Reflection on 2018 Goals

After a relaxing start of 2019, the normal life rhythm picked up again with school for the kids and business objectives at work. This means also business travel. The first trip in 2019 is a business trip to Shanghai. I was the first time in Shanghai in 2006. Now 13 years later I am back again. This blogpost is written on the flight Dubai – Shanghai and in my hotelroom. See a beautiful picture taken from the Bund.

Let’s reflect on the year 2018.

2017 was the year where we launched our blog and have grown our monthly visitors from 6000 visitors per month to more than 22.000 visitors per month. In 2018 we have crossed the 50.000 mark. Simply amazing. I am glad that more and more people realize that they have to learn how to grow their money and also teach their kids financial literacy.

In January 2018 we defined the following financial and travel goals. Did we meet or beat them?

Our 2018 Financial goals

Here are our five 2018 financial goals that we either consider Achieved or NOT Achieved.

1. Save at least 10% of my yearly income (Pay myself first! – see our Financial strategy) – NOT Achieved
2. Achieve a total of 10.000$ dividend or options income for the total year 2018 which equals an average of 550$ per month. Increase also our monthly dividend paying income to at least 300$. We would like to have a 30% increase if possible compared to 2018. – NOT Achieved
3. Put my mom’s portfolio at work and generate at least a yearly 3.500$ dividend and/or options income. That equals a 290$ a month. NOT Achieved
4. Continue to grow my foster child and my kids’ portfolio. Monthly contributions for the portfolio of my foster child and dividend income focus for my kids’ portfolio. Grow our dividend and/or options income in my kids portfolio to 1000$ for the whole year. NOT Achieved
5. Give our sons at least 5 FINANCIAL educational lessons and teach him the basics of finance and how to manage money. Achieved

Saving 10% of our yearly income has been a challenge again. My wife and her son arrived finally in April to start a life as a family together. No more flight tickets back and forth to South-America and Belgium. However a family budget with 5 people instead of 3 people is more expensive, you know that. As we keep track of our monthly expenses, we noticed a significant increase in clothing, medical and mobile telecom expenses.

Financial goal Number 2 was the 10.000$ Challenge. We didn’t achieve the 10K and only achieved 92%. We came 848,52$ short and only received 9151,48$. The main reason for not achieving this goal is the fact that we decided to transfer our portfolio from Binck bank to Tradersonly broker. This has saved at least 400 euro in expenses however Binck was doing difficult during the transfer period. It took almost 4 and a half months to transfer the complete portfolio. A period where I couldn’t trade, nor execute new purchases. Very frustrating situation. Anyhow we are still very pleased with the decision as the customer support is outstanding and the trading platform is very professional with many capabilities. The only downside is the charts. Use another charting platform to do your technical analysis.
Where are we with our options trading knowledge? We are grinding forward with our options trading. I have been exposed to different options trading strategies and I am still in learning mode. I am no longer an options novice but I consider myself an options intermediate trader. Our risk management can be improved a lot as in November 2018 we achieved a profit of more than 2.000$ but had also 1800$ losses and commissions. In December we also had one day a profit of 1200$ but we have given back more than 600$. If we can minimize our losses, our options income can improve substantially.

When we compare our results against 2017, we achieved less passive income. That’s okay for me. A quick calculation shows us that our yearly return was around 7-8% of our invested money. We also crossed the 25.000$ cash flow in 3,5 years. Remarkable, isn’t it?

In Financial goal 3, we wanted to generate at least a yearly 3.500$ dividend and/or options income. We only achieved 2308$. Although we also transferred this portfolio to Tradersonly, here the transfer was completed fast in two weeks. The main reason for missing our objective is the 823$ options loss in August. If we would have avoided that loss, we would definitely have achieved our goal. Anyway, we paid some learning money there. My mom’s portfolio is only invested for around 40%. The rest of her portfolio was cash. From April 2018 we noticed that markets became more volatile and we avoided adding new positions. Was that a good or bad decision? That depends on the risk profile you define for your investment portfolio. I didn’t want to add downside risk to her portfolio. A passive income of 2308$ in 2018 is more than the passive income in 2017. We are happy with this result. It is definitely more than the interest income from a savings account that 95% of the Belgians achieved…
In our financial goal number 4 we continued to invest 25 euro per month in our foster child portfolio. At the end of 2018, we decided to redefine our investments and overweigh in emerging and Asian markets going forward. I personally think the biggest growth in economies will be in Asia for the next 10 – 15 years. As this foster child portfolio is a long term investment, I prefer to overweigh my monthly investments in Asia. Our goal is to achieve 5.000 Euro. We have now around 1300 Euro.

The financial goal of our kids portfolio was to achieve 1000$ passive income for the whole year. We only achieved 866$. We decided not to trade options anymore in this portfolio for the remainder of the year. Nevertheless, 866$ is more than the year 2017 and we added cash to our portfolio. Now let’s put this cash to work in 2019.

Goal 5 Teaching financial literacy to the kids.

This objective is always fun for me. We managed to teach 5 financial classes. It can be challenging to engage a teenager in teaching financial literacy as the world they live in is YouTube, Instagram and other social media. You can find the blog posts of all our financial education classes on our blog.
We didn’t give them 1.000$ yet as I have been searching for a way to let them invest their money on their own. We will take action on this topic in 2019. The travel with a fixed budget was my personal favorite financial education class. In 2018 I also learned a lot about the risk profile and perspective of the two boys. One is more risk averse than the other. This will have an impact on how they manage their money going forward…we will see.

Our 2018 Travel goals

In our life we focus on spending money on experiences instead of buying things. Travel is a perfect way to relax and learn new things.

In 2018 we continued to save money for our travel plans or local visits to interesting places in Belgium. This is the 3rd layer in our Financial Strategy. We save money for this specific purpose each year. If we miss saving 10% of our yearly income, but achieve our travel goals instead, we are perfectly fine with that decision. You also have to live your life now!

Here are our five travel goals that we defined for 2018.

1. Visit this year three interesting spots in Belgium where kids can learn something and have a unique experience to remember. They don’t have to cost money to be great. NOT Achieved
2. Do ONE city break vacation in 2018 with my son Achieved.
3. Plan and relax two weeks somewhere in the world with the family for a SUMMER vacation Achieved
4. Post a blog post of each travel or visit experience. Grow the popularity of the blog. Achieved
5. Inject the kids with cultural insights during our travel and teach them about history and other important facts in life. Write a travel chapter in their life story book. Achieved

Did we visit three interesting spots in Belgium? No, we did visit only two interesting places

• The Royal Greenhouses 
• Pairi Daiza

We did a citytrip in London which we combined with a practical financial education class “Travel with a budget”. We spend few days in Dusseldorf during Christmas.

In 2018 we spend a great summer vacation in Italy. It was the first time that we spend it together as a family and it was the first time in Tuscany. The car drive to Italy was split in two with a stop in France close to the Swiss border. Nevertheless it was a long drive to get there. The house accommodation with swimming pool was amazing and worth every penny. The vacation has given the kids interesting cultural insights about Italy and its history. We did visits to Pisa, Lucca and Florence and ended the vacation with an incredible boat trip in Riomagiorre. A great lifetime experience. See unfiltered picture from the boat…

Final words

As final word, we conclude with saying that we view 2018 as a transition year. We have set ourselves up for more passive income by avoiding bank fees (by switching broker) and obtaining a more powerful platform. We are now also working with a mentor for options trading and this has opened our eyes on what is possible. Our risk management is still not in control and that will be one of our key focus and improvement areas for 2019. Without proper risk management we will definitely fail.

From a personal life perspective, we have also started 2018 as a complete family. As a new composed multi-cultural and international family, we faced our challenges as any other family does, sometimes caused by cultural differences or language misunderstandings as in our family we speak now three languages: English, Dutch and Spanish. That leads to funny situations when we visit a restaurant and we see people watching and listening in on our table…lol.

We look forward to 2019 as this will be an exciting and challenging year. We have defined new projects for the blog and also new financial and travel objectives. You can all read about it next week.

Good luck with your personal finance strategy! Thanks for following us on Twitter and Facebook and reading this blog post. As always we end with a quote.