Year-End Reckoning
January 1st, 2025 at 01:39 amStill have to wait for the final 12/31 numbers, but they should be close and I'm rounding in any case. Total assets, around $1,070,000 (high in November was $1,085,000). Added around $129,500. Total debt, around $50,750, a significant decrease of about $23,500--a big improvement over my typical $10k decrease a year. Motivated in part by the acquisition of the company I work for, which lit a fire under me for getting debts paid off just in case I don't like the way things go under the new entity (which, since we were acquired by a private equity firm, will probably be sold again in another 3 years). Total net worth around $1,019,250--first time I end the year over a million.
I have two beneficiary IRAs which operate under the "old" (pre-SECURE Act) rules, so I have annual RMDs (required minimum distributions) to take. While I have the debt, I have been taking my RMDs near the beginning of the year and using them to pay down debt. I will do that again this week. After that, I expect the total debt balance (around 25k of which is what's left on the mortgage) to be down to around 44k).
We may or may not get a bonus--I still have no good idea how the new acquiring company works, other than that if there IS a bonus, it will come early in the year, along with an announcement of raises (again, waiting with great anticipation). With my old, much smaller company, they kept the employees apprised each month of how the company was doing, so we had a pretty good idea of whether bonuses would be coming or not, since bonuses were based on the company meeting a certain profit margin. In any case, if there IS a bonus, I have one additional chunk of debt (a balance transfer credit card) that I will pay off and then will add the additional funds to a sinking fund for all of my "irregular" annual expenses.
I plan to manage things a bit differently this year--in the past, I've paid the credit cards down to a certain balance (typically, three with a $500 balance) and as long as I paid off the prior month balance, I didn't incur any interest charges. In 2025, I plan to leave the base balance at zero rather than $500 on those 3 cards. As the debt is coming down, I will be adding the excess to a government money market fund in my brokerage account for those big sporadic expenses, like annual insurance premiums. I hope to build that fund up over the year--but whether or not I am really able to build it up depends on whether or not a bonus is forthcoming. With no bonus, the additional funds I add in to the sinking fund will be spent during the course of the year.
As for my annual goals: I kept up the exercise at the beginning of the year and have been getting back to it during Q4, but the middle of the year was kind of a lost cause. I did NOT run the planned Turkey Trot again but will plan to run it in 2025. I also gained back about 10 pounds. Not a great year for my health goals, but it could have been worse. Wealth goals are right on target (as revised mid-year). My systems/habits/routines goals did not have much progress. If we do get a bonus, my big plan is to hire some help for the decluttering. I think that's the only way to ensure it gets done before I retire. The other thing I will do is to re-organize my vacation days, which I have been using to take long weekends, but it's been 2 or 3 years since I had as much as a whole week off at a time. One nice thing about the new company is that I will get an additional 5 PTO days, and I will plan to take perhaps a couple of 2-week periods of time off to make some progress. The problem with lots of long weekends is that the order in which I address my needs when I have time off is to first, catch up on rest, then to catch up on my social life, third to catch up on chores....which leaves no real time for any project that might take longer, like clearing out the items I don't use from the kitchen cabinets or sorting and filing the research papers I collect. In any case, Goals for 2025 will essentially be my 2024 goals updated, which is pretty much how it always works, now that my education and career change goals are history (but they were very much what governed me during my early days of blogging here).
Well, it's all of 8:30 pm on New Years Eve and I am pretty much ready for bed. I've been watching a lovely little series called "Portait Artist of the Year" on Amazon Prime (10 seasons available; they also have 8 seasons of "Landscape Artist of the Year"). It's just the right pace for a pre-bedtime winddown. Happy New Year everyone!