Goodbye 2023, hello 2024! As I started writing this post, I struggled to find a defining theme for this year. It truly felt like a big extension of my 2022.

I continued with travel revenge and overall just enjoyed my 30’s not being completely broke like I was in my 20’s. If I’m being kind to myself, I would mark this year a success with the accomplishment of fully paying off my student loans. More realistically though, I really have to back down on the overspending. 

Without further ado, these are some highlights of 2023.

Work

After fighting for a raise for almost half of 2022 as I did not receive one when I switched to my new position, I was finally able to receive a 10% increase to my base pay in early 2023. Along with that, I received two bonuses this year: one is the expected annual bonus and the other was a surprise bonus for my last paycheck of the year.

The imposter syndrome is real. I don’t know that I was deserving of that last award bonus especially since I was pretty burnt out towards the end of 2023 and there were days when I literally was putting the bare minimum to just show up.

I’m definitely blessed with an amazing boss that will fight for me which is great and really makes a huge difference! It’s truly a two way street as I’m willing to also go the extra mile for her as I know she will do the same for her team.

She is honestly 60% of the reason I am staying at my current job. The other 40% of course is the WFH. I made it past the 3 year mark this year which is the longest I’ve stayed at any job since I first started working at 18!

Overspending

As much as I’d love to only highlight the best parts of 2023, I have to discuss the elephant in the room. As evident by my monthly budgets, I overspent by a lot this year.

It started with two expenses in January that I simply do not regret: getting LASIK and booking my cruise trip.

While February through June went fairly well, the last half of 2023 was just downhill. It was marked by more travel expenses then finally holiday and Black Friday shopping.

However, the biggest surprise spending this year had to be my property taxes. I paid $13,593 in property taxes this year! Granted, some of it came from only paying $1,286 last year since it was a new construction property and the right amount hadn’t been assessed yet hence I was hit with quite a few supplemental bills this year!

Add on my mortgage, HOA, home insurance, and home improvement spending, my homeowner expenses this year came out to a couple dollars shy of $50,000!

To put this into perspective, just two years ago, my total spending was half that!

It really makes me question whether it’s worth it to own my current place. I know my neighbor was able to get a huge profit by selling hers just 2 years after buying, which really tempts me to do the same. I’ve been toying with the idea of relocating to a less expensive area since I work at home anyways.

Student Debt Review

Now back to the good news! This year, a series of events found me finally pulling the trigger and paying off my student loans! First, with the ending of 0% interest rate on my federal student loans, I had to make a decision whether to pay it off or start paying interest on it. I had refinanced most of my federal loans, but I had around $4,000 balance with a fairly low 3.4% interest. 

Since the start of COVID, I had plans on paying it off and held off only because of the 0% interest rate. I decided to no longer delay and paid it off in August, just one day before interest would start to accrue!

Then, just a few days before the end of the year I decided I had to take advantage of First Republic’s generous offer of getting a rebate back on my interest paid up to 2% of my original loan amount on my student loan refinance if I pay it off within 4 years. This would only be a year earlier than my loan term of 5 years.

I did not want to wait any longer as I was one month away from hitting month 48. Plus, with First Republic having been acquired by Chase, I wanted to do this as soon as possible as they had already started transferring my mortgage over and I didn’t know how long they would keep my student loan account with them.

Lastly, I just wanted to start 2024 with a clean slate! It feels so good to know that I am forever free of paying $880.77 every month!

It’s been a crazy 6.5 year journey and to be honest not quite the journey I had planned for. I had initially planned to aggressively pay off my debt as soon as possible. I was on track by year 3 but ended with a change of mind. I realized how important it was to also start investing. 

After I refinanced and obtained a low 2.2% interest rate, I realized the 10% that the stock market has historically returned annually would benefit my financial future better in my pursuit for financial independence.

I don’t regret that choice, but boy am I glad to finally get rid of my student loans! I sincerely thank all the readers and bloggers who have supported me in this journey. And while I know she is no longer blogging (and let’s be honest, probably doesn’t even read my blog), I have to give a special thanks to Double Debt Single Woman whose blog inspired me to document my own student loan payoff journey.

It’s bittersweet (heck, who am I kidding, it’s just sweet!), but this will be the last of my Student Debt Reviews.

Total 2023 student loan payments made: $26,065

Total 2023 interest paid: $404.97

Remaining balance: $0

This will also be the last of my debt progress page update as I’ve finally made it to 100% payoff! 🥳

Travel

I went on two international trips this year, including my first cruise which included visits to 3 countries! Domestically, I also went on numerous road trips this year.

I am literally having FOMO after hearing about The Ultimate World Cruise going on this year as I reminisce about all my port stops last year.

If there’s a takeaway I learned from the trips I took this year, it’s that I need to allocate more time to each of these destinations or take a second (and maybe third or fourth!) visit. Italy and South Korea felt like a blur where I was hitting the main “must-do” sites, but didn’t get to truly enjoy the slower side of the travel.

In South Korea, especially, I would have loved to spend more time walking around the neighborhood and going into these cafes that just look so aesthetically pleasing.

Investment

I contributed $51,551 in 2023 across all my investment accounts (401k, Roth IRA, HSA, and brokerage) which was sadly ~$12k less than I was able to contribute last year. But here’s the shocker, I gained $62,258 from the market increase as the S&P 500 ended with a 24% gain this year. 

That’s more than the average nationwide salary according to Forbes! It’s like I’m scamming another person by taking their full salary except it’s not a scam! It’s just the power of compound interest 🤯.

Adding in employer match and subtracting fees, my investment increased by $124,587 this year, which I only contributed 41% of! That’s just crazy to me. 

Net Worth

December 2023 Net Worth: $394,978

Year-to-Date Change: +$145,599

My net worth increased by $145,599 in 2023 which again is just so crazy to me! I was able to hit $300k in April which I was so happy to see considering that was my failed 2022 goal. Most of this is thanks to the huge market gain rebound this year!

In fact, it was such a huge rebound that I was this close to closing the year with $400k! I can’t imagine hitting both $300k and $400k in the same year.

The only thing dampening my joyous mood is how I’m unable to see much of the data in my Empower (previously Personal Capital) net worth chart. Thanks to First Republic transferring my mortgage account to Chase there was a delay in the system registering the Chase account hence the huge spike.

I even tried contacting Empower to see if there’s any way that I can update the date to coincide with each other and even attaching the screenshot showing how the huge spike diminishes all the other data points for the year, but alas they said there was currently no way of updating transaction dates so I’m stuck with it.

In 2021, I went into detail how I had messed up my net worth calculation in the past. It has been corrected since last year, but since then I have the (corrected) designation in my net worth tracker.

2023 Goals Review

Time to review how I did with the three goals I made last year:

1. Hit $400k net worth. Can I be crazy? I know I didn’t hit my 2022 goal of $300k but can I still hope to hit $400k in 2023? That would be on par with a $100k net worth increase per year that I had been hoping to continue the trend on since hitting $200k.

It’s an audacious goal that relies on a huge market recovery in 2023 that I am hoping will happen as the world continues to open back up. Realistically, I will be more than happy to finally hit $300k net worth.

I completely forgot I made the crazy goal of hitting $400k! It must have been the new year optimism. I’ll give this a half pass. I came really close to $400k and I definitely was more than happy to hit $300k.

2. Be prepared to purchase a second home. Again, crazy goal as I had just spent the last 4 years buying my first home and now I am already thinking of the next one? But I have been heavily influenced by my mom’s success in renting out her property and my dream is have one property that I can rent out that will be able to pay the mortgages on two homes.

I have my eyes set on a new construction community a little bit north of where I live but as I am now 99% confirmed to be able to continue work from home, my dream is to purchase a more affordable home and rent my current one to cover both mortgages.

This was an obvious fail. There’s no way I’m close to being ready to purchase another home. I did keep my eye out on the new construction community up north and I can say the price point is completely out of reach! It’s now even pricier than my current home which goes completely against my goal of purchasing a more affordable place.

3. Exercise more. Another vague goal that’s hard to quantify. Knowing I barely exercised in 2022 though, I’d consider the smallest effort an improvement. I did talk to my friend who I ran at least 5 miles every week for an entire year in 2021 with and we decided to at least do this once a month.

I may pick up running again but at the very least I’d like to do more swimming in the summer time.

This was a complete fail. However, I am participating in a challenge with a couple of my friends to walk/run one mile every day for the month of January!

We’re even thinking of doing different challenges for the months after. So I’m optimistic that I will exercise more this year.

2024 Goals

1. Hit $500k net worth. In keeping with the tradition, the first goal is going to be net worth related. I’m really hoping for another $100k+ increase this year. How amazing would it be to finally hit half a mil??!
   
   
2. Exercise regularly. Exercise at least twice a week. I have a bad habit of going all out and then getting burned out. So I’m going to start small which is to exercise at least twice a week. I know that January will be a success with the ongoing 1 mile a day challenge. Hopefully it will continue for the rest of the year!
   
   
3. Learn a new skill. I would love to learn something new this year, whether it be coding, or a new language, or maybe a much-needed tax preparation course. I’ve always loved learning and it is one of the things I miss the most about being out of school.

Future of the Blog

I’m a huge K-pop fan as evidence by my trip to South Korea and in K-pop, there’s a known phenomenon called the “7 year curse”. It’s the idea that many groups don’t make it past the 7-year mark. Don’t ask me how I made this association, but I feel like I’m falling victim to the 7 year curse myself. I started this blog mid-2017 and next year I will be celebrating the 7 year anniversary of this blog!

I’ve never made a big deal of celebrating blogiversary and for most of this time have lost track of how long I’ve had this blog for! But as I recently mentioned, I started questioning whether I should continue this blog.

I wouldn’t necessarily call it a burn-out because let’s face it, I barely update once a month. The posting frequency is absolutely manageable. However, I think sometimes there comes a stopping point where I don’t quite feel like I’m able to provide much value.

I started this blog as a way to motivate myself and others to aggressively pay off debt and that has now been accomplished. My next goal is financial independence, but now that I’m in the dreaded middle, there doesn’t seem to be anything of too much interest for me to write about.

My life has become more mundane and I say that in the best way possible. I’m no longer in the tumultuous state I was when I started this blog. This blog helped me figure many things out. It helped me deal with my anxiety of having $200,000 student loan debt. It helped me write out my thoughts as I decided between investing or paying off debt.

It helped me through core moments like starting my professional career, mentally breaking down in a job I hated, getting laid off, dealing with the home-buying process, and till now, being at a job I’m quite satisfied with.

This blog also allowed me to celebrate key financial moments from going under six figure debt, to crossing over to positive net worth, then finally getting my first $100k net worth and eventually $300k net worth. I am forever grateful that I was able to document these moments to look back on.

However, my work now has been pretty stable and so has my spending with only the occasional outliers in my variable spending. Now that I’ve paid off my student loan, it is no longer a topic I will write on and I currently have no intention of paying off my mortgage early so it’ll be just minimum payments for the foreseeable future.

While I’ll still do my own budget tracking and continue tracking my net worth, I simply do not have much to say. And honestly, having someone write about her effort to get a second home, or work toward a half a mil net worth can be a bit out of touch.

Maybe I will pivot to travel reviews or recaps. Maybe I will pick up a new skill that I will write about… who knows! I’m still continuing to grow as a person, but I think I’ve outgrown the current format of this blog. Or maybe I just need a break to get the enthusiasm back. It’s definitely a new adventure out there and I can’t wait to see what 2024 has to offer!