*Spoiler Alert* – there’s nothing radical or wildly different here. In fact, they’re pretty much the same as last year.
They’re just simple annual goals, ones which have some meaning to me, even if they might not make sense to others. Still, they provide me with some focus while I get on with the humdrum day-to-day stuff.
2025 Financial Goals:
£4,600 Total ISA Dividend Income
Building up my dividend income is only part of my overall investment strategy – my intention is for dividends to cover a small chunk of my monthly bills, not my entire retirement income.
So the goal this year will be to receive at least £4.6k income from my investment trusts and shares in my ISA. This is around 7% more than what I received last year, keeps up with inflation, hopefully covers any dividend cuts or cancellations, and accounts for the small capital top ups I make to this portfolio (most of my money still goes on the growth part of my portfolio).
It’s only a small increase but I’m being realistic.
Why am I doing this, when I’m still accumulating? Well I want to see dividend income being paid now, see it working, get used to the lumpy payments. I don’t want to wait to find out if it works (or not) when I retire and for it to not be as I had thought or anticipated.
Emergency Fund (3-months’ expenses) – £4,500
Yes, this is my goal, yet again!
I feel like I need to, not prioritise, but take this goal more seriously. It’s a struggle to balance this with saving and investing but I haven’t really been trying as I’ve been trying to grow my Future Fund.
I have a Monzo account which I don’t use, so as an incentive, I have taken up their 1p Saving Challenge, which should boost my emergency funds a bit more.
The emergency fund target’s gone up from last year as my basic costs have gone up – I don’t think I will achieve it (even with the above challenge), but I’d like to get a lot closer. I won’t be starting from scratch (have what I saved last year) so will see how I get on.
My bare bones monthly expenses (mortgage + bills) are now around £1.5k a month.
And that’s it for my financial goals.
For what it’s worth, I will continue to log my monthly savings rate. This rate however is a bit meaningless to me as I currently have no goal or measurement of what this rate should be. In the early exciting days of aiming for FIRE, I was striving to reach 50% (!) and I think I needed that push and motivation. But now, coming to the latter part of my journey, I’m actually happy with the minimum of 10% which is auto-invested/saved each month. Any extra I save is a bonus.
Charity Goal
I was happy to surpass my goal last year.
I think I will just round this goal up to £250 this year. My monthly direct debits and ad-hoc donations should get me there.
The charities I donate to regularly are Age UK, Macmillan Cancer Support and Royal British Legion.
I will continue to make the occasional one-off donations by sponsoring friends or colleagues and am still funding ‘charity loans’ via Kiva.
As I’ve mentioned before, it’s tempting to throw every single penny I can towards my FIRE goal but I want to (and feel like I should) support charities because I can and because it makes me feel like I’m contributing and helping others in a small way.
2025 Non-Financial Goals
Read 20 books – minimum 12 ‘off the bookshelf’
Didn’t do that well with this goal last year so it’s same again – I have numerous unread books on my bookshelves at home. I need to read them so I know which ones to give away/donate (or keep).
In between reading my owned books, I will continue to read books from the library as borrowing books is one way I can support local libraries. Also, borrowing books means I don’t have to spend money buying them.
I love reading books, find it relaxing, helps with my concentration and stops me from looking at my phone (or TV).
However, a really good book can disrupt my sleep as I end up reading into the wee hours, doing the ‘one more chapter’ thing!
I’m going to try to read a total of 20 books this year – I managed 17 last year but plan on making time to read this year (I track my progress here via Goodreads).
Read 4 Non-Fiction or Classic books
(This goal is within the above goal).
Four non-fiction books is a stretch for me so again, I’m lumping ‘classics’ in this category.
Already have books in mind/to hand so will see how I can squeeze those in between reading my usual genres.
‘Creativity’ Goals
I don’t think I really succeeded in doing the ‘arty’ things I wanted to do, aside from doodling a little at home and a bit of colouring.
So I hope to make use of all the paints, pencils etc which I’ve started to accumulate!
I have continued with my French language learning with Duolingo – currently on a streak of 839 days and am continuing to enjoy spending a few minutes each day on this.
I am now at a point where I am learning a lot of new words/tenses, beyond what I learned at school/uni. My old brain is finding it a challenge and rather than progress through the levels, I may go back to practise old sections.
I hit my 800 day streak in November
I also finally completed my jigsaw – I might frame it, not sure yet!
Options, Options
Options trading has no place in a FIRE blog but I’m still doing it on a small scale (trading for 2 years now).
Still not managed my goal of doubling my initial capital, but I’m nearly there.
Once I hit that, I guess I will just continue trading to see where it takes me.
I’ll do an update in 6 months.
Other Stuff
New year, same old me, so there are things which I will just continue doing because they are good habits, rather than bad ones.
I’ll continue to try to get to the gym 3 times a week (inevitably, my gym membership has gone up again), still mostly weight training but ensuring I get a bit of cardio and a lot of stretching too.
I’m still doing the intermittent fasting (14:10) and as mentioned in my previous post, still making my own kefir, so will carry on with that.
No dry January or Veganuary for me – alcohol consumption is still for weekends only (or holidays). Quite a few of my friends have gone teetotal but I’m not there yet, enjoy my beer too much!
I’m pretty happy with my diet, cook most things from scratch, although could probably do with eating more leafy greens. My fruit smoothies are now more protein packed to help prevent loss of muscle tone due to age/menopause.
2024 was another year where I didn’t buy a single bottle of water – it’s been at least 8 years now. I will continue to carry a refillable drinking bottle, which is my own small effort to stop another plastic bottle ending up in the landfill/sea.
In 2015, one of my goals had been to complete the Rubik’s Cube without looking at instructions. After achieving this I found that if I didn’t practice solving it on a semi-regular basis, my old brain forgot how to do it! Anyway, another year has passed and regular fiddling with the cube means I can still do it, which hopefully keeps the little grey cells active! I’m no speed-cuber though, it takes me several minutes of full concentration, not seconds 😀
Next Milestone
The next milestone will be when my Future Fund reaches £300k, which might happen soon but I have a horrible feeling that the markets might conspire to delay my celebrations until later in the year.
Trump’s imminent ascension, a UK bond rout, UK’s economy collapsing into oblivion? Who knows!? I am sure I will get there in the end!
Anyway, all the best to everyone who has set goals for 2025 – good luck with them and here’s to a healthy and prosperous one for us all!
