2025 Goals and Resolutions – Q3 Update

With Q3 2025 in the books, it is time for a quarterly update on my 2025 goals and resolutions. For those of you who are new, since 2019, I have set goals and resolutions at the beginning of the year and posted quarterly updates on this blog. This is my way to stay accountable and ensure I remain motivated in accomplishing these goals.

Thanks to this method, I have accomplished many goals and resolutions since 2019. I think this is one of the best methods to ensure I don’t slack off and lose sight of the goals and resolutions I set out to accomplish. Now, this works well for me but I realize it may not work for everyone. 

Let’s find out how I did in Q3, shall we?

2025 Goals and Resolutions – Q3 Update

I have been using a spreadsheet to keep track of all my goals and resolutions. Whenever I made progress, like finishing reading a book, I’d update the spreadsheet.

Here’s what the spreadsheet looked like at the end of Q3:

Financial Goals

Dividend Income over $60,000 – WIP. A+ $48,823.02

After nine months, we received a total of $48,823.02 in dividend income, which is way ahead of progress. It’s a pretty safe bet that we will end up with more than $60,000 in dividend income by the end of 2025. 

With the goal in sight, the real question now is how much we will end up with by the end of the year.

If nothing changes (i.e. no additional purchases, dividend increases, or dividend cuts), based on my projection, we should end the year at around $64,000! This would put us 6.7% ahead of our target.

If that’s the case, that’s a fantastic way to end 2025! 

$25k in LTSS/cash wedge – WIP

At the end of Q3, we are a bit away from $25k saved up in our LTSS/cash wedge. At this point, I’m not 100% sure whether we will be able to accomplish this goal this year, but we plan to give it a shot.

We can move some money around to meet this goal before the end of the year, but that would just be funny accounting and cheating. That’s not something we want to do, of course.  

Boost RESP by $1,500 each – Done. A+

Because we didn’t “front-load” the RESPs by contributing $14,000 when each kid was born, we wanted to keep contributing money and max out the additional $14,000 RESP contribution room as quickly as possible. 

We actually accomplished this goal back in Q1. Since then, we added a bit more money in Q2 and Q3 to each kid’s RESP to get closer to the $14,000 limit. It would be nice if we could max out the $14k limit by the middle of next year.

Blog Goals

Continue publishing a blog post every Monday – WIP

I have successfully published a blog post every Monday so far this year. I am quite pleased and proud to be able to write and publish a new article every Monday.

I have also been keeping myself busy by starting a podcast with Nelson called the DIY Wealth Canada Podcast. It’s a little fun project for me and Nelson. We have low expectations, so we’ll see where the podcast takes us in the future. 

Improve Google Pagespeed to >=90 Performance – Done. A+. 

I spent quite a bit of time tweaking the blog in Q1 to improve page load speed. With these changes, I have managed to improve Google Pagespeed to above 90 on Mobile! 

I haven’t done anything since my tweaks in Q1. Hopefully, the website loading speed is still quite fast. 

Consider whether to incorporate or not – Done. A.

After talking to a few tax specialists and fellow bloggers who have incorporated, I decided not to incorporate the blog. The blog is very much a hobby project for me. Although the blog generates some income, that level doesn’t justify the one-time incorporation cost and the yearly recurring cost. 

Personal Goals 

Read 15 books – WIP. A+ Read 17 books. 

I’m proud to announce that I hit the targeted number of reading 15 books in Q3. I ended Q3 with 17 books read. Here are the books I read in Q3:

• Around the World in Eighty Days by Jules Verne: I read this book out loud for the kids. Considering the book was written in 1874, I was surprised by the descriptions and accuracy of many of the details. 
• Winter of the World by Ken Follett: the 2nd book in the Century Trilogy. I thought it was very interesting following the 2nd generation of different families and their stories. My blood boiled when I read about the Nazis and the mistreatments of Germans and Jews. Overall, I enjoyed reading this book.
• Edge of Eternity by Ken Follett: the 3rd and final book in the Century Trilogy. This book was all about the Cold War. Since I didn’t know too much about the Cold War, I found the story quite fascinating and was shocked by how close we were to a nuclear war. I also learned more about the segregation and mistreatment of Black people in the US in the 1960s and the civil uprising during that time. It’s quite sad that the world was so divided only 60 years ago. Surprisingly, there seemed to be a lot of similarities between the 1960s and 1980s to what we are seeing today. I wish Ken Follett would give us more details of the characters from the previous book(s), though. 
• Zen Money by the Seven Dollar Millionaire: a quick and easy book to read. It’s all about the mentality of money. 
• Genius Myth by Helen Lewis: a very interesting book about what it means by “genius” and how geniuses are made. Helen debunked the idea that IQ = genius. I was surprised to learn that many of the historical “geniuses” have a dark side to their stories. 
• Make Money Easy by Lewis Howes: another book about money mentality and ways one can do to attract money. I found the book very similar to The Secret of Millionaire Mind. 

Join 2 Curling Teams – Done. A+. Jan-Mar 2 teams & spared on 1 team. Sep – Dec 3 teams & sparing on 1 team.

The 2025-2026 curling season started in September. I joined three teams – playing as the skip on a mixed team, the third on another mixed team (possibly skipping here and there), and the 5th player on the men’s team (playing as lead or second). I’m also the spare on another men’s team. I will be busy on weekday evenings!

It’s a bit funny because other curlers have been asking if I could play on Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays too. I figured I needed a break from curling so I could spend time with the family and do other things (like blogging and podcasting, for example).

Replace 2013 iMac – Not yet 

It’s looking less and less likely that we’ll replace our 2013 27” iMac. The iMac is definitely getting toward the end of its life, with some programs really out of date and no longer supported.

With the rumours of M5 MacMinis and a new Studio Display in 2026, we’ll probably replace it next year instead.

Fix Fence – Partially Done. B-

I cleaned up the fallen posts and fixed some fence panels in the summer, but it doesn’t look like I can fix the fence completely myself. 

Since our lot is higher than our neighbour’s, to properly fix the fence, we’d need to build a concrete retaining wall and then put the fence up on the retaining wall (that was probably one of the reasons why the fence fell due to not having a retaining wall). 

We received a few quotes from fence companies on replacing the entire fence around our backyard. To our shock, it would cost over $25k! We plan to put off the fix for now. 

Fun Goals 

Visit Taiwan with family – Done. A

We visited Taiwan for 3 weeks in January and had a blast!

You can find the three-part trip report here:

• Visiting Taiwan for 20 days – our itinerary & experience (Part 2) 
• Visiting Taiwan for 20 days – our itinerary & experience (Part 1) 
• Visiting Taiwan for 20 days – our itinerary & experience (Part 3)

Both kids have been asking whether we would go back to Taiwan again next year. Clearly, they had a lot of fun there. There’s no plan to visit Taiwan in the near future but plans can change quickly…

Omakase with Mrs. T – Done. A.

Mrs. T and I went for two sushi Omakase while in Taiwan and we thoroughly enjoyed the experience. 

Summer camping trip – Done. A. 

Mrs. T’s friends visited from Sweden in the summer, so we took them camping at Chilliwack Lake for two nights. It was our first time camping at Chilliwack Lake and we really liked the area. We plan to go back there in the future.

Summer- 2025 Goals and Resolutions – Q3 Update

Overall, I think it was a successful Q3. I finished a few goals and continued making progress on my annual goals. 

What should I focus on in Q4? It will likely be on saving money so we can hit the $25k LTSS/cash wedge.