The Utter Boredom of Successful Personal Finance

It’s like watching paint dry, but less exciting

It looks like we’re going to hit our next investment target this month. After that I think it will take us another couple of years to hit the next one.

Of course, these arbitrary targets that I set for us aren’t particularly important. They, like writing this blog, are just a way of keeping myself active and interested without messing with our financial plan. The plan is working fine, so the worst thing I could do is start changing it.

Once you have figured out your goals, made a plan, got spending under control, maximized your income, automated your investment process, and figured out how to keep track of your progress, there isn’t much else to do.

Our monthly contributions are now below 5% of our net worth, so they hardly change anything month to month. Soon, dividends/interest and growth of capital will be more important than the amount we save each month. I can basically ignore our finances and do other things with my time.

This is great but it is very boring for me. I want the excitement of buying things! Making decisions! Selling for a profit!

If you are interested in the process of investing and money management, but don’t want to mess with your portfolio, you can try some of the following:

  • set aside a small amount (<10%) of your portfolio to gamble with
  • write a blog or become active in discussion groups
  • read books and blogs about investing
  • set financial goals for yourself and track your progress




 You can probably tell that I am doing all of these 🙂


How about you? Is your financial plan in place? Are you bored now?

3 Responses

  1. The hardest thing for me is exchange rate risk. The stock market over time is generally pretty safe, fluctuations are relatively minor really. Interest rates etc.. go up and down, but within a certain range. Exchange rates however can rapidly change your financial situation.

    1. I guess I don’t really worry about exchange rates much. I have investments in three currencies and all of them are very long-term (I don’t really plan on needing the money for decades) so anything the exchange rates do in the short-term doesn’t bother me much.
      Also, I predict that the yen will end up weaker than it is now in the future, providing my dividends with more purchasing power 😉

  2. Same as Trevor above, the big uncertainty for me is the exchange rate. 75% of my investments are in the US (and in dollars), and this ratio is increasing.
    With a plan to get back to Japan in a few years, we will heavily rely on a strong dollar, but these things change a lot over time…