2023 - here we are! It's been a slow start to the year as my partner and I spent the first week of it with COVID. It was also over my first birthday off work in 3 years so that was annoying.
It was an interesting and unexpected end to the year but the unexpected is starting to feel expected as another year working on solar farms rolls over.
New Year is always a good time for self reflection and thinking back has certainly made me feel like 2022 was more of a success than it may have felt more recently... A lot can happen in a year!
I may be a little late to the party on the whole year-end reflection and goal setting for 2023 posts but cut me some slack, I was ill and spent the last week working in the stinking heat whilst still not feeling 100% after COVID... I did manage to create a content schedule for That FIFO Money blog until June so I've gotta hold myself accountable and stick to my content plan, even if it is coming a little later than planned. So I thought it's only right that my first blog post of the new year should be reflecting on how well last year went in terms of my goals before going into some new goal setting for this coming year. I thought I'd share my money wins in 2022 and some fails/losses or things that I hope to improve on in 2023.
WINS
Weirdly enough, the biggest, best and proudest moment of my partner and I's year didn't actually happen all that long ago (September) but feels like ages already. However long it's felt, it definitely can't be overlooked as it's our greatest achievement so far.
We bought a house! And not just any house... A second house... An investment property... We are officially property investors! And I think we may be on to a winner!
The property is in a pretty idyllic location overlooking the ocean on a bit of a hill up from the beach in, what we think is an overlooked but likely to increase in value suburb, half an hour outside of the Adelaide CBD. I'll post a bit about the house on That FIFO Money Instagram page soon because it really needs to be seen to be believed. I can't tell you how good it felt to finally see some of our hard work from all these hours slaving away on solar farms and tight budgeting, come to fruition. The place is better than what we thought we would find, was cheaper than what we had planned on spending, and rented immediately after settlement for more than we could have hoped for per week. That, plus the obvious potential for some very healthy capital growth over the long term; should really serve us well for our future retirement goals and also in our shorter term property portfolio accumulation phase. We hope to grow our portfolio and buy a few more investment properties over the next few years so I think we are off to a great start in our property investment journey, which is really exciting.
A secondary win to buying the investment property is also how we were able to purchase the investment property, in the end. We had always had the goal of saving at least $200k for a healthy deposit and stamp duty but we were able to use a lot more equity from our owner occupier (the house we live in that my partner, Nick, was building when we met) than we had planned for so we actually only had to use around half of our house fund savings for the deposit and stamp duty. That's meant that we are already off to a great start on saving for property number 3!
Another big money win for me in 2022 was when I realised I had over $100k in savings. Not anymore, thanks to stamp duty! Although, seeing 6 figures in my bank account for a brief period of time was motivating and reminded me that the hard work was definitely paying off! A few years ago I would never have dreamed I would see numbers like that in my bank account, let alone be buying a beach front investment property in Australia! That FIFO Money really showed me in 2022 that you don't have to have a fancy job title to achieve goals and create wealth.
As we hit some unexpected bumps in the solar farm life and found ourselves having to find work on a new project towards the end of the year, our emergency funds also came in very useful while we were out of work. Luckily, we didn't have to dip too much into them as we weren't out of work for too long but we didn't know how long it would take to find new jobs so we were cautious with our spending and tried finding work as soon as we got let go. It's the first time in a few years that we haven't known what the next job is when one finishes and had planned time off in between so I was grateful for our healthy savings accounts, although, just a month or so after buying our first investment property, was a less-than-ideal time to lose our jobs that's for sure! We did our tax returns late for 2021 too, so another small money win during this time was getting a few thousand dollars back around the time we weren't working so that definitely helped at the time!
We also managed to get a bit of use out of our holiday funds in 2022 and was, again, grateful that we had dedicated holiday funds set aside so that any time off work, including a spontaneous trip back to the UK (the first time Nick had met my friends in real life!) back in April and a fun-filled 8 day visit from my best friend and her husband on their honeymoon, didn't set us back in terms of our bigger savings goals. No important savings accounts had to be touched, even when we weren't making money for those few weeks so I'd say that in itself is a pretty big win! We may have felt like we haven't one forwards too much since buying the investment property in September; but we certainly haven't gone backwards so I'll take that!
LOSSES
I'd say that our biggest money fail this year would be that we chose to have 5 weeks off in between two projects in July-August because we were sure that the job we were going to was going to go on well into 2023 and we'd just spent the best part of 8 months working 13 days on and 1 day off so we felt we deserved a long break. If we'd had a crystal ball and knew that the job would've ended abruptly in November, we certainly wouldn't have had that amount of time off then. But we couldn't have known that would happen so I like to focus on the positive and the fact that we weren't set back too much thanks to our emergency and holiday funds.
We also had a bit of car trouble before Christmas (honestly, we really weren't having much luck the end of the year!) so that was another bit of a setback as we had to fork out to have the car fixed not long after we started this new job. But again, it could have been worse, if we didn't have emergency funds, or had happened when we were still out of work so we can't complain too much.
To end on a positive, we both got onto a new solar farm in November which is paying us both very well so we are milking the 13 and 1 roster right until the end of the project which will most likely be in February/March so we will be on the hunt for new jobs again soon!
When I look back and realise we had much more wins than losses across the year, I feel so motivated to carry on this saving train so for the forseeable future, you'll find me and my partner listening to property and investing podcasts while making That FIFO Money to achieve our goals! If you want to see how we have planned for our 2023 goals and a bit about my 2023 vision boards that I have got saved as the backgrounds on my phone, read my full post about 'Vision Boards and Goal Setting' here.
Here's to kicking our money goals in 2023!
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