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2021 Annual Review

At the end of 2020, I was hoping for the next year to be more relaxed. 2020 seemed pretty intense for a lot of reasons, and while I am firmly on the side of not wanting to go back to what used to be considered “normal” in many ways, I was hoping vaccines and other developments would bring back some of the things I liked about the old way of things. Maybe more time with friends and some international travel?

Needless to say, that was not what 2021 had in store for us! The year kicked off with political turmoil and upheaval and continued full bore ahead with new waves and COVID variants seemingly around every corner. The year also included a lot of challenges, illness, and loss of loved ones on a personal level. Despite all this, 2021 was also an amazing year packed with exciting and sometimes unexpected adventures, massive personal growth, new friends, and eclipsing financial milestones.

Thankfully, along my journey so far I have picked up mental and emotional tools that have helped me cope with the challenges, an amazing support group of family and friends, and a framework for financial wizardry that keeps us nimble, adaptable, and antifragile in the face of challenges. I’ve had the luck to be dealt good cards and take advantage of many of the opportunities life has thrown my way or learn from those I missed. I’m deeply grateful.

This is my fourth year posting my annual review publicly. As usual, I’ll follow this format:

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Financial Survival Guide – Pandemic Edition

Wow. Has the world gone crazy or what?

Since the last time I wrote to you, the world has hurtled headlong into a pandemic brought on by the spread of COVID-19, aka “the coronavirus”; the US economy has experienced historic unemployment, entered a recession, and somehow seen the stock market recover its losses for the year; and the largest human rights movement in history has exploded onto the streets of major cities across the globe following the callous murder of George Floyd by police in Minneapolis.

a dog sitting in the middle of a house that is being consumed by flames and saying "this is fine."
2020 in a nutshell

Unity, equality, and inclusion are some of the founding principles of this blog. Part of my goal in publishing my writing here is to help uplift you. I firmly believe that we all have more opportunity than we realize. That there is a light at the end of the tunnel, much closer than we ever thought possible. That the journey there should be fun, and that we can learn things about ourselves and each other along the way. Our culture doesn’t teach us these things, and it doesn’t equip us with the tools to take advantage of these simple truths and the endless opportunities that exist right at our fingertips. My goal in writing to you is to empower you by sharing the tools and experiences that have helped me along the way, in the hopes that you can learn from my mistakes as well as my successes, to live a happier, freer life. And perhaps while we’re at it, I can provide some entertainment as well.

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How to Freeze Your Spending

spending freeze - a credit card frozen in a block of ice

As it has for many people, the pandemic/recession combo has caused some disruption to our financial life. Mrs. Wallet lost her job, our tenant has been unable to pay rent for months, and our mortgage company overpaid our property taxes by thousands of dollars and increased our escrow payments by ~$800/month at precisely the worst time possible. I’ll have to write about that last one more later in its own post! To add to the dumpster fire, we’ve also had some big unexpected expenses, such as dealing with termites (the kind the insurance doesn’t cover of course, because there are apparently different kinds). In total, our net income was reduced by over 55%. Cue for us to freak out, sell everything, and start living on the street and eating out of garbage bins, right?

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Going Solar

solar roof

Working in the energy industry, caring about the environment, and being financially minded have colluded to pique my interest in solar. Unfortunately, in the past, the analysis was pretty short-lived. It simply didn’t make sense financially.

What changed? Why did we decide to make the leap? Let’s take a look…

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How I Paid Myself Over $100/hr to Get a Great Workout

One thing Mrs. Wallet and I decided on when we chose to purchase our own home was that we would learn to take care of, repair, and renovate homes on our own. This would allow us to avoid labor costs, mark-up, etc, embedding some margin in our purchase through sweat equity. When we bought our home, no one would have called me a handy man, and I had none of these skills.

Which leads us to an expensive problem we ran into…

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Tackling the Big Three: Saving on Transportation

One of the top three areas people spend (and waste) their money is on transportation (alongside food and housing). However, much more than for food, people seem to overlook that they have choices concerning their transportation and associated spending. For whatever reason, people tend to think of their transportation expenses as given, facts of life irrevocably laid out by the Traffic Gods at the dawn of time, nary to be questioned again.

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