By: Revanche

2019: Our year in review

January 1, 2020

2019 highlights in Life

• We solved puzzles, created crafts, wrote cards to friends and family, and read a TON of books.
• We traveled to Hawaii, San Diego, and Lake Tahoe. Not all the trips went smoothly (Hawaii was an epic UGH due to one terrible person) but on the whole we had good times with everyone else.
• Weird health thing: me. I am the weird health thing. Oh wait, for this year. I’ve developed some strange kind of allergy situation where I randomly sprout really itchy rashes for no apparent reason. That’s at least as much fun as you can imagine. Allergy testing, here we come.
• Weird pride thing: I’m happy that I spent only 1/10th of the time that PiC did on hair trims and removal.
• I am grateful for my improving ability to physically exist in this world in this year, and the friends who gently encouraged me to keep at it, supplying sugar free recipes and cooking inspiration. Battling chronic health issues is exhausting and it’s easy to give up even before having to create a new diet with no guidelines. December was especially hard physically, and maybe extra hard because I had several months of lighter pain prior, because I was hit with a triple whammy: overextending myself, catching JB’s cold, menstruating which always makes my pain and fatigue at least 3 times worse. Then add to that the holiday stressors of having to plan and host a holiday party, buy, wrap and pack over a dozen gifts, order and mail 80 holiday cards and packages of some kind for loved ones and I was ready to dig a hole and pull it in after me! But at least half the year was more about better than worse.
• I am grateful for a true partner who continues to learn to improve himself because he and I are totally imperfect people with room to grow and I both appreciate his efforts and find them encouraging for me to keep improving myself as well.
• I am grateful for the professional skills that mean I can still earn a decent amount of money within my physical limitations.
• I am grateful for my child growing up healthy and reasonably independently so far.
• I am grateful for the technology that lets us stay in touch both asynchronously and in real time with our loved ones across thousands of miles and time zones: Twitter, Skype, messaging apps, Marco Polo, air travel that brings us together every so often.

2019 highlights in Money

• I reorganized our banking in March so the accounts would make more sense, and later realized that setting aside all large expenses (property taxes, insurance, other large expenses) in a single account wasn’t working so we stopped doing that too. Instead we only set aside money for property taxes and cashflow the rest of our bigger expenses.
• We stopped contributing to JB’s 529 since it has a healthy amount. Now I’m fully focused on retirement income investing. I still feel like I’m running way way behind in a race to the finish line but my anxiety about it isn’t always high. Sometimes it’s only medium.
• Out of uncertainty comes a bit of good. In January, we both got raises but the outlook was murky. PiC’s company had undergone several layoffs. He still had a job after several restructures but he was uncomfortable and unhappy. I still had a job but I was definitely unhappy and concerned – the political climate has hit many of our clients hard and a recession loomed. I’m paid well but that could also be the reason they chose to get rid of me to cut expenses. I’m still scrambling to make up for 7 years of not contributing a penny to retirement and oh, 20 years of money being drained away by Dad.
  I was a swirl of anxiety. To combat that panicky feeling, I decided to aim to squirrel away our highest amount of annual savings ever in case we both took a serious hit any time through or after this year that meant we couldn’t save. I figured we could both could at least hold on for 2019 and then I’d feel less freaked out about whatever negative stuff comes down the pipeline. We scrimped, saved, and controlled our spending aggressively all year, took a lot of hits, made as many contributions on faith that we would make it work, and it did come together in the end.
• We did a much better job giving more time and money this year.

2020 Life outlook

• We are anticipating a number of life changes in the lives of people nearest and dearest to us: a marriage, a divorce, the health of at least three elderly relatives. We are making some travel commitments to support our family through at least the hardest of those life changes and we really need to find a great dogsitter for our pups. That’s one major source of anxiety for me as Seamus’s needs multiply like bunnies. I can’t go tend to other people if our aging pup isn’t well cared for!
• I wish for: Better health.
• I wish for: Internal peace from the anxiety that’s developed over the years.
• I wish for: A lot of good years with my family.
• I wish for: As many good years at this job as I need or want: I have a lot of autonomy, the set up is as ideal as it can be to preserve my energy and let me be present for my family, and pay the bills.

2020 Money outlook

• My job should be stable for another year if nothing big changes like a recession or changes in geopolitics. Those can and will change our stability dramatically so I remain very cautious.
• PiC’s job is still in the same unknown status of “he’s got a job right now that he doesn’t much enjoy but it’s paying the bills and we have no idea if he’s safe from another round of layoffs!” Yay!
• We have at least two necessary major maintenance projects this year though we haven’t nailed down exactly which lucky two yet and I’m guessing we need to set aside $10,000 (???) for them. We need to do our brace and bolt (our preferred contractor will match the price of the EBB contractors after subsidy if we add it to the other project) and deal with some drainage issues. We also have a massive landscaping problem to tackle that may be contributing to our drainage problems. We have multiple home projects on the list after that but I’m not willing to commit to more than two in the year, yet.
• Minor home maintenance: we still have to fix our showerhead, figure out the leak in the washer and why the dryer won’t stop on its own anymore, and murder all the mold that keeps trying to grow.
• Knowing we are committed to spending on some major home maintenance this year, it’s more realistic to aim for saving and investing 80% of what we managed this year.
• Financial stability: We currently have 10 years of expenses invested but we are also holding 5 years’ worth of expenses in mortgages, so it doesn’t feel like we’ve got all that much financial freedom under our belts. Pondering: Does that X times your annual expenses take into account the lifespan of your debts? I guess it doesn’t need to, this X years of expenses is just that – income enough for 10 years and then we’d better have another 10 years of money after that, and so on.

Goals for 2020

Life: Add, one at a time, two new activities for JB. We meant to start one of them this year but I just couldn’t hack it. The other one was a back of mind thing that PiC is interested in getting zir into. It’s 45 minutes a session, we’re not going bonkers here, so it shouldn’t be as insurmountable as it FEELS to be adding two more commitments to our week but it sure does feel like a lot.

Life: Start hosting one Friday movie or potluck night a month with locals. I worked hard at hosting in 2019 and we did see a lot of friends but I think I’d like to make it a regular recurring thing so that I get comfortable with it. I’d also like to see my friends who are not hyper-local but are within a 2 hour drive. That’s harder to swing.

Money: I’m working on some ideas for charitable giving that I’m excited to share. Nothing big but definitely meaningful.

It feels like I should have some big career or money making goal this year but I just don’t. I didn’t in 2019, either. I don’t know why I remain wound so tight with worry but I am. It’s more important for me to let go and relax than to find some new star to aim at in 2020. Perhaps the bigger goal is to embrace a mindset where I can both aim to achieve and trust that we will get to where we’re going.

Decade Summary

It’s been the most eventful decade of my life! It’s the first full decade in which I was fully an adult throughout – able to make all my own decisions, mistakes, and even take some risks. I’m proud that I did take some risks. Having the freedom to do so doesn’t mean one is willing to take them, nor the guts or resolve, but together PiC and I chose to take some risks together and they’ve been really good for us as a family and for each of us individually.

Together, we got married, we buried more than our fair share of loved ones, we built our own small family, we learned to set boundaries for our little family (still learning!), and we’ve embraced chosen family and friends wholeheartedly. We navigated tough situations at work and I learned to stop letting professional toxic messes seep into our marriage (I was terrible at this between 2008-2011).

I won’t speak to PiC’s or JB’s highlights here because that’s their decision to make but individually for me:

At my FT job, I professionally advocated for myself year in and year out, and for my team. I’m proud of what I’ve built in my career thus far. I pushed myself to learn bits and pieces of creative endeavors shared here on the blog and that was satisfying in a whole other way. It feels weird to say I’m proud to be a mother because so much of that wasn’t in my control, but I am glad we ventured into parenthood together. It’s a super tough job and I will have no idea if we “succeeded” for many years yet, but we’re doing our best. I’ve spent half the decade being a remote landlady and that’s been a learning experience as well. I haven’t decided if I should sell, double down and buy another property, or just stick with the one. I’ve also read so many books and feel like I’m still at the teething stage of figuring out my own writing chops. There are stories I don’t want to die with me, and I’d like to get them out when I’m ready.

The decade has been a bit of a bell curve, especially at the end here where I feel like I didn’t actually accomplish anything of note in 2019 but I did hold steady with everything and that’s not nothing.

:: Thanks for reading! What are your expectations for 2020? What would you like to bring into your lives with the new year and the new decade? What were your favorite moments of 2019?

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