Happy Holidays 2024 edition
Welcome to my Happy Holidays 2024 post.
With almost another year in the books, since 2009 as My Own Advisor in fact, I believe this old adage remains quite true for me and running this site: time flies when you’re having fun.
This blog continues to be a small labour of love. Yes, it takes lots time and energy to put my thoughts together on this site but in doing so it’s so rewarding too…to engage and connect with so many like-minded, passionate Do-It-Yourself (DIY) investors year after year.
This DIY investor community on my site is passionate about:
- Growing dividends
- Higher capital gains
- Getting out of debt
- Savvy shopping
- Travel
- Optimizing your time as a valuable resource
- Low-money management fees
- Health and wellness
- and much more.
In fact, your passionate personal finance and investing list reads much like my own:
2024 Milestones
For those of you that have been following my journey as My Own Advisor for many years now (some of you since 2009!), you’ll realize that this year (2024) was full of personal finance and investing milestones.
In very early January 2024, we killed off our mortgage which was our final debt-anchor.
It was always our plan to be debt-free before semi-retirement or retirement, and now we are.
In fact, it was always our plan to be debt-free while striving to realize financial independence around the same time – and wouldn’t you know it, we accomplished that too in 2024!
For those unfamiliar with any Coast FIRE concept in that post title, the idea here is you save early and often enough in your working years until your portfolio reaches a point where its expected growth will secure all future retirement needs moving forward.
With Coast FIRE or Financial Independence, Work On Own Terms (FIWOOT) as I like to call it, you can open many doors like the following:
- You can keep working, on your own terms as you wish – but you no longer need to save for retirement.
- You can consider shifting to part-time work.
- You can consider ramping-up your hobby work / occassional work / seasonal work.
- You can take extended breaks from any work at all.
- Or all the above. 🙂
….if you save early enough and remain invested long enough, you might find yourself at a point in your life whereby you can allow your existing investments to grow while there is no longer any real urgency to save more for retirement. You are financially coasting to retirement now….
Essentially, that is where we are right now.
And finally, pretty much as predicted unlike many forecasts by some financial experts in 2024 (! – link below), we bought a new PHEV (Plug-In Hybrid Vehicle) this past summer. This PHEV replaced our aging 13-year-old KIA Soul – so we would have a new(er) vehicle to enter semi-retirement with for the coming 10+ years.
So far, so good with our Hyundai Tucson PHEV.
2025 things to come?
While we do have some investing plans (for our Tax Free Savings Accounts (TFSAs) in just a few weeks….old habits are hard to break!), not much else is planned after that.
2025 is anticipated to be a BIG transition year for us, from a career perspective, and I will certainly keep you posted on what happens and how that feeds into our semi-retirement activities.
We are hopeful beyond some continued employment with our current employer, we both focus on our health/improved health and fitness in 2025 along with enjoying some travel plans that our portfolio could allow us to spend freely on.
When it comes to this site, and your engagement in 2025, I certainly hope that continues too.
I like the banter – reading the comments.
I enjoy your emails and questions to publish.
I appreciate it when you respectfully disagree with me. I don’t know the answers to everything. I learn from readers quite a bit too – espcially the established DIY investors that continue to share their “been there, done that” investing wisdom here.
I thank you for your feedback on all posts, webinars and related content. It’s fun to run the site and I hope that comes through in my writing and general engagement with you.
Year to date, at the time of this post, this site has been seen by over 270,000 unique visitors, in over 109 countries, approaching 2 million total events including hundreds of thousands of pageviews in 2024.
Thank you, thank you, thank you.
I remain inspired by you to keep sharing my/our journey into 2025, engaging with you on everything related to personal finance, investing and many lifestyle topics in between.
While I may get to a few blogposts between now and early 2025, the most important message to share at this time of year is this:
a very Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to you and your family.
Take care, stay well, and chat soon.
Warm Holiday Wishes,
Mark
Mark
My name is Mark Seed – the founder, editor and owner of My Own Advisor. As my own DIY financial advisor, I’m looking to start semi-retirement soon, sooner than most. Find out what I did and how I realized Financial Independence to tailor your own path. Join the newsletter read by thousands. Always free.
