2021 – A Retrospective

My 2021 was at the same time the best year of my life due to the birth of my son and it was also a sleeper of a year. If you remove him from the equation I’ve not done much compared to the previous year. 2020 was a massive year for me. We got pregnant hence my son, we bought a house, had the excitement and chaos of a global pandemic, I learned a ton about personal finance and how to invest

At the beginning of 2021, I set some goals that I published here. I wanted to learn what it means to be a dad and from my point of view, I’ve achieved this. Although it’s not my achievement. My son is the one who showed me what it means to be a dad. There’s lots of nuance to parenting and being a dad, that this post isn’t about, but in essence, show up and love them.

I wanted to address my physical health, so my diet and fitness. I have not done that at all and have ordered way too many takeaways this year. I checked my receipts and I am embarrassed to admit my wife and I have had 33 takeaways for £875 in 2021, that’s too high. It’s over £1,000 when you include eating out. That’s so much money wasted, that’s enough for a decent (much needed) getaway. This year I’m going to slash that number right down. As for my mental health, it’s worse going into this year than last, I’m not sure why this is. Perhaps, it’s tiredness? Or fatigue from not feeling productive? Issues with work and a general lack of fulfilment? I’m not sure.

I wanted to blog more but that’s not happened. I started the blog in 2020 and I only did a few posts last year. Mainly ones that I wrote at the beginning of the year and staggered the releases. But from about May the blog was a ghost town. Because I couldn’t find time to write but also I have put a lot of pressure on myself to write in my opinion ‘good’ posts. And I’ve struggled with the definition of what’s a blog. Now I’ve decided that a blog to me is a public personal journal. Being a personal journal, there are no limits, no restrictions, no word counts. If I want to post something super short, makes no sense to anyone but myself that’s enough. But who knows, someone may get value from it. I can look back for myself so as long as I’m happy or somewhat happy it’s okay.

I wanted to create alternative streams of income I have failed on that account. I have a few Defi (decentralised finance) investments that are giving me pretty stable APY (annual percentage yield). That’s paid out daily but it’s nowhere near enough to count as income as it’s just a few dollars a day. I want to ramp that up this year.

The last thing on last year’s list was that I wanted to be kinder to people. I think I’ve been mostly successful on this but I am not the one to decide that. That’s for others to decide. I’m sure if certain people read this and they take umbrage with this they’ll let me know.

Over the next 12 months, I’m going to continue to be kinder to people and the best dad I can be. I want to find more time to work on health both mental and physical. I want to get my salary at least in line with inflation. My salary has not changed in 2 years now and inflation is gone rampant over the last couple of years. The figures for 2020 and 2021 (annualised figures for 2021 aren’t available yet) as reported by the Office for National Statistics are 0.9% and ~5.1% respectively. This means I need to increase my salary by a minimum of 6%. As it stands my salary has decreased in value by 6% over the last 2 years.

My investments and net worth have done pretty well over 2021. The money invested last year has grown by 57%, which is pretty good. Total invested in the stock market has increased by 117%. I got back into crypto this year and I’m going to continue doing that going forward. Crypto is the future and it’s here now. I first started in crypto in 2016 then everything blew up at the end of 2017 and I lost faith. Now I’m in, I believe in it. I will post in the future about chains and protocols that I’m a fan of, bullish on and think will give stable and consistent returns going forward.

And that’s it.

Health, happiness and wealth.