Reaching milestones on your investment journey is a means for celebration - but what personal goals can you set to ensure significant growth in your portfolio?
A RADO watch retailing at $9000 was a reward I had set myself back in year 2007 for reaching an important milestone in my portfolio.
The milestone was the pay down of all ancillary debt I had accumulated over the years that I have been investing, as well as paying down a third of my portfolio debt.
The ancillary debt? That was the $495,000 of personal debt accumulated due to investing mistakes in my early years of investing. Ironically, I had started with just $4,500, and I now had accumulated some $495,000 of credit cards, personal loans and non deductible loans. Some from courses I had paid for, some from renovation and subdivision budget overruns as I bumbled my way through different property investment strategies, and some from downright dumb speculating!
So for my goal setting at the end of 2007, I focused on some basic house keeping - no pun intended!
Apart from the $495,000 of debt, I also set an ambitious goal to pay down or manufacture equity of at least a third of the portfolio, being some multi-millions, by December 31st 2015.
As a reward to myself for achieving this goal, I selected one of the most expensive watches I knew of at that time.
Of course I smashed that goal well within the time frame.
This January I had the opportunity to travel overseas to herald the arrival of a new family member in this world. My beautiful wife reminded me of my reward and insisted on us going through the duty free shops at the international check in. Somehow I think she also had a side agenda, as she loves expensive clothes and shoes.
So we browsed through the only RADO dealer at the Sydney airport and the watch that was some $9,000 back in 2007 was now some $16,000 duty free.
As I was looking at the watches, I realised suddenly that I actually didn't want it, I just couldn't connect with it, and I had become quite used to not wearing a watch (yes, I took off my watch in 2007 and never put it back on again). It wasn't because I couldn't afford the watch - as a matter of fact I could afford any watch they had on display. But there was just no satisfaction in buying it.
As we walked on towards our gate, I started analysing what had happened, and then it hit me as an "Aha!" moment. There was no emotional connection to this reward, and deep inside me I felt it would be pretentious or a show off purchase, and not because I wanted it. It made me realise, that had I put a more emotionally charged reward in place, there was a strong potential that I may have been able to keep the motivation and focus of achieving my milestone a lot more in the forefront.
The moral of the story? Keep your goals real, and make sure you connect with it. Don't strive for numbers in your portfolio that you simply can't connect with mentally and emotionally. Keep it real.
Victor Kumar
Nearly 15 years ago Victor and his wife came to Australia from Fiji with just $4,500 in their pockets. They worked hard as radiographers but realised this was not the way to prosperity. Victor embarked on a process of building wealth through property. He has amassed a substantial property portfolio, and is still actively buying and renovating property. His recommendations are based on what works in today’s market, not what used to be effective a year or more ago.
Victor’s experience, finance background, and financial planning qualifications mean he is well equipped to negotiate with banks – helping them find ways to say “Yes”. He has also invested significant time and money in learning from other property investment experts and knows how to make a portfolio work.
Of course, Victor has made a few mistakes along the way but these have made him wiser – and he’ll let you learn from his mistakes so you don’t need to make them. His goal is to help you achieve your financial goals by sharing his extensive knowledge about financial structures and investment property.
Victor is now sought after as a keynote speaker at several property investment seminars and is acknowledged by his peers as an expert in the industry.
