My goals for 2022 and beyond
For me personally there isn’t too much to reflect upon in 2021. I moved back to London, progressed through my professional exams and managed to get away for a holiday in Budapest! It was relatively uneventful. So instead, I’m going to write down some goals for 2022. But I’m also going to reflect on my longer term goals and re-evaluate these!
My Long Term Goals (3 years)
I already have 5 year goals which I made 2 years ago to complete by the time I’m 30 (so by end of 2024), these are as follows:
- Become a qualified Actuary
- Save over 50k for a deposit
- Start vlogging weekly on YouTube
- Take a secondment abroad, hopefully USA
- Take up Boxing/Kickboxing and have my first fight
1. Become a qualified Actuary
I have passed 4/4 actuarial exams so I am on track to qualify as an Actuary! Nothing more to say on this goal. It can stay as it is! If you don’t know what an actuary you can read the link below!
Actuary job profile: https://www.prospects.ac.uk/job-profiles/actuary
2. Save over 50k for a deposit
By now it is clear to me that 50k is probably not enough for me to put down for a deposit for a house in London. In fact, let us do some quick maths, feel free to skip ahead if you despise mathematics! I’ve indented for your benefit!
A typical mortgage will be 4.5 times your salary, and adding this amount to the deposit will be the price of the house you can afford. The tricky part, in my case, is predicting what my salary will be in 3 years, this will depends on a few factors such as passing actuarial exams, career progression and even whether I’ll still be in the same job or not! Doing some background research a typical newly qualified actuarial salary is “between ยฃ40,000 and ยฃ55,000”, personally I believe it is a bit higher than this (glassdoor has the average at ยฃ57k) but I’ll leave the website link down below anyway.
Actuary job profile: https://www.prospects.ac.uk/job-profiles/actuary
Let us use both extremes. ยฃ40k * 4.5 = ยฃ180k. And so a ยฃ50k deposit will mean I can afford a ยฃ230k property. Reasonable in the North of England however for London where the average flat price sold last year was ยฃ532k (see link below) that is pretty unreasonable. Taking the upper limit ยฃ55k * 4.5 = ยฃ247.5k, adding ยฃ50k for a deposit would be ยฃ297.5k. Still well under the average flat price, let alone the average house price of ยฃ669k. Of course these are just averages and there is always a possibility of house prices coming down (lol who am I kidding?!), or a chance my salary will be higher than ยฃ55k (Show me the moneyyy).
Rightmove average flat/house prices: https://www.rightmove.co.uk/house-prices-in-London.html
Anyway what I’m suggesting to myself is to be more ambitious with my goal. Instead of saving 50k, lets change it to 75k! A tall order but I’m up for the challenge!
3. Start vlogging weekly on YouTube
So I actually have two channel ideas. One for Kabaddi, if you don’t know what that is then I have a handy website (which I haven’t updated in years).
My Kabaddi website: https://www.spkabaddi.com/what-is-international-kabaddi/
And the second channel will be like a vlog channel. In fact I already have a vlog about my trip to Nepal, you can watch that on YouTube now:
My Nepal vlog: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nODl9Yut2l4
I also have a gaming channel but we’ll gloss over that for now! Anyway, I haven’t made any progress, partly because I’ve been lazy but also partly because I am let down by my hardware. I started recording videos for my Kabaddi channel however I was getting frame rate and laggy video so I’m upgrading my laptop to a PC, hopefully early next year.
4. Take a secondment abroad
I do wish to work abroad for a period of time whether that be in a new job entirely, part of a secondment or by volunteering, I do not mind. However ideally it will be a secondment type situation whereby my company liaises with an office abroad to arrange a swap, or something similar, for a period of 6-12 months. Now unfortunately my company is very much UK based, although they do have an Australian branch too, I wonder if they have an actuarial team. (Action for myself: Find out!). However my parent company AJG is USA based… could there be opportunities? I hope so.
In fact I need to do a better job of finding out. I should have sub goals here, which would be to network with colleagues across my parent company. Opportunities don’t just fall into your lap, rarely they do, but you have to create opportunities too!
5. Take up Boxing/Kickboxing and have my first fight
I’m really struggling with this goal because I’m very conscious about receiving short term and longer term head injuries. There have been several reports recently about long term head injuries in sports such as American football, Football, Rugby and, of course, Boxing. Nonetheless when I was doing Muay Thai it was the fittest I’ve ever been, so perhaps I should cross the head injury bridge when I’m good enough to start sparring/fighting.
As of 3 months ago I’ve started attending the gym regularly again, getting into good shape and maintaining a decent diet. I have the unusual problem of finding it difficult to gain weight! I think I will target a weight of 65kg again as that has worked well for me in the past! See: My ten greatest achievements so far
I may start up muay thai or boxing later in the year but I have other plans first, more on this later…
Okay so my new longer term goals (next 3 years) are now this (basically the same):
- Become a qualified Actuary
- Save over 75k for a deposit
- Start vlogging weekly on YouTube
- Take a secondment abroad, hopefully USA
- Take up Boxing/Kickboxing and have my first fight
Time for my 2022 goals!
1. Pass 4/4 Actuarial exams
Okay this is self explanatory. I’m still debating whether to do 3 or 4 exams this year but let us now commit to doing 4. I’m the type of person that won’t be satisfied with only passing 3 out of 4. So I’m targeting a clean sweep. There are 13 exams in total by the way, I’ve passed 4, so I have 9 left. If all goes to plan I’ll only have 5 left in a years’ time!
2. Get promoted
Another career goal and this time its not exam focused. I think this year should be the one where I target a promotion to a senior position. And I believe I’m on my way to doing this! Not much more to add on this, I wonder if my colleagues will read this, probably!
3. Learn to Swim
Something a little more fun. I can’t swim. So I’m going to learn to swim which will be my first sport of 2022 aside from going to the gym. I believe there are a few places in London which do adult swim classes so I’m going to join them and have some fun. Ideally I’ll be able to jump in the deep end and not panic like a fool!
4. Hit 65kg in weight again
I’m hovering around 58kg at the moment. As mentioned above, I’m going to target 65kg, which I should be able to pull off in a few months. But with a clean(ish) diet only. After that we’ll see, if I do take up a martial art then that weight will drop as it can get quite intense. So the goal here is to reach 65kg but not necessarily maintain it!
5. Visit Scotland
Twice I’ve planned a trip to Scotland and twice I’ve had to cancel due to covid restrictions. So I’m going to be more flexible and just go for it when I get a chance! Will attempt a cheeky Ben Nevis climb as well so I won’t be able to go until late April I’m guessing, maybe even May. But I’ll definitely visit Scotland this year!
6. Cross 3 more countries out on my scratch map
Aside from Scotland I would like to visit another country. Be it a solo trip or with friends, I don’t mind! I have the travel bug again (not covid ffs). Although, now I’m thinking about it, 1 new country seems too low. So lets aim for 3 new countries! Is that too ambitious? Scotland doesn’t count btw!
7. Hit 1000 subscribers on YouTube
One of my long terms goals is to vlog so why not make a YouTube goal. I think I will say it needs to be 1000 on one of my channels and not both added together because that would be slightly easier. Plus I might prefer uploading to one channel over another. For reference one has 17 and the other has 1 so I have a long way to go!
8. Read 10 more books
Classic cliche goal of reading more books but I have a book list and I want to get through them so I should allocate more time and resources into doing so. Maybe I read during my lunch break at work because reading before bedtime doesn’t really work for me.
Others…
Honestly the list is pretty endless. I love learning new stuff. Things I haven’t really mentioned include topics such as fashion, photography, coding, investing and languages. All topics on my radar, whether that be learning new skills or further development on existing skills. I haven’t touched upon relationships either! Anyway this post is starting to get a bit too long, I’ll have to blog a bit more next year that is for sure. Happy holidays and stay safe!
