How My 2024 Looked (Family, Personal, Finances, Career)

Overall Rating 7 / 10
Summary: This year was incredible, with a heavy emphasis on hobbies, adventures, and better health-based routines. Since we live in different states from our family, we spent 67 days visiting them, more than any previous year. Financially, as my portfolio is a simple 70% equities, 30% fixed income, I had a 7% increase in net work after spending. Personally, my marriage needs communication improvement from years of focusing solely on my previous business.
Family (Rating: 6 of 10)
The positives.
I don’t think there’s a year where my wife and I experienced more together than any other year. We flew 95,000 miles across 12 countries, which also included a total of 13 hours of delays (source: Flighty). Yikes!
I usually would be disgusted at the amount of time spent in airports, but the vast majority was non-work related as we explored new places. Some highlight countries were a safari in Kenya, wine tasting in Portugal, the pyramids in Egypt, watching a pro surf competition in El Salvador, surfing in Costa Rica, eating our way through Mexico City, and camping in Death Valley.
We even bought a camper van to visit National Parks, and our first road trip was driving back to our parent’s home state for the holidays. Being in the van and going anywhere and anytime is incredibly freeing.
We spent 67 days back in our parents’ home state, attending birthdays, holidays, taking family to new attractions, and just being together. I’m really happy we took the time to do this and will continue it.
I think one of the best gifts, though, was sending our parents back home to Taiwan. They had an incredible experience and probably wouldn’t have done it otherwise. Our parents seem to always be busy doing something and can get stuck in their routines.
Ok, room for improvement areas. This section is why I rated Family a 6 of 10.
First, I need to get off my phone more.
It’s too easy to open Instagram and Twitter 20x a day, scrolling around looking for dopamine. Two weeks ago, I deleted the apps off my phone, but I can access them from the browser if need be. It seems to have killed the zombie-like checking, scrolling, and reading, as the browser experience is way worse than a native app. I find myself getting up in the morning without checking my phone, feeling calmer with less inciteful content being displayed, and wasting less time in the bathroom scrolling around on the toilet.
Second, another area for improvement is my marriage. I spent 10 years focusing on my business, half of which was when I was single and not with my girlfriend, now wife. We achieved the holy grail of financial independence: no need for a job or meetings and the ability to spend time how we want to spend it. But the cost was the quality of our marriage.
That business was my sole focus and obsession for a long time, which meant I wasn’t as present and dedicated as I could have been. The theme for me in 2025 and beyond is going the extra mile. Schedule things together that I know she’ll like and experience, even if I don’t. Treat our relationship more like I’m courting her versus having been together for 10 years. We’re also going to hire a couples therapist to help improve communication and a stronger marriage.
Lastly, my wife and I still don’t have a clear direction on whether or not to have kids. We wanted to have a direction by now but don’t. Maybe that’s ok.
Personal (Rating: 9 of 10)
I really went deep on hobbies this year. I hired a weekly surf coach to help me improve. We review video tapes, do gym exercises, and have a roadmap for continuing to improve. It’s been fun to spend money on activities we enjoy. For example, if you enjoy tennis, can you hire a trainer, watch a pro tournament, play at the best-maintained clubs, and really dive deep into it?
I’m still lifting heavy weights 3x a week but added 5g/day of creatine to help reduce soreness. It worked surprisingly well. This is in addition to 150g+ of protein and a few other supplements based on my blood test results.
Since I wanted to add more cardio into the mix, I ran 1x a week for 2mi. Not much, but better than nothing at this point.
Through better food consumption, I’m at 17% body fat. Why a 9 out of 10 then? I eat an insane amount of desserts.
Finance (Rating: 9 of 10)
We spent significantly more than anticipated.
It’s always the large one-off items that blow up my spending plans. Not in a bad way, as it’s not out of control (less than 4% of net worth), but I’m surprised by how much lifestyle creep we’ve had over the past 3yrs.
In 2024, our income was my W-2 income from the acquirer, my wife’s W-2 income, and distributions from fixed-income investments. At some point, we should spend down the principal so as not to let our net worth get out of control, but since we’re in our mid-30s, I’d like to be more conservative.
Home improvements, a sprinter van, and trips dominated spending this year. Some of those are materialistic, and others are experience-driven. I’ve already started creating a rough budget for 2025 with my wife in an attempt to plan for larger-spend items we want to experience or buy. I’m also going to look at spend annually instead of monthly, which gets skewed too often.
Although I track spend using RocketMoney, I’d prefer not to be surprised by larger expenditures. I’ve noticed that I feel “richest” when our spending is below the budget, which may just be a psychological game at this point.
I’ve also never worked on a spending plan together with my wife, as I just create it and give her a heads-up. Not because I’m a budget dictator, she’s just not interested in it. She thinks I worry about money too much, but she has acknowledged that I have improved over the past 3 years since I sold the business. I personally think that once my financial advisor shared a Monte Carlo simulation of our net worth, it made me want to change my spending habits. Visually seeing our net worth balloon to an unimaginable number when we die (I estimated at age 95) means we didn’t take full advantage of the assets.
My goal was to keep spending under $400k. Some of the larger expenditures were ~$20k in home renovations, a $25k trip to the Masai Mara in Kenya this year, and a $200k sprinter van.
After spending, our net worth was up 7%. I was overly invested in treasuries even as the SP500 rocketed, but I am almost fully dollar coast averaged in a 70% equities/30% fixed income allocation. My financial advisor manages the fixed income side as I found it complicated in a high-tax state to deliver the best post-tax gains.
I exclude taxes from our annual spending total, but here are the annual categories from 2024:
Taxes, $319,973.00
RV Van, $218,526.53
Travel & Vacation, $68,840.70
Property Tax, $65,308.75
Home & Garden, $56,160.10
Dining & Drinks, $41,273.36
Shopping, $31,816.57
Bills & Utilities, $22,878.29
Pets, $19,636.35
1st Home Mortgage, $79,999 (This is tax-advantaged using a Tax Award Mortgage)
2nd Home Mortgage, $18,396.36
Business Related Expenses, $12,217.59
Auto & Transport, $11,734.54
Entertainment & Rec., $10,875.02
Gifts, 1% of spend, $10,625.59
Groceries, $9,956.44
Health & Wellness, $7,276.31
Cash & Checks, $5,213.88
Personal Care, $4,214.21
Legal/Accounting, $2,680.00
Medical, $2,376.90
Uncategorized, $2,061.80 (I got lazy on categorizing mostly Venmo’s)
Career (Rating: 8 of 10)
I gave advising for a family office this year a try and quit after 3 weeks. They were a great team, really smart, and had a lot of opportunities to learn about investing. But in the end, it was a drag to join regular meetings again, plus I found it tough to work for someone. I’m happy I was self-reflective about my time and pivoted quickly.
It's safe to say I haven’t figured out my new North Star yet, but maybe that’s okay. We’re wired to work a job to earn income and use that to live daily. If you don’t need income, the equation is broken, and another is needed.
What’s working for now is focusing on spending time where I get positive energy and excitement. If I leave a camping trip, surf excursion, or dinner with friends and feel great afterward, I want to chase more of that.
Do I still get the urge to build a company again? Yes, every few days, in fact. But if that opportunity arises, I’d like to be deliberate about it. It would need to energize me but not drag me into long hours and mentally distance me from family again.
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I hope you enjoyed my rambling on about 2024. Cheers to 2025!