This year was the first one me and my lady set some clear financial goals and developed an actual plan to achieve them. Now, since it’s the end of the year, we heard it helps to draw a line and see what has been achieved.

Financial goals

I’m not going to give numbers for two main reasons: to some the amounts might sound like bragging while to others they might sound like pennies.

• We managed to save about 90% of the amount we planned to save for our future home;
• We invested 100% of the amount we had in mind;

We currently have money invested through two brokers: eToro and IBKR. The reason is that in the beginning (two years ago) the easier and more intuitive platform for me was eToro. Later, when I realized you don’t own the actual assets through eToro, we switched to IBKR. That was in November of 2022. Our year to date performance looks so:

The reason we have that crazy 40+% on eToro is that I bought MSFT in its bear period last year and we all know what happened to it this year. On the other hand, I’m quite proud of my 13% on IBKR.

• We allocated 100% of the amount we had in mind for dentistry. The dentist is actually the reason why we saved only 90% of the intended amount for our future home: we had to make a quite expensive downpayment for my future invisible braces and we had to cut on the budget somewhere;

There were some other smaller more personal goals we had that we achieved as well. Financially speaking, we have achieved all our goals. Go Planet, go!

Professional goals

• I’ve got my Linux certification (LPIC-1) in April;
• I’ve got my CCNA in November;

That being said I’ve reached my goals this year.

Other goals

We had the goal of going somewhere nice this year only the two of us. We went to Sicily for 5 days in October and it was really nice. Excepting some short rains, the weather was great. Unfortunately I did not do my research properly so we didn’t know we should take our slippers for their rocky beaches, so we could only wet our feet a bit. But there was people swimming all over the place.

Another thing I am really happy about is I have finally managed to find a doctor who helped my with my seborrheic dermatitis, a condition I have been fighting against for the past at least 15 years and that was really bringing me down every now and then. May God bless her soul!

My lady started attending an Italian class, which she’s been planning on for a long time. She’s now waiting for the next module (B1) to start. Well done!