Well, 2021 turned out to be a bit of a bust… but because we are humans, and humans tend to be inherently hopeful, I am again, hopeful that 2022 will turn out to be much better than 2021 and 2020.
2021 wasn’t as bad as 2020 because we at least got to see family and friends and got to dine in restaurants (and have some semblance of normalcy) but just having COVID get drawn out without a possible end in sight was very tiring.
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Here are my 2022 personal finance resolutions. They are usually the same each year and of course the name of the game is improvement from the year before.
As mentioned, I find financial resolutions easier than the regular New Year’s resolutions. Here are 7 financial resolutions to target and achieve in 2022.
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.
| Year | TFSA Contribution Room |
| 2009 | $5000 |
| 2010 | $5000 |
| 2011 | $5000 |
| 2012 | $5000 |
| 2013 | $5500 |
| 2014 | $5500 |
| 2015 | $10,000 |
| 2016 | $5500 |
| 2017 | $5500 |
| 2018 | $5500 |
| 2019 | $6000 |
| 2020 | $6000 |
| 2021 | $6000 |
| 2022 | $6000 |
| 2023 | $6500 |
| 2024 | $7000 |
| Total | $95,000 |
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.
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.
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).
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.
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
I usually review these books and post them on this blog throughout the year as I read them. Thankfully most of these books are available at the library.
Here are other personal finance books and dividend investing books I recommend.
Last year I had the goal of cleaning up my portfolio. It’s pretty clean now. I will continue to move some US dollar dividend paying companies into my RRSP when I have my contribution room available.
2022 Life and New Year’s Resolutions
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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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!
Wish me luck!!
What are some of your personal finance resolutions?
What are some of your New Year’s Resolutions?
Do you have any investing or personal finance books that you would also recommend?
GYM is a 30 something millennial interested in achieving financial freedom through disciplined saving, dividend and ETF investing, and living a minimalist lifestyle. Before you go, check out my recommendations page of financial tools I use to save and invest money. Don’t forget to subscribe for blog updates, a free dividend yield spreadsheet, and the free Young Money Bootcamp eCourse.
Great resolutions this year! Especially that “limit Twitter to 30 minutes a day”. If you find yourself browsing endlessly on your computer, I recommend “Cold Turkey”. It’s an desktop app that lets you control how much time you spend on websites – totally configurable. I use it and it’s helped keep me productive.
I’m excited to see you hit a $1M investment portfolio. Imagine if you already had that before markets went crazy these past two years. You’d have made a killing!
@AnotherLoonie- I use Twitter on my phone, I really should just delete it. Thanks for sharing about “Cold Turkey”! I’ll be excited if I hit that too! If I already had that before markets went crazy I would probably be a 1.5 millionaire, haha…
I didn’t know the average person spends so much time on their phone every day, wow. There’s probably a better intentional use of time than browsing social media.
I think we have a lot of similar goals, like meditating, reading books, and building a $1 million investment portfolio. Well, I’m kind of cheating on that last one because I’m using leverage. On a net investment basis I’m still far away, lol. Good luck with all your endeavors in 2022. ?
@Liquid- I’m embarrassed to say sometimes it’s like FOUR hours for me, though it includes if I use Google Maps to get places in my car. Good luck to you too! Yes we sure do have a lot of similar goals, looking forward to reading about your progress.
GYM I don’t m ow how you can write or even stay awake past midnight. With 2 little ones I’m zonked by 9pm if not earlier. That’s probably why I’m not as productive on my blog as you ha ha.
Looking forward to seeing your progress throughout the year.
@Maria- Haha, I don’t know either, but I think I am intrinsically a night owl. I would probably stay up until 1am every day if I didn’t have to take care of kids during the day and try my best not to be cranky at them 😉
We finished 2021 with $33,581 dividends received, and a 2022 go forward number of $40,112 as of today. I’d like to plan to collect $43,000 by end of 2022 and have a $46,000 go forward number for 2023.
As for healthy resolutions I’m going to put up a list of things I can easily do in my home office:
planks
dumbbell work (shoulders, biceps, triceps, tin cans, etc….)
squats
I’ll try to do a few of each per day and see where it goes. I walk our lab-mix twice a day for about 6.5km already.
@James R- Wow, that’s fantastic! Do you have an ‘end’ goal of dividend income that you want? Also, great health resolutions!