient investing strategies and how dividends are taxed in Canada.

INCREASE DIVIDEND INCOME TO $25,000/YEAR

Last year in 2021, my goal was to increase my dividend income to $20,000 per year. To my pleasant surprise, I ended the year with just over $23,400 in passive dividend income annually.

It helped that companies like Suncor increased their dividend back to previous levels (after it was cut in 2020), and that some of the Canadian financials increased their dividend distribution by anywhere from 11% to 25.5%.

Therefore, in 2022, my goal is to increase the dividend income from $23,400 per year to $25,000 (forward annual yield). With a conservative 2.8% yield, this amounts to approximately investing another $57,500 into the portfolio (through dollar cost averaging).

I can’t control what the market does but I can control my contributions (I have cash savings, and I don’t make this much money, in case you are wondering).

If I don’t hit my goal, I won’t fuss about it too much because I don’t need the income right now, but focusing on growth would be a bigger deal, which is why I’ll be investing the majority of my money in ETFs that may not have a 3%+ yield (and rather a unsightly 1.8% yield, but has much more potential for growth).

Completed. This was completed in May 2022. I am surprised by this to be honest. There were a number of dividend increases that helped speed things up along the way.

CONTINUE WORKING ON MY 2 YEAR GOAL

My two year goal is to have 7 figures in my investment portfolio. Assuming a 7% annualized return (though this is average), my target for the end of the year December 2022 will be around $920,000 and this includes contributions to the portfolio which are similar in numbers to the above dividend income goal with reinvested dividends.

Get Smarter about Money has a nice compound interest calculator, and Passiv recently added a Goals feature to help you achieve this and keep track of your goals- it is pretty much a compound interest calculator broken down by month. You can see what the goals feature looks like here.

One downside is that it only looks at your Questrade accounts and if you have other accounts it doesn’t include it.

Passiv Elite is free if you use Questrade.

In progress. I have no idea how December 2022 will pan out and I am HOPEFUL that this might happen but I am not sure how this market will fare.

READ 5 INVESTING/ PERSONAL FINANCE BOOKS

I enjoy reading non-fiction personal finance and investing books, and I usually pick five investing or personal finance books per year and and write book reviews about them.

The book reviews I write help me remember what I learned from the books, even if they’re not very popular articles on this blog.

Here are the 5 investing and personal finance books that I hope to read in 2022.

• Margin of Safety: Risk Averse Value Investing Strategies for the Thoughtful Investor by Seth Klarman
• The Most Important Thing: Uncommon Sense for the Thoughtful Investor by Howard Marks
• The Great Minds of Investing by William Green (I liked his book Richer, Happier, Wiser so much, I thought I should read his other book)
• Adventure Capitalist: The Ultimate Road Trip by Jim Rogers (if I am sidelined from traveling, might as well travel vicariously through his book)
• What Works on Wall Street by James O’Shaughnessy

In Progress but might need to change it up. I read The Most Important Thing, it was pretty good. What Works on Wall Street was not for me. It was so difficult to read that I could not bring myself to write a book review on it. I am currently reading Margin of Safety and it is pretty good.

I look forward to reading Adventure Capitalist and just ordered it on Chapters (unfortunately couldn’t find it at the library).

The Great Minds of Investing by William Green was more difficult to acquire than I thought (copies on Amazon are like $50-100 or something for the book) so I might have to switch this to a different book.

Maybe Balance by Andrew Hallam?

2022 LIFE AND NEW YEAR’S RESOLUTIONs

Now for the fun stuff (and arguably much more difficult)

I’ll keep this short since it is a personal finance blog after all. There are more goals about ‘slowing down’ and being more mindful.

• Meditation daily for 10 minutes. I was meditating for 10 minutes four times a week but let’s be honest it wasn’t really meditating I would just fall asleep. I’m going to increase it to daily and try to do meditation during a time that I won’t fall asleep. I haven’t truly ‘meditated’ probably for a few years. I even went to a meditation retreat a few years ago and I want to get back to calming my continuous exhausted hyper-excitable fight or flight tendencies.

Needs some work. This definitely needs some work. I continue to fall asleep and snore within minutes of starting my meditation app.

• Continue physical activity 20 minutes four times a week and get some weights. I will be more strict with this 20 minute goal, sometimes I was doing just 15 minutes and sometimes it was stretching and not really to the point of breaking a sweat. I have been too cheap to get some weights (and also didn’t want clutter, and also didn’t want my kids to pick up weights and drop them on their toes) but some weight bearing exercise is helpful to prevent osteoporosis in the future and will help strengthen my core.

In progress. I have been pretty good about having more physical activity incorporated in my week. We got some weights and I am using weights two times per week and running or doing a HIIT exercise for the other two days of the week.

• Sleep before 12am– I was pretty good at sleeping before 12am after reading the book “Why We Sleep” but then I got lazy and slipped up. Right now it’s 12:29am as I type this so I better get to bed!

Failing. Sleeping before 12 am is a hit or miss. Generally I have been better but there are some days where I am well past 12 am. It is better though I’m not waiting until 1am to go to bed. I was doing well and then slipped up and just continued sleeping at 12:30am on most nights. There’s just too much to do as a night owl, haha. I’ll try and work on this again for the remainder of the year.

• Time management– Limit Twitter to 30 minutes a day (there, I said it here! I must be held accountable!). I complain there is no time but I am not setting boundaries with myself for time. The average individual spends THREE hours on their phone per day, so I hope to keep that down to under 2 hours per day.

Failing. It is not under 2 hours per day (some days though). I set the app limits for 30 minutes but just press ignore for the day.

How are you doing for your personal finance resolutions or resolutions?