My 2021 Year-End Review
At the start of 2021, I set out to accomplish some business and personal finance goals for the year. By the middle of the year, I published a review of how those goals were progressing, as well as some of my personal goals (not money-related). Now that we’re at the end of 2021 (crazy how fast it went), I will do one final review of both my money & non-money goals and share how I did!
Business Goals
Monetize this blog. As I mentioned in my mid-year review, I abandoned this 2021 goal. I initially set out to monetize Buck by Buck to at least cover my operational expenses for running the website. However, I’ve decided to scrap this goal entirely for 2021. My primary goal for this blog is to help as many people learn about all things finances. I think that monetizing the website at this point in the blog’s growth will take away too much of my valuable time from sharing educational content.
Offer 1-1 coaching. I set out to do 1-1 coaching at least once a month. In January and February alone, I had done 4 or 5 sessions, well ahead of my goal. Unfortunately, I did not find time to do any more coaching sessions in the 2nd half of the year. Therefore, I only achieved 5/12 of this goal. In 2022, I do not expect to commit to this goal again since I will be focused on relocating and settling into the Dallas area.
Start an out-of-state flipping business and flip an average of 1 home per quarter (4 for 2021). Alright, here’s the summary of my flipping business:
Flip #1: Purchased & sold for $130,000 over appraised value!
Flip #2: Purchased, tried to sell & failed, then successfully converted to an Airbnb!
Flip #3: Purchased & sold for over $100K profit in less than 4 months!
Flip #4: Purchased & going terribly… My contractor, who worked on my previous 3 flips, decided to burn bridges with me, failed to really even start the job, and lied to me repeatedly about his failures. Now, I’m clawing back money from his company. Stay tuned to find out what happens to this one once more progress is made!
Buy another buy-and-hold rental property. I got into a contract last summer to purchase an out-of-state investment property for close to $500,000. Not only was it a new construction, it was also in a highly-desirable area due to its great location & school district.
While the original plan was to hold it and rent it out long-term, I decided to sell the property (basically like a flip) right after I took ownership of it! Why? Because it appreciated an insane amount in just 1 year. Click here to read all the juicy details on how I turned this $125K investment into $250K!
Reach 10K followers on Instagram by the end of the year. Thanks to this amazing FI/RE community and my fellow content creators who helped me along the way, this goal has been achieved! Currently, my Instagram account has roughly 13,500 followers!
Personal Finance Goals
Max out my 401(k). This goal changed shortly after the start of the year because my company announced that they’re going to offer the Mega Backdoor Roth option this year. It took effect sometime in February or March, but instead of “just” maxing out my pre-tax contributions to $19,500, I decided to max out at $58K this year by utilizing the Mega Backdoor Roth. Here’s my progress YTD (year-to-date):
Contributions:
Employee: $56,500.00
Employer: $1,500.00
Contribution progress: 100%
YTD earnings: +$42,742.44
YTD return: +22.75%
Max out my partner’s 401(k)s. Like me, my partner’s employer also offers the Mega Backdoor Roth. So we’ll both be maxing out our 401(k)s with $58K in contributions respectively. Here’s my partner’s progress YTD (year-to-date):
Contributions:
Employee: $42,902.00
Employer: $11,600.00
Contribution progress: 93.97%
YTD earnings: +$50,071.45
YTD return: +20.91%
Backdoor Roth IRA conversions (goal completed!). Just a few days after New Year’s, I completed the Backdoor Roth IRA conversions for both me and my partner. So we effectively front loaded $12K to our Roth IRAs at the beginning of the year. If you’re interested in doing this yourself, be sure to read through my step-by-step guide on how to do this via Fidelity.
Roth IRA #1
Contributions: $6,000
YTD earnings: +$5,780.15
YTD return: +23.30%
Roth IRA #2
Contributions: $6,000
YTD earnings: +$5,957.46
YTD return: +24.97%
Contribute $500 per month to a 529 account (goal completed!). Typically, every month we auto-invest $500 into our child’s 529 account. We’re still doing that, but I decided to front load an extra $24,000 into the 529 in May 2021 so we won’t have to contribute as much in future years (the sooner you invest, the better). This means we’ll contribute $30K into the 529 this year, up to the annual gift tax exclusion limit. We’ve already invested $29,750, so we only have $250 left to go!
Auto-invest $2,500 per week into mutual funds. We have a couple more weeks left in the year, but here’s what’s been invested so far:
YTD contributions: $299,950
Average auto-investment: $5,393 per week
I am so happy this goal was met! I started the year off by trimming our “usual” $5,000 per week auto-investment to $2,500 per week so that I could fund my new out-of-state flipping business. After most of those flips were completed, I was happy to re-invest those profits back into stocks!
Reaching FI/RE at Age 31. This was an unpublished goal up until about a week ago, but I officially retired a month ago at age 31! I won’t go into full details again, so be sure to read my previous blog post to hear my decision-making process and what I plan to do in retirement!
Personal Goals (Not Money-Related)
Travel. We were able to travel a bit more this year and went to Tahoe, San Diego, and Maui! All 3 trips were so memorable, and I still relive them by watching videos of our time there. I can’t wait to travel internationally again. We’re thinking of traveling to Europe next year. Perhaps Switzerland, but I guess it’ll depend on Omicron.
Cooking. Maybe my partner has a different opinion, but I think I’ve met my goal here. I can pretty consistently cook our household favorite recipes without any help (while watching a toddler simultaneously)! Next year, I hope to understand the importance of each ingredient and techniques in the recipe more so I can start experimenting on my own!
Health. While I did return to the gym this summer, my partner and I both felt uncomfortable going due to the uptick in COVID cases near the end of summer. So physical activity dropped once again. However, I did pick up a new sport, called Pickleball, which is a cross between tennis and ping pong! It’s really fun, not too exerting, and the social aspect is terrific! Once we relocate, I hope to find a new group of Pickleball enthusiasts and I’ll be sure to take advantage of our apartment’s gym! And once your custom house is fully built, we’ll definitely be investing in a home gym for our convenience!
A look back at my 2021 predictions
At the beginning of the year, I made a few bold predictions about the economy and investing landscape. Let’s see how I fared.
COVID will last longer than most of us think. This prediction clearly came to fruition. COVID has changed our economy forever, with so many people working in a hybrid or fully-remote model. There are even millions of people quitting their jobs in droves, also known as The Great Resignation (or the “Big Quit”). People are valuing their time much more now that they’ve realized that working from home is achievable, which allows them to save time on their commutes, help out more at home, and spend more time with their families.
Interest rates will continue to stay at all-time lows. Interest rates largely remained at all-time lows throughout the year, allowing many to buy homes and refinance their loans to get better rates.
Tech will continue to reign supreme. This one’s subjective, but I still do think we’re living in the future with tech surrounding us. It’s worth noting that tech stocks have outperformed the S&P 500 YTD (year-to-date), indicating their continued growth story.
The wealth gap will continue to widen. As I mentioned previously, the rich keep getting richer and the poor stay poor, especially due to the COVID crisis. The rich are able to stay invested in a thriving stock and real estate market, while the poor are struggling to make ends meet due to store closures and, therefore, job losses. Additionally, as the poor scramble to make ends meet, their education will be sacrificed and result in their being less competitive in the job market.
It’s crazy to see a single individual’s (Elon Musk) net worth balloon to over $300 billion! What does that tell you?
Stocks
Tesla (TSLA) will reach the coveted $1 trillion market cap. This prediction also came true this year!, helping to rocket Musk’s net worth to over $300 billion.
Stocks will continue to reach new all-time highs. Stocks have hit all-time highs yet again! They’re up over 20% at the time of writing. Fingers crossed for a repeat year in 2022!
Amazon will split its stock. This one I got wrong. It really doesn’t matter what stock prices are at nowadays, thanks to the introduction of fractional shares. Some brokers allow people to buy fractions of shares of companies instead of requiring purchases of buying whole shares. This means someone can buy $10 worth of AMZN instead of having to fork over a minimum of $3.4K per share. It’s never been easier to invest!
Stay-at-home stocks will continue their meteoric rise. Certainly some stay-at-home stocks reached new heights, but a good share of them plummeted. So my prediction was neither right nor wrong.
Real Estate
Major tech hubs like Silicon Valley and Seattle will continue to drive sky-high real estate prices in those areas. Thanks to hefty income levels in those areas, real estate prices continued to reach new heights, just like the stock market!
Suburban real estate prices will reach new highs, while rental rates in big cities will remain at muted levels. Coupled with all-time low interest rates, as more and more (tech) companies allow for fully remote work, more people will be attracted to lower cost of living (LCOL) areas where they can afford to buy a bigger, newer home and raise a family outside of a big city. Ring a bell? Yep, I’m one of those relocating, too!
Many of those destinations will likely be in states with no income taxes like Texas, Nevada, and Florida to reduce their tax burdens. Highly-compensated workers fleeing areas like Silicon Valley will take their multi-six figure salaries with them (albeit with a 10-15% pay cut), and continue to scoop up real estate like it’s nothing.
Final Assessment
Overall, I’ve had a fantastic year! My out-of-state flipping business had some massive profits that I did not foresee when I started out the year. And soon, my out-of-state flipping business will become an in-state flipping business (yes, that was part of the plan all along!) as soon as we relocate to Dallas, so I’ll be able to network and manage my local real estate activity much better next year.
The stock market has been doing really well, too, which has really increased our net worth! Whether the upward trend continues or not, I don’t really care. I’ll just keep auto-investing through the noise over the years anyway!
The rest of my year will be super busy with last minute packing, moving, settling in in Dallas, and a makeshift holiday season if we can unpack quick enough. Nevertheless, I’ll be committing to some 2022 goals soon, so stay tuned for a coming blog post! Happy Holidays to all of you, stay safe, and thank you for reading!
