Year in Review: 2020

Huz­zah! We are done with 2020! What a huge relief.

In some ways, 2020 was a great year for me. It was also simul­ta­ne­ous­ly a hor­ri­bly wretched year at the exact same time.

The first few months of the year were off to a fan­tas­tic start. I start­ed get­ting set­tled into St Louis, was meet­ing new peo­ple to hope­ful­ly start up new friend groups, met and start­ed dat­ing my most won­der­ful boyfriend, and start­ed feel­ing like I was on sol­id foot­ing with the new job.

And then the pan­dem­ic hit. Sud­den­ly I could­n’t explore the city and all the fun things it has to offer, I could­n’t see my boyfriend in per­son for a long time, all the social activ­i­ties stopped so I could­n’t meet peo­ple, and my job had us work from home for the fore­see­able future.

Per­son­al­ly, things weren’t so bad. I binge-watched the entire Mar­vel movie series, con­quered Ter­raria, got a new bike and rode near­ly 100 miles on it, watched Avatar: The Last Air­ben­der and The Leg­end of Kor­ra, and learned how to make a mean lat­te. The only per­son in my fam­i­ly to get sick was my estranged bio­log­i­cal father and he pulled through. My fam­i­ly wel­comed a new baby cousin into the fold.

I’m upset I did­n’t get to do a lot of things I want­ed to do. My first year liv­ing in St Louis and I was­n’t able to attend a Car­di­nals game in per­son. (Shush to all you oth­er base­ball fans out there that tell me that’s no great loss!) My boyfriend and I have yet to meet each oth­er’s fam­i­lies in per­son. I was­n’t able to attend my friend’s change of com­mand cer­e­mo­ny. There was no Camp­FI for me in 2020 for the first time in years. I miss get­ting to see my online friends and meet­ing new peo­ple. Some Zoom meet­ings helped, but I think we’re all sick of online meet­ings by now.

As I write this on Jan­u­ary 10^th, 2021 is not off to a great start but I am hope­ful that those deny­ing real­i­ty will come around and be held account­able for their actions by the full extent of the law. The vac­cines rolling out for Covid-19 also look promis­ing and I hope that means we can find our new nor­mal soon­er rather than lat­er this year. I leave you with a meme before get­ting into the nuts and bolts of my spend­ing review for 2020.

Expenses

This year was one of my most expen­sive years ever. I have become what some in the more fru­gal cir­cles of the FIRE world would call a “spendy­pants”. I think I am per­fect­ly ok with that title. Being a “spendy­pants” means I live in a spa­cious apart­ment with room to work on most of my hob­bies (and room to work from home with­out total­ly los­ing my mind). It means my apart­ment is nice­ly dec­o­rat­ed and func­tion­al. It means my clothes fit and look nice. It means I have a car that works with­out leav­ing me anx­ious I’m going to break down some­where. It means my boyfriend and I have a lot of fun on dates doing things like play­ing video games, eat­ing brunch, and going to the local ice cream par­lor. (Or, at least it did in the first 3 months before we had to move all of our dates online.)

Cat­e­go­ry	Amount ($)	Com­ments
Hous­ing	14,249	1 month of high­er costs from old apart­ment in HCOL area, 11 months at $1,125 to rent a 2 bed­room, 1 bath unit in a nice enough area of St Louis in easy com­mut­ing dis­tance of work.
Food	7,054	Aver­age of $587/mo which is much high­er than years past. I attribute this to feed­ing myself and my boyfriend for most of the year. He’s very worth it — and also worth not­ing some food out­ings were cov­ered by him.
Car	5,997	Min­i­mal gas expens­es, but a lot of repair costs and then the pay­ment for the new car bought in September.
Inter­net	1,320	Medi­um fast, unre­li­able inter­net from Spec­trum. It drops all the time and I hate it but they’re the only ones who ser­vice my build­ing. Ugh
Phone	1,244	Google FI bill that includes pay­ing off my phone for most of 2020. I’m sav­ing up for a new one now.
Util­i­ties	1,177	I live in a his­toric build­ing with giant win­dows that aren’t ener­gy effi­cient at all. Costs are super high in the win­ter and super low in the sum­mer when I love hav­ing all the win­dows open and the air off.
Sup­port	1,950	I send mon­ey to my sis­ter each month to sup­port her endeav­ors as a mis­sion­ary around the world.
Pet	969	Bartholomew was expen­sive this year with two vet vis­its, one to clean his teeth.
Blog	1,518	Costs of host­ing the blog, sup­port work, and var­i­ous sub­scrip­tions I use to do things like graph­ics and email list.
Games	111	I bought a Switch game or 2 and a Steam game (the afore­men­tioned Terraria).
Enter­tain­ment	812	Most­ly things like stream­ing ser­vices and Patre­on dues for var­i­ous peo­ple to encour­age their con­tin­ued creation.
Shop­ping	4,516	Fur­nish­ing the new house, some clothes, some shoes, bul­let jour­nals, books, and kitchen stuff.
Fees	1,816	Annu­al cred­it card fees, a missed pay­ment or two fee, and lots of oth­er lit­tle stuff that added up.
Misc	2,400	Expens­es that don’t fit any­where else.
Trav­el	86	Hilar­i­ous­ly and sad­ly low 🙁
Gifts	2,211	Birth­day gifts, Christ­mas gifts, just because I’m think­ing about you gifts, flow­ers, etc.
Hob­bies	1,219	I think I bought some fab­ric and count­ed cross stitch stuff to keep me occu­pied while shel­ter­ing in my home.
Health	1,975	Things like the den­tist and med­i­cine in case I got sick.

Total expens­es: $49,347

Thoughts on Expenses:

2020 was a very weird year for my bud­get. My food bud­get went up thanks to my exper­i­ments with a local CSA, a meal shar­ing plan with a few peo­ple in my neigh­bor­hood, meals ready to eat from a meal prep place, and feed­ing my boyfriend on occa­sion. My car expens­es were low­er than nor­mal when it came to buy­ing gas, but high­er with unex­pect­ed repairs and a car pur­chase in Sep­tem­ber. My side hus­tle expens­es were way low­er after I stopped pret­ty much every­thing but the blog. Expens­es went way down, my hap­pi­ness lev­els went up, and my stress lev­els far low­er. I spent a lot more on things like gifts and char­i­ty this year. I was blessed to not lose my job, so most of my first stim­u­lus check went to places like my home church, their fund for any con­gre­ga­tion mem­bers in need, local char­i­ties in St Louis and any orga­ni­za­tion on the ground with a good plea (like an orga­ni­za­tion work­ing to sup­port unhoused peo­ple in St Louis). Health expens­es were up com­pared to the last few years of vir­tu­al neglect. My teeth are look­ing great now! Shop­ping was high­er as I allowed myself to actu­al­ly buy new clothes that look good on me and fit me. I also bought things for my apart­ment like cook­ware, knives, dish­es, a rug, paint­ings and oth­er art, and match­ing décor. I’ve spent a lot of time in this apart­ment over the last 12 months and love that it feels like home. Trav­el spend­ing was hel­la low. With the coro­n­avirus keep­ing me home, I did­n’t get to do my annu­al over­seas trip or any num­ber of domes­tic trips like I nor­mal­ly do. I miss my friends!! And final­ly, reoc­cur­ring expens­es like Net­flix, game sub­scrip­tions, and Patre­on dona­tions were not only high­er, but actu­al­ly exist­ed. This is the first time I’ve had any­thing of the sort and I’m glad I do as they’ve col­lec­tive­ly pro­vid­ed a lot of enter­tain­ment with friends over the course of the year. Going for­ward, I’ll eval­u­ate if I want to keep them, but I def­i­nite­ly don’t regret shar­ing my Net­flix with my sis­ter so her fam­i­ly could be entertained.

Income

W2 Pay: $81,133.41
Non-W2 income: $7,800

Total: $88,933.65

This includes things like sell­ing my car, any mon­ey from the IRS like my stim­u­lus or tax refund, and side hus­tle activ­i­ties. I’m pret­ty sure I man­aged to sell about $100 worth of things on Etsy this year. Yay me!

Net Worth

Well, this year was a roller coast­er for the ol’ net worth track­er. I start­ed the year at $213,000 and end­ed up with a net worth of $284,033. Check out this ride:

The mar­ket went on a pret­ty steep dive with the advent of the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic in March. Most every month after that it went steadi­ly back up. In some months it kin­da did­dled around and did­n’t do much, and some months shot up like a rock­et (look­ing at you Octo­ber to Novem­ber!). I thought for a sec­ond I might cross the $300k mark before the end of the year, but the mar­ket was­n’t that insane. I think it’s crazy that I could spend just about $50,000 in one year and still see my net worth go up $71,000. Now we get to see what the mar­ket does when it catch­es up to the real­i­ty that a large chunk of the US is suf­fer­ing from being laid off and can’t pay all their bills. Oh, and civ­il unrest is always great, too. I have a feel­ing 2021 will be very inter­est­ing. I’m also includ­ing a screen­shot of my total net worth jour­ney below. I feel it’s impor­tant to show the entire picture.

The pow­er of com­pound­ing is clear­ly vis­i­ble. It’s also fas­ci­nat­ing to see the deci­sions I made play out in real life. You can see the long slog of steadi­ly sav­ing, the fluc­tu­a­tions around my adven­tures in real estate, the recov­ery year in 2019 and now the return to steady sav­ings. Side note, the lit­tle dots at the top of the lines always remind me of kiwi seeds. Thanks, Mint.

At this rate, I’ve achieved Coast­FI from my invest­ments alone. How­ev­er, I also have a pen­sion from my old job and a pen­sion from this job (pro­vid­ed it’s not tak­en away before I retire at 55 to be able to stay on the employ­ee health care plan).

So to wrap up a crazy and wacky year.….. per­son­al­ly, life was pret­ty good. I met the love of my life, my fam­i­ly was healthy, my job is secure, and my net worth steadi­ly going up.

I only wish that were true for every­one. Stay safe!