Passive Income Update - Goals for 2017

I spent the first weekend of January setting the goals for 2017. I do track my goals regularly and 2016 was a mixed bag where i managed to hit 50% of the goals set (quite an achievement already! lol)

Your goals will depend on the life cycle which you are in and i have set some very "stretched" goals for myself for end 2017 (not all are listed here):

• Achieve passive income of $60,000 per year
  
• Achieve trading income of $1,000 per month 
• Travel to 3 new places or cities 
  

Goal 1 - passive income of $60,000 per year

My eventual target is about $120,000 per year so i am still a long way from this. The idea is to build up a portfolio of bonds and dividend paying stocks. My existing portfolio is projected to generate around $36,000 for 2017 on a blended yield of 6.6%, so i still have some way to go. 

I will probably add more dividend paying stocks and REITs as well as some corporate bonds. I may consider using leverage to achieve this. This is probably a stretched goal but i need to "just do it". 

Goal 2 - generate trading income of $1,000 per month

This is just to keep me in tune with the market. I will use a $100,000 portfolio to trade anything under the sun. Stocks, Futures, Forex. This is of "moderate" difficulty. The difficulty is that i hardly have time to monitor the market due to my travel and work commitments. Let's see if i can meet this target.

Goal 3 - Travel to 3 new places or cities

I aspire to travel round the world one day (need to build up that stream of passive income still) so in the meantime, i will try to visit 3 new places or cities every year. This should be an easier goal. 

CPF Accounts and Mortgage Repayments

I have decided in December last year to stop using CPF for our mortgage repayments. From this year onwards, I will use cash to pay down the monthly mortgages.

You must have read about AK47's CPF account balances. The inspiring post is here. I too, have decided that it is probably better for my CPF balances to earn that 2.5% from government then to "pay for it" myself. As you can see, the interest is $17,933.23. 

Come to think of it, it is probably better off to pay down the amount drawn from CPF then to pay off the bank. Otherwise it is a "double whammy" since bank interest rate is lower and doesn't require you to "pay back" the interest. Wifey's withdrawal from CPF is almost similiar. I will try to pay off my CPF portfolio if i have excess cash and can't find a good use on them.

Ok, that's it for today. 

Happy CPFing