Welcome to the first quarterly update of my 2025 goals and resolutions. Since 2019, I have set goals and resolutions at the beginning of the year, published them on this blog, and provided quarterly updates.
Many people lose focus on their New Year’s resolution by around February, so for me, it is important to find a way to keep myself motivated and accountable. Publishing the goals and resolutions on this blog and doing quarterly updates have helped me stay focused throughout the year.
I will be the first to admit I’m not perfect. Last year I had many year- long goals and I lost focus by Q3 which resulted in me not achieving as well as I might have wished. This is why I limited myself from having too many year-long goals in 2025.
Let’s find out how I did in Q1.
2025 Goals and Resolutions – Q1 Update
I use a spreadsheet to track my goals and resolutions. Here’s what it looks like at the end of Q1.
Financial Goals
Dividend income over $60,000 – WIP. A+. $16,276.71
After three months, we have collected $16,276.71 in dividends. To reach over $60,000 for the entire year, we would need at least $15,000 by the end of Q3. In other words, we are slightly ahead in progress with this goal.
Since the market has been volatile, we plan to continue saving money and investing new capital into our dividend portfolio to generate more dividend income.
We plan to add more from the best Canadian dividend stocks with the new capital.
$25k in LTSS/cash wedge – WIP
The idea behind this goal is to build up our cash wedge to give us a greater margin of safety when we do live off our portfolio. Although we have been saving money into our LTSS, we have been spending money on some big-ticket items. Therefore, this goal is very much a work in progress (WIP).
Boost RESP by $1,500 each – Done. A+
In addition to the $2,500 RESP contribution for each child at the beginning of 2025, we also contributed an additional $1,500 to each RESP.
Since we didn’t “front-load” the RESPs by contributing $14,000 the years our kids were born, we are trying to catch up. In addition to the $2,500 annual contribution, we plan to continue adding more money to both RESPs so we can knock off the $14,000 target for each child.
Blog Goals
Continue publishing a blog post every Monday – WIP
This goal has kept me motivated and allowed me to plan ahead in terms of blog posts. So far in 2025 I have successfully published a blog post every Monday.
Improve Google Pagespeed to >=90 Performance – Done. A+.
Having a speedy site is very important for readers. Whenever I browse a site, I always get frustrated if the site doesn’t load up quickly or I just get a blank page.
In Q1 I spent a bit of time tweaking the blog and working on making sure the different pages load up as quickly as possible. With these changes, the blog’s Google Pagespeed has improved from the mid-70s to above 90!
Since Google PageSpeed Insights provides different scores from time to time, I have seen the performance score drop to below 80 occasionally. Despite the variable results, I would say I have completed this goal ahead of time.
Consider whether to incorporate or not – WIP
I have talked to a couple of tax specialists about whether to incorporate the blog or not. I have also talked to a few bloggers who have incorporated. I have not made any decisions yet but need to figure it out before the end of April.
Personal Goals
Read 15 books – WIP. A. Read 4 books
Last year I had an annual goal of “read for 10 minutes before bedtime.” Unfortunately, I lost focus in Q3. Also, it was difficult to read before bedtime when I travelled for business. So this year I changed the goal to a more specific number – read 15 books.
In Q1 I finished reading the following books:
- Don’t Worry Retire Happy by Tom Hegna – overall a decent book but I know many of the topics covered in the book already. It was a relatively quick read for me.
- Retirement Reality Check: How to Spend Your Money and Still Leave an Amazing Legacy by Josh Jlinski – this book had similar vibes as Die with Zero. However, I found the author talking too much about his Financial Quarterback program and it almost came off as a book to sell his program.
- Morris Chang Autobiography Volume 1 by Morris Chang – Morris Chang published the first volume in 1988, chronicling his life from his birth until his early years at Texas Instruments. He published the second volume in November 2024 which covered his career from 1964 to 2018. I came across these books while we vacationed in Taiwan in January and decided to purchase both volumes. Since there’s no English version available yet, both books are in Chinese. Since I don’t know many of the semiconductor technical terms in Chinese, it was a bit challenging to read the book. Overall, a great book with a lot of insights.
- The Temperament God Gave Your Kids by Art and Larraine Bennett – Mrs. T read this book and thought I should read it too, so I did (better listen to your wife!). Once I got past the words “God,” “Mass,” and “Catholic,” the book was quite good and provided a good breakdown of a child’s unique temperament and ways parents should work with the different temperaments. It was interesting to see that I had the same top two temperaments as Kid 1.0.
Join 2 Curling Teams – WIP. A+. 2 teams & spare on 1 team from January to March
In December, I finished a 7-week “Learn to Curl” workshop. Since I used to curl for two years back in high school, it was interesting to get back to curling again. I spared a few times last year but in January, I started playing on two teams and spared consistently on another team. Playing three times a week has helped me improve my curling techniques… but there are still a lot of little things I can improve on.
The curling season finished at the end of March. The current plan is to be on three teams and play three times a week in September, possibly spare on other days if I have time.
As mentioned, I got both kids interested in curling as well. It will be interesting to see whether they want to join the after-school curling program in September or not. My long-term goal is to play on the same team as both kids one day…
Replace 2013 iMac – Not yet started
Our 2013 27” iMac is progressively getting slower and slower. We also can’t install some programs due to an out-of-date operating system.
After reading reviews, I think the best option is to replace our iMac with an M4 Mac Mini with either 24GB or 32GB of RAM and 512 GB of SSD. We’ll supplement additional harddrive space with an external SSD. Since there are rumours that a new Apple Studio Display might come out later this year, I might wait till this new display comes out before replacing the iMac.
But I also need to be careful not to keep “waiting” for the new technology to come out, because new stuff will always come out and I’d just be waiting forever…
Fix Fence – Not yet started
This will be the project once the weather gets better. Unclear whether I should plan to fix the fence myself or hire someone to do it.
Fun Goals
Visit Taiwan with family – Done. A
We visited Taiwan for 3 weeks in January and had a blast!
I’ll publish a trip report later so share more pictures and stories.
Omakase with Mrs. T – Done. A.
Mrs. T and I went for two sushi Omakase while in Taiwan and we really enjoyed the experience.
Summer camping trip – WIP, nothing booked yet
We still need to book something for a camping trip this summer. Probably need to start planning soon rather than later.
Summary – 2025 Goals and Resolutions – Q1 Update
Overall, I think Q1 was quite successful for me. I accomplished two goals as planned and two more goals ahead of schedule.
For Q2, I need to determine whether to incorporate the blog business or not and focus on reading more books.
Maybe you can open a Corporate Investing account for your blog. Just buy a no dividend stock and watch it grow
Hi, whats the story behind incorporating your blog? Do you make money off it that you want to recognize through a corporation?
The blog makes a small amount of money but right now the amount is taxed at my marginal tax rate. Corporations are taxed at 15% so it’s much lower than any individual tax brackets. Obviously there are yearly expenses tied to incorporating & maintaining a corporation… I need to figure out whether these expenses are worth it. Hope this helps.
Oh ok. Yeah makes sense 🙂
There are a lot of expenses and also time spent on ensuring you meet the incorporation annual reqts. For instance, employing an accountant to file your T2, annual returns, etc. Unless you are making a lot of money right now, it is really not worth the hassle. Again, it depends on your circumstances.
Yup, understand the one time expense and on-going expenses with incorporation. I’ve asked around and I’m getting to that conclusion – not worth it.
I think you’re prudent not to incorporate. I have several smaller corps and the ongoing headaches, reporting, and fees don’t make good business sense until the business has a decent amount of revenue. Wish I knew that years ago 😉
Good to know, thank you for the input.
Well done. Keep up the good work.
Thank you, Daryn.