As promised, here is the evolution of my different personal goals as of 31.09.21. As a reminder, at the beginning of July, I had put on paper the list of my personal goals that I had set for this year 2021.
General overview
Despite 3 weeks of holydays for the GP family, a significant overall progress of 12% has been achieved, against 7% last month. I put the effort on the objectives that were a bit behind and I am very satisfied with this month :-). Only one goal was slightly down, but that was to be expected. I’ll explain all this in detail below.
1. Invest the maximum on my 3rd pillars (6’883.- CHF)
No problem to reach this goal. The permanent transfers are configured and do their job 🙂
As explained in the initial post, part of my 3a accounts are invested in the stock market and have been giving me a return of more than 24% since the accounts were opened (I was at 28% in August). Nevertheless, for the first time, we notice a big drop of about 4% on this return. As we all know, the end of September was very rough for the world and Swiss stock markets. However, my performance since the opening is still excellent.
Interesting performance, isn’t it? If you want to know more, I let you discover how to have a 3a invested in the stock market with ridiculously low fees! If you are interested, write me and I will give you an invitation link that will allow you to have your first 500 CHF managed for free!
2. Invest CHF 15’000 in the stock market (shares, ETF)
I have a permanent transfer of CHF 1,000 to my Interactive Broker account and then I decide what I want to invest in during the first days of the month. Depending on the opportunities, I sometimes make additional payments. The goal can be reached without any problem this year.
For the month of September, I strengthened my positions in the CHSPI ETF by buying 16 additional shares. I invested a bit more than the previous month with a total of 2’500.00 CHF. The end of the month was very hard for the world stock market. Even my Swiss positions (CHSPI) did not resist. It is never a pleasure to open my portfolio and see the majority in red, many P&L in negative as well, but I must not panic and keep a cool head. The stock market is going to go back up, it’s the opportunity to make the sales 🙂
3. Achieve a savings rate of 50%
For this month of September, I did not expect to reach a record savings rate. As we had three weeks of vacation, it is natural that we will spend a bit more than usual. Even if the 50% was not reached, a respectable 37.2% was achieved this month. To help me out, I received a municipal tax refund for an amount of 1’220.- CHF , but the holydays still cost me about 1’500.- CHF more than usual.
No regrets for this month. We were lucky to have three weeks of vacation at the same time, and on top of that, the weather was great!
The annual target is still possible. 47.61% average savings rate is very satisfying. Even though we try to be frugal, we place a lot of importance on time with friends and family and we don’t want to fall into a mode of deprivation and frustration. In order to increase this savings rate, the other area I’m going to focus on until the end of the year is income. How to earn more? A very interesting question that I will be looking into very soon 🙂
In order to calculate this rate, I have to track all of my money coming in and going out. As already mentioned, I do this with this great app, YNAB.
Note: YNAB is paid and for this reason, it is not the most frugal solution. There are a lot of free GoogleSheets that allow you to do this job. It’s up to you to see what motivates you the most 🙂
4. Learning to invest in crypto – 2’000 CHF
Not much on the crypto side during this month. I have not invested in this domain, but I have opened a Binance account in order to be able to invest USDT, cypto that I use to feed a marketing platform that I am testing. My goal is to go from 48% to 72%.
I know that there are ways to make a little (or a lot) of money in this field, but I refuse to get serious without having a clear and precise strategy. Even if the lure of gain can be tempting, I force myself to be rigorous in my strategies. I have subscribed to a crypto analysis platform and I need to take the time to familiarize myself with Binance to be able to make some well defined trades. Currently, my crypto strategy is simply to buy in bear market and hold everything. The staking at Swissborg makes me earn some daily interest.
5. Increase my cash by 30’000 CHF
Just like last month, no increase of my cash for this month. With expenses a little bit higher than normal due to the holydays and 2’500 CHF invested in the stock market this month, I don’t have much left :-). In terms of numbers, I decreased my cash by 166.20 CHF. This decrease does not worry me at all, because the important thing for me is to have been able to invest where I wanted to. So I’m going from 61% to 58%, a 3% drop.
6. Read 4 books about personal development or finance
After a few months without any work, I read one more book which brings my goal from 50 to 75%. I read “The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck, by Mark Manson”, an atypical personal development book for those who don’t like personal development :-). You can find this book.
If you order through these links, I will get a small commission 🙂 Thanks in advance.
7. Write 35 posts for my blog (in French)
Just like last month, I’m well ahead of the month of September with 3 new posts.
If you haven’t seen the new posts for September, here they are!
- Earning money by taking surveys
- Checklist – daily frugality
- Why budgeting ? The prerequisite for increasing your saving rate
8. Translate 20 posts from my blog into English
As you know, I only started to translate the site in July. Nice progress in September with 5 translated posts.
I went from 35% to 60%! Very happy of myself. This goal will be achievable by the end of the year.
9. Get 100 subscribers to my newsletter
Very good progress with 10 new members in September. Out of these 10, 4 subscribed to the English version of the newsletter. This number really motivates me to continue the translations and also to write new posts! Thanks a lot to them! If you read this post and you like it, subscribe if you haven’t done so yet :-). Don’t hesitate to share the address too 🙂
Thanks a lot !
This is a progression that suits me! If you are already a subscriber, sharing my blog address on your social networks or directly to your acquaintances would help me a lot! Thanks in advance for your help.
10. Earn 2,000 CHF in additional income
I’m a bit behind with this goal, but I still get an additional CHF 85.20 for September. All of this amount comes from online surveys only. I’ve made a habit of spending 20-30 minutes a evening on this task. It’s time consuming, not necessarily interesting, but it allows me to generate a small income.
I don’t include dividends or returns from my investments
Conclusion
I wasn’t very optimistic for this month of September, but I am finally happy with the result. I notice that reaching the 50% savings rate is really a big challenge and that I should not only focus on expenses, but also on other ways to generate income. What about you? How was your month of September?
Comments are welcome!
