This is my first time writing a post like this. In retirement I’ve posted about my spending, my income and that’s basically it. But I wanted a place to talk about my money moves in general and sum everything up for the year, so that’s what this new annual post will be! Let’s look at my overall financial picture and see what the future holds.
Income & Spending
2024 Spending: $21,499
2024 Profit: $5,344
I’ve already written entire posts detailing my spending and income in 2024 (links above). This year, I spent $21,499, which is below the $23,400 I budgeted for this year. I was surprised to see that to be honest, since I’ve been traveling all over the world and eating everything in sight. That $5,344 was a pleasant surprise and I’m going to use the $3,065 that originated from this site to offset blog costs.
Dividends
2024 Total: $10,528.15
Of that, I received $4,264.53 of dividends in my checking account from my Taxable Brokerage this year. The remaining dividends were automatically reinvested into my Traditional IRA and Roth IRA accounts.
And here is how my dividends have grown over time:
Retirement Withdrawal
2024 Withdrawal: $20,000
This year I withdrew $20K from my Taxable Brokerage account and put it in my Ally High-Yield Savings account. Withdrawing from my investments is a pretty straightforward process that I detailed in this post:
Roth IRA Conversion
2024 Conversion: $9,900
Similarly, my Roth Conversion is an annual activity that’s not a huge deal since I’m now used to it. The only challenge is that I have to wait until the last few days of the year to estimate all of my income and figure out how much I can convert from my Traditional IRA to my Roth IRA tax-free, and so far it’s worked out well. I detailed how I figure that out and make the conversion in a post here:
Net Worth
2024 Net Worth: $882,223
Wowza. That’s a 20.5% increase for 2024 while the stock market increased 22.9%. Since I retired in 2020 my net worth has increased $342,223 or 63% while the stock market has increased 70%.
I must admit that this was not the financial outcome I was expecting when retiring into a pandemic and possible recession, but here we are 🙂 . Another lesson that I cannot predict the future of the stock market and should never try! I update my net worth on Instagram and The Numbers page every month so check that out if it’s something that interests you.
As a reminder, my investment portfolio is 100% VTSAX and I wrote about why below, but the TL;DL is that I can easily weather the downsides and it’s simpler with no rebalancing or tax optimization for where I put stocks and bonds.
And in case you missed it, here is how I manage my money:
2025
Spending Goal: $24,000
In 2025 I’m going to continue increasing my spending goal with inflation. 2024 saw about 2% inflation so my spending goal for 2025 will be $24,000. And because I’m me, I already have most of next year’s travel adventures planned out in my head 😉 . Spoiler: 🇯🇵🇳🇿🇺🇸🇵🇪🇬🇧🏴🏴🇮🇸.
Conclusion
And that’s what my money was up to in 2024. As I mentioned, this is my first time writing a post like this in retirement, so if there’s anything you wish I had talked about or would like me to write about in more detail in next year’s post, feel free to let me know!
Overall I’m in awe of the power of compound interest. It’s one thing to read about compounding and another to see it in action and I’m very excited to see where my retirement journey goes next.
What are your money goals for 2025?
Thank you for your continued posts! Amazing to see the networth growth and the countries you got lined up for next year
Thank you for reading 🙂 . And yeah it should be an exciting year.
I love the more detailed approach, and congratulations on 21% increase in your networth! I’m on a FIRE journey that is projected to take about 20 years total. I have it all mapped out to retire at 55 and used some knowledge from this blog.
I hope you have an amazing dinner or trip or something when you hit $1 million!
Thank you! And that’s exciting – you’ve got this. I’m honored to hear some of this blog might have helped with your plan 🙂 . Haha I’ll think about it – the stock market is all over the place so celebrating with a trip only for it to fall the next day might feel weird, but I’ll think about it.
Great to see how the first 5 years have gone, and you somehow spending less than the year before 😅
At what level / effective withdrawal rate would you consider increasing your spending target above inflation? (otherwise you could end up with the nice problem of too much capital as you get into later years)
Haha thanks 🙂 . I don’t have a spending ceiling on my FIRE models so I’ve always allowed myself to spend more if I wanted to – I just haven’t wanted to yet 😉 . I buy whatever I want and just see how much I spend at the end of the year and so far that’s shaken out to be around my goal spending number.
If I have more capital than expected in later years I’ll still call that a win since my costs are likely to increase as I’m older with healthcare and all that jazz.
Woohoo! You’re a nice case study of how catching a good sequence of returns early in retirement can work out extremely well for getting a nice buffer to future, inevitable downturns.
The prior 6 years return for VTI (per Portfolio Visualizer): 30.67%, 21.03%, 25.67%, -19.51%, 26.05%, and most recently 23.81% in 2024. These returns are obviously much higher relative to historical averages (avg of 16.47%/year in those most recent years), and we may get a bad downturn at some point to get this average back in line with what’s normal.
The good news: The market could result in you losing $282,000 of your net worth next year (~32% down year) and…you’d still have ~25x your target spend invested ($600k)!
I personally don’t go for 100% stocks as my retirement portfolio, but I think you will be fine to stick with it given how much buffer you now have by getting a great sequence of returns vs typically.
Here’s to continued adventures in 2025!
True story 🙂 . Here’s to 2025!
Wow! This post is so helpful. I’m early in learning about FIRE. Curious to know why you don’t use all of your dividends every year? Thank you!
Thanks – I’m glad it was helpful! Do you mean why I reinvest my dividends in my tax-advantaged accounts instead of having them go into my checking account too? I can only access my taxable dividends without penalty since I’m not 59.5.
Really appreciated this high level summary! Will definitely reference it in the future. I’m about 87% of the way to my FIRE number, so my 2025 money goal is to maaaaaybe hit FIRE?! Let’s see.
I’m glad you enjoyed it and that’s so exciting!!! The last 13% here we go 🙂 .