2022 in review and looking forward to 2023

For the first time since we started this blog in 2017, we finished a calendar year with a lower Net Worth than we started. Ouch.

But these types of years are expected. They are part and parcel of normal economic and market cycles. The years of 2017 to 2021 gave us uninterrupted, and unprecedented, gains. Some pullback is only good.

Since we started tracking and documenting our financial journey from beginning of 2017, we’re amazed how far we’ve come. In January 2017, our net worth stood at $458k. In 6 full years, we are close to $1.3m. That’s lower than what we ended 2021 but still incredible!

We made the following contributions to our investment accounts:

  • 401(k) – $19,664 (only for W) more than the $15k from 2021
  • IRAs – $12k (combined for both) – made goal
  • Brokerage – $14,400 – handily cleared the 2021 contribution of $8.6k
  • 529 – $2,000 – less than the $2.7k from 2021
  • HSA – $6,300 – lower than the max of 7,300 but $100 higher than 2021
  • Bonds – $8,000 – I-Bonds
  • Crypto – $350 – an ongoing, but possibly failed, experiment. It’s ok though, this is earmarked for failure 😀

In all, we contributed $62,714 to our investments in 2022.

The one big-ish trip we took in 2022 was to a National Park. We flew in and then rented a car to drive around for 4 days. We made a few road trips to visit family over weekends and holidays. A slow year in terms of travel for us. We are hoping to take at least one big – possibly international – trip in 2023 and a slew of road trips.

Again, setting no goals for 2023 but will possibly try to hit 2022 numbers. And more trips.

December 2022

December, thankfully, brought close to a dismal year. Our NW dropped by almost $47k last month.

The weather in our part of the world has been, to put it politely, f**king insane. Record snow, blizzard conditions, icy roads, plummeting temps has made an awful start to winter. We traveled over the holidays but though we are all safe, conditions were frightful.

The new year apparently is going much like the past one. January already have had 3 school closures due to bad weather! Hopefully this will get better.

Life has been, otherwise, good around here. We’re engaged in activities that mentally and physically keep us in shape. We’re eating well. We aren’t worried about finances. We’re watching a lot of movies.

The year end review should be out before this month ends.

Hope your holidays were special. Cheers!