Goodbye 2021, hello 2022! As I look back on the past year and contemplated the theme of 2021, I realized that The Year of Waiting was the most fitting. I started 2021 with excitement as I do every year, anticipating the year that would come with every ounce of optimism. Unfortunately most of the waiting ended up in disappointment, but that’s just life sometimes.

A Diminishing Excitement

At the start of 2021, I was most excited to get the newly approved COVID-19 vaccine in hopes that the world can finally return to pre-pandemic era and that I can finally go on my dream vacation to Europe.

I have never been to Europe and have regretted not going since 2017 when I received an invite to go but decided to go straight home after graduating from pharmacy school to start studying for my board exam instead.

In 2019, my friend and I decided we would go in 2020. Well, because of Covid, that plan was scratched. This year, when we both received full vaccinations, we were inches away from booking a Mediterranean cruise for fall of 2021. I even made an itinerary already of the places we wanted to visit!

That’s when news of the Delta variant emerged. And now with the Omicron variant also emerging and who knows what other of variants will emerge in the future, it seems like the wait may never be over.

At this time, the risk isn’t worth it, especially with cruises being an especially risky place to be quarantined in. Plus, I didn’t want my first time in Europe to be tainted with Covid restrictions.

You know what else started off as exciting for me in the beginning of 2022? At the end of 2020, I finally felt financially secure enough to purchase a home and was just waiting for the right home to snap up.

I can’t believe how naive I was. As we all know, the home buying process has been crazy this year for everyone! Luckily, I discovered a new construction community that is very close to where I currently live. It’s a win-win because I like my area and I would remain very close to my family. So needless to say, I was excited!

Well, the excitement didn’t last long as it was soon replaced by tremendous anxiety and overwhelm. I was being pushed left and right, with opinions thrown at me from every direction on what home I should get, what price point I should go for, and what my living arrangement would look like. I was left questioning whether this was what I truly wanted.

I knew I had to plump up my down payment savings as I ended up going with a home that was above the price point I had initially planned on spending for my first home.

So I worked hard at work especially after one of the managers mentioned that she was just waiting for the budget to open up so she could offer me a new position in the niche field I was initially just helping her with as my side project.

That, and the fact that I was now losing one weekend day every week to running with my running buddy/group left me with barely any me-time which increased the overwhelm I was feeling.

It was probably one of the worst beginnings to a new year I’ve ever felt.

When Things Got Better

Fortunately, things did get better after that first month. I’m proud to say that I advocated for myself and was flexed off some minor projects to better focus on my main tasks at work.

After many tears, thoughts, and sleepless nights, I also finally decided on a home and was able to reserve one of the new construction homes set to be finished in Winter of 2021. For the rest of the year, it was simply just going to be a waiting game.

As I was financially planning for home ownership, I also decided to check my FIRE number. I’ve known the concept of FIRE for a couple years now, but have always thought of it as such a far-away goal that I refused to disappoint myself in doing any calculations.

I finally caved and decided to use this calculator to enter my best estimates. My FIRE number turned out to be $625,000 based on a $25k annual spending. What surprised me the most was the prediction that I could FIRE in 5 years!

This calculation seems too unrealistic now as these predictions were made with my 2018-2020 average spending of $24,396 and things can and likely will change drastically with home ownership. But the possibility of being able to stop working in less than a decade certainly made my day.

With my mental health in such a better place this time of the year, I even saw this improvement reflected in my physical state. I found the motivation to restart the Couch to 5K program. I then followed it up by finishing the program and even going as far as running 5 miles non-stop.

Recalculation

While the first half of 2021 ended in a better note than it started with, I was hit with the first of many disappointments at the start of the second half of 2021. The first came in the form of a very disappointing mid-year net worth check in.

I explained in greater detail on this post why there’s the random spike and my thoughts on a very sad $10k net worth increase in a 6-month span of time. This is the main gist of it:

A couple things happened. One, with me moving money between my bank accounts in order to get ready for my home purchase, things got glitchy on Personal Capital hence that crazy (wishful) spike in January.

Two, for the longest time, I stupidly didn’t realize that Personal Capital would allow me to input manual entries. Since my personal loan to my parents is just between us and not under any institution, I thought there’d be no way to account for it on Personal Capital.

While playing around with Personal Capital, I realized I could just add a manual entry with the loan amount into the liability category. This ended up reducing my net worth and dropped me down to barely $100k net worth by the end of January.

Shout out to Bee who made this comment and inspired me to recalculate. I do hope you’re still following my blog today. On that note, I also want to thank everyone who follows and/or has ever commented on this blog, especially an extra big shout out to Afro Penny who has taken the time to comment on almost all my posts 🧡.

After some recalculation, I should have ended 2020 with $26,750 less in net worth than what was reported in Personal Capital. This would actually put my net worth at $100,413 at the end of 2020. Wow, cutting it really close to not even hitting $100k net worth in 2020.

This means that I actually had a $37,514 increase in net worth during the mid-year check in for 2021. To meet my goal of $100k net worth increase, I should be at $50k at mid-year so I’m still about ~$12,500 short, but re-calculating definitely made me feel a lot better so thank you Bee for the suggestion.

Note: I don’t plan on using this new re-calculated number for anything else other than this. While it would be nice to have a greater accuracy, my previous couple of years of tracking have been based off this inaccuracy so I think it’s better to leave those alone and have only this year be a little messed up.

Disappointments Continue

After getting a shock out of my mid-year net worth, I was determined to play catch up on my investment contributions which I had been holding off in an effort to beef up my down payment savings.

While I knew buying a home would come with extra costs, I didn’t realize I would already be hit with opportunity costs even before I closed on the home. While my money was stuck in a savings account yielding less than 1%, the S&P 500 was up by roughly 15% at this point.

What really got me angry though was when I finally inquired on a closing date, I was told that rather than Winter of 2021, I had been mis-informed and that Spring of 2022 was the expected closing date for homes built in my phase. This means that I had delayed my retirement contributions this year in vain!

Things at work were also not going as great as I hoped. My direct manager who I had a great relationship with quit the company. My new manager was someone who I had worked with but had our share of differences in the past.

Plus the manager that I was working closely with on the project hasn’t mentioned anything about the new position anymore although she keeps emphasizing that she says great things about me to my manager and the VP who is both her and my manager’s boss.

Now that it’s almost time for me to go back to my actual role in 2022, I fear that this new position is just a hopeless dream at this point.

Travel

While unfortunately traveling abroad didn’t happen yet again this year, I was able to travel quite a bit domestically this year.

I’ve already travelled extensively throughout the United States. I’ve even gone on a cross-country road trip before so there aren’t many states I haven’t been to which is why at first I wasn’t too excited at the prospect of yet another year of domestic travel.

But, I think upon realizing that I wouldn’t be traveling abroad this year, I went YOLO and decided that I would hit up the states I still haven’t been to so in the future I can solely focus on traveling out of the country.

In August, I joined my friend on a last minute trip to San Francisco followed by a road trip down the Pacific Coast Highway as a last hooray before he was set to go back to his home country permanently. I’ve actually been to San Francisco before so I was hesitant to go again. But boy was I glad! Our mutual friend who lives there gave the best one day tour of San Francisco (we visited 14 places in one day)!

In September, I went to Washington state and explored 3 national parks and went on the longest and prettiest hike I’ve ever gone on in my life!

In October, I went on to Colorado where I’ve never been before and got to not only enjoy the fall foliage but also catch up with my long-distance friend who I haven’t seen in 4 years.

Spending

Total 2021 Spending: $15,955

Alright, time for the numbers! My spending this year was at an all-time low of $15,955. This of course is because I wasn’t paying rent or loan to my parents of $1,000/month that I have been paying in previous years.

To make it comparable to previous years, if adding $11,000 ($1,000 per month x 11 months since I stopped payments in February), my 2021 spending would have been $26,955. This is actually very comparable to what I was spending in 2019. It is ~$3,500 higher than 2020 but 2020 was such an anomaly. COVID-19 lockdown was very strict and I was basically just home the entire year. 

It’s quite a surprise as I really thought there were many months where I was over-budget this year. So I am excited to see that lifestyle inflation hasn’t creeped in too much.

Debt Review

Honestly, I debated even making a review of my debt payments for this year. This used to be my favorite part of my year-end review. But now that I’m only making minimum payments to my private loans and not making payments at all to my federal loan, there is really nothing interesting going on.

My minimum payment is $880.77 every month. With my 5 year loan term that I started in 2020, I have 3 more years left.

Total 2021 student loan payments made: $10,569

Total 2021 interest paid: $827.11

Remaining balance: $36,618.59

In 2021, I finally passed the 75% mark on my payoff progress. I now have less than 1/4 of the journey to go! Here’s a snapshot of my payoff progress taken from my debt progress page.

Net Worth

I made 4 goals at the end of 2020 and spoiler alert: I knew I was on my way to failing 3 of those goals months before the end of the year. My only hope of reaching just one of those goals was if I accomplished goal #1 which was to hit $200k net worth.

Needless to say, December was a nerve-racking month.

I found myself checking my Personal Capital account multiple times a day, waiting for the numbers to hit that magical $200k. I’m happy to announce that I made it to $200k in the nick of time! Thankfully, the market made a recovery at the end of the year after taking a dip in November.

While I felt excited for a moment, the excitement came from realizing that I wouldn’t be disappointed yet again at the end of this year.

Waiting to hit this number made me realize that the anticipation of what I thought I’d feel wasn’t as great as what I actually felt. I guess it’s true; it’s about the journey, not the destination. 

December 2021 Net Worth: $201,413

Year-to-Date Change: +$73,841

What I found most regrettable about this year was not being able to aggressively play the market to my advantage during yet another bull run until the last half of the year. 

Yet, when using the re-calculated net worth of $100,413 at the end of 2020, I actually gained $101,000 this year which makes it very comparable to my +$104,562 gain in 2020.

Investment

I was curious how much money I made from investments versus what I had actually put in. They say that after the first $100k, money really starts working for you. I wanted to put this saying to the test.

After I left my old job, I decided to keep my old 401k separate from my new 401k. Well, that account started with a balance of $71,955. One year later it is now $88,609. I did absolutely nothing to this account except for a one-time $33 contribution that was automatically made before I could stop it.

By doing nothing but parking my investment, this account gained $16,629. That’s $16,629 I gained by doing nothing! Did I repeat that enough times? I’m still mind-blown by this discovery.

Compare that to my current 401k which I started investing late. Although I maxed my contribution of $19,500 with a company match of $3,586 for a total of $23,086, my balance at the end of the year stood at $25,140.

I only gained +$2,054. That’s an 8.9% return compared to my 23% return on my old 401k.

It just goes to show that front-loading especially in a bull market can make a huge difference. I could have easily doubled my new 401k return this year had I chosen to front load rather than wait mid-year to start aggressively contributing.

But let’s forget the regrets now and move on to the positives. Across all my investment accounts (401k, Roth IRA, brokerage account, HSA, company stock) I gained $29,942!

That’s ~$30k of me doing absolutely nothing but parking my money!

Now, what makes this number even more significant is that my spending of $26,955 in 2021 could have theoretically been covered with my gains alone this year!

Coast FI

All this talk about being able to cover my yearly expense with just my gains reminded me of a little something called FIRE. While I am still years away from the traditional FIRE (25x annual spending), I suddenly found myself in the sandy territory of Coast FI.

Coast FI is the idea that by saving aggressively in your 20s and/or 30s, you can simply “coast” to a traditional retirement without adding any more money to your investment accounts. Simply put, if you are Coast FI, you have enough money saved up in investments that even if you don’t put in another cent to your retirement accounts, you’re set to retire at the traditional retirement age.

Currently, the traditional retirement age is set at 67 years old. So, what else did you expect me to do? Of course I went online to search for a Coast FI calculator to plug in my numbers.

Using this calculator, otherwise known as the first link in my “Coast FI calculator” google search, I plugged in my numbers. Although my spending for the past 4 years have never reached $30k, I figured it would be better to overestimate my future spending.

With that, I plugged the assumptions listed below. Imagine my surprise when the green box appeared saying I’m already Coast FI! This pleasant surprise made me giddy for a moment.

Then I realized that while this is awesome, Coast FI really is not my goal. I just cannot stand the thought of working till 67 even if it means I can spend the entirety of my salary every year until then.

It’s simply not the same as quitting. Especially since I’m really not motivated by spending money or buying material goods. I’m interested in buying my time back.

Nevertheless, this unexpected surprise really gave me a much needed boost as I make my way through the dreaded boring middle of the FIRE journey.

I’m no longer chasing my first $100k, but I’m also nowhere close to retiring yet. So I’m in the dreaded no man’s land where I just have to keep grinding for that FIRE number.

2021 Goals Review

Alright, I’ve already spoiled this part but I can’t just ignore it. In 2021 I made 4 goals. Here’s how I did on them.

1. Hit $200k net worth: They say the first $100k is the hardest so I am hoping that the next $100k will come sooner than the 3.5 years it took me to get from negative net worth to $100k. 

Woot! The only one of my four goals I actually succeeded. I finished 2021 with $201,413.

2. Buy a home: My second goal should be of no surprise. It is a repeat of last year’s failed goal of buying a home.

Why does it feel like déjà vu? Yet again, I failed this goal. With the delay in the closing of my home till at least Spring of 2022, I’m still waiting to fulfill this goal since 2018.

3. Pay off federal loans and bring down student loan debt to under $30k: I had planned on paying off my remaining $4,300 federal loans that did not get refinanced to private loans this year. But since it is currently under COVID-19 forbearance I delayed making any payments.

I was deeply unsatisfied with only making minimum payments to my student loans in 2020 and don’t want that to become the norm so in 2021 I plan to go back to making extra payments.

The COVID-19 forbearance continues! So, I’m holding on to my 0% federal loan for the time being. As for making extra payments to my private loan? Also didn’t happen.

In fact, I actually forgot about the second part to this goal. It just didn’t make sense to me to be aggressive with my very low interest of 2.2%, especially when market returns and my mortgage interest rate will likely be higher.

I finished 2021 with a student loan balance of $36,618.59.

4. Travel internationally: I went on my first international trip in 2019 and had a blast! I’m really hoping that I’ll have an opportunity in 2021 to go abroad again. 

Yay to another failure! This time, it wasn’t for lack of trying though so I won’t blame myself for this.

2022 Goals

Alright, let’s give these goals another try, shall we? For 2022, I will keep almost all my failed goals the same and hope for a new net worth high. These are my 4 goals of 2022:

1. Hit $300k net worth: Knowing how hard it was to reach my $200k goal this year, let’s just say I’ve been humbled, big time. They say that net worth skyrockets after the first $100k but for me it’s stayed linear with the same ~$100k gain in 2020 and 2021.

Will I be able to keep up my $100k net worth gain next year? What can I say? I like my round numbers 😉

On one hand, I’m anticipating greater spending especially in my first year of home ownership. I know that home ownership is going to increase my cost of living significantly from living at home.

But I do think that $200k will be able to work harder for me than $100k so I’m hoping if the market stays in this bull run, I’ll be able to reap a greater passive return.

I gained ~$18k in 2020 and ~$29k in 2021 from market returns, can I hope for a ~$40k return in 2022? A girl can always dream.

My plan is to hopefully still be able to max my 401k, Roth IRA, and HSA this year. Hopefully I’ll be able to continue contributing into my brokerage account as I did in 2021 but realistically it may not happen.

2. Buy a home: I don’t think I even need any further explanation of this goal. The most disappointing aspect of this year was waiting for my house to close and realizing that it wasn’t going to happen until 2022. As I mentioned, home ownership has been a 3 year dream in the making. Now, it has turned into 4 years.

If this goal doesn’t come true by the end of 2022, then something has gone awfully wrong.

3. Learn and practice day/swing trading: Earlier this year I got seriously into day trading after my coworkers and I had a chat about it. I ate up every free courses and online videos to learn about trends and patterns. I even started doing simulated trading on the thinkorswim platform offered by TD Ameritrade to gauge whether I was making the correct analysis.

While I’m obviously motivated by the money that can be made, analyzing charts and trends are really up my alley in terms of my interest.

I don’t have any delusions of grandeur that I’m going to become a millionaire overnight by doing this, but I would love to do this as a side hustle.

It’ll be hard to gauge the “success” of this goal, but I’d like to have it here on the occasion that I forget my goals for 2022 and look back at this post so I will see this.

4. Travel internationally: This really isn’t a goal. Goals are supposed to be challenging. This is more of a want. I’m really itching to travel abroad, hopefully it will happen in 2022!

That’s the end of my long review of 2021. Cheers to 2022!