hi guys i have been a lurker on babypips for well over a year now and finally i am posting.
My name is Ian and i live in Scotland, i work full time as an optometrist, am married with 2 infant daughters.
I first got interested in forex about 2 years ago and have spent a lot of time reading up about it but have done very little actual trading.
With family and work free time is limited (or more like i’m not very good managing it!!).
My goal is to find a trading style that fits my schedule (longer time frames and small numbers of trades - i’m guessing from my limited knowledge so far). I have limited time in my work to study charts and on my days off i look after the 2 kids (3 years and 10 moths old) as my wife works part-time and they require constant supervision.
My goal would be to try and develop the ability to consistently grow an account by 5% a month and once able to do this not touch the account for 5-6 years and just let it grow.
I’m aware that this be extremely difficult and a long road to tread but i’m serious about giving it a go.
Main reason for posting is today i have finally commited to spending more time demo trading rather than just reading about forex all the time(which i love doing by the way!) and will need all the help i can get.
I look forward to interacting with everyone,
regards,
Ian
Hello Ian and welcome to the community! Your situation is pretty similar to most folks who join: full time student or employee. So, I think your first goal, rather than a % gain per month is to lock down a basic trading process (research/analysis, planning, execution, trade journaling) that you think you can consistently run every week. The real work of a trader isn’t the actual trades, but everything else you do to help you make a good decision, avoid mistakes, and learn from every trade. Once you build good trading habits and a regular routine that suits your lifestyle, then you can really begin to focus on profits and losses. I hope this helps…good luck! 
Hi ljhobson,
Welcome to the forums
Hi pipcrawler, thanks for the reply and sound advice, this is gonna take a lot of work!
Hi to you also matrix!
Welcome to the forum! Familiarize yourself with the trading hours for forex. You can perhaps design a schedule around that as it is a 24hr market aside from Friday evening to Sunday evening.