My Financial Goals for 2018

It has been a remarkably dangerous week since i last wrote on this modern rune stone generator. Vikings do not do well with the heat of the unusually hot summer. Most of the week i was hiding in my cave trying to print some money in there. As a result I can tell you this: going for a raid to the neighboring village is much more simple than trying to squeeze money papers out of my money paper - like squeezing water out of a stone. I did get a few metal coins out of the effort and ended up with my first treasure from this new technology - 33 copper coins that this new generation of people prefers to call cents or euro cents.. 

A wise conqueror would have put the coins in a chest and bury it somewhere safe marked with an X but seems like humans these days have gone crazy! They kept saying: "Trust me, if you give us back these coins you just got, we will give you back even more! You just have to wait!". "Insanity", I thought to myself but i do like adventures and have a few good chests stored with the banking people so i agreed to give it a go! They call this magic P2P lending.

I only started investing in June so it is reasonable to miss the start of the year by 6 (almost 7!) months to set the financial goals for the year. I actually have had the idea to write about it for a few weeks but setting goals for myself is apparently a complicated and time-consuming process!

I came up with these goals:

1. Earn at least 100 euros of passive income in total,
2. Buy (and hold) at least one non-baltic stock,
3. Invest at least 10 000 euros,
4. Read 4 books about anything investing-related.

Four goals seems to be a reasonable start considering it's only for half a year. Let's go through them and dig a bit deeper.

Earn at least 100 euros of passive income in total

Trying not to get too greedy. The stocks i have bought so far have been bought for dividends and will not really bring me any passive income before the next year (hopefully). One of the ways to make some progress right now would be to increase investments in P2P lending which seems to be slightly short on the demand side these days so the interest rates are going down. The other option would be to go for the stocks that are going to make more dividend payments this year but picking stocks just based on this criteria is not a wise move.

Buy (and hold) at least one non-baltic stock

This one is a challenge to go a little further in the stock market. Took me a while to do my first transaction in the Baltic stock market and i made sure to understand how the buying part works by letting a friend of mine talk me through all the options i have. As with most things it turned out to be easier than i was afraid of. Before buying something from the USA market i want to make sure i find the best option to minimize the expenses i will have when keeping the stocks for dividends. If anyone has a good blog post or some other resource about how to have the lowest upkeep and transactions fees in Estonia then feel free to hook me up!

Invest at least 10 000 euros

I am a rather conservative person when it comes to putting my money anywhere but my bank account because there it seems to be the safest. This year however i have realized more than ever before that by keeping the money on the bank account I am actually slowly burning it from one end while pumping more of it in through the other end. The burning itself intensifies as the amount i have stored gets bigger. Therefore it has been an eye-opening year and this goal is meant for me to overcome the aforementioned fears with the thought at the back of my mind that I am okay with losing some of the money at least temporarily.

Read 4 books about anything investing-related

I do like reading blogs and other shorter media formats but have had a slightly tougher time with going through books. I have books lined up i want to read so it is mostly about picking them up from somewhere or ordering them online. 

What do you think about my initial goals? Which ones will i be able to likely achieve and which ones not?

Enjoy the summer but also don't forget to continue to fight the modern war for financial freedom!