Hey everyone,
hope you guys have been doing well! I've been gradually easing my way into my University life, and getting used to the student life after a two-year break certainly haven't been easy. But now that I have settled down, I had the chance to take a breather, and sort out my finances, which had been a mess during this whole transition to university life....
During this review, I realised, disappointingly, that I was not going to hit my financial goal of $18,000 this year. Instead, I would have to adjust my annual goal to be at $12,000. There are several reasons for this, and I will explore some of them below:
1) Miscalculation
The biggest reason for me missing my annual goal would be my miscalculations previously. I did not take into account several of the big spending that I would have to make heading into my university life. For example, my laptop's wear-and-tear resulted in me needing to purchase another one, and I did not take into account some of the charges I would have to undertake, including my hall fees and miscellaneous purchases.
I was also unrealistic in my budget for my monthly spending initially, as I set an overly-ambitious goal in the beginning of the year, and did not give myself any leeway/room for failure. As I realised that it was impossible for me to adhere to the initial goal, I decided to give myself a looser, and much more manageable budget, which inevitably contributed to me missing the target.
Broadly speaking, I was overly optimistic and naive in making my first financial goal, and this experience is definitely something I will take into account when crafting my future goals.
2) Unexpected market
As most of my holdings were mainly in Straits Times Index, the index's under-performance this year contributed to my portfolio's lacklustre performance. The rest of my portfolio were not performing great as well, especially since some of them were purchased right before the COVID-19 pandemic crashed the local markets. While I have no worry holding my stocks for the long-term, some of them have not recovered to their pre-COVID highs, and have taken a hit at my overall net worth.
In conclusion, while it is indeed unfortunate that I had to adjust my annual goal downwards, I am glad that I managed to discover and review it early, as I could now work towards my new target realistically. This has also been a great lesson for me, to be more realistic and pragmatic in my future annual goals moving forward. I believe that goals might be there to stretch us to achieve something we deem impossible, but it definitely has to be realistic and achievable. I am relieved that I still have exactly 4 months to work towards my revised goal.
On that note, how have you guys been doing with your annual goals? Do share with us in the comments below!
Stay Safe,
T
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