And with that, 2024 is over. It was undoubtedly one of the best years of my life for so many different reasons. Our daughter was born, we visited our last continent and several new countries (56 countries visited in total now), we started settling into a more stationary family lifestyle which we’ve been craving for a while now, and we set a new record for yearly earnings in our business. I also had the best financial year of my life for net worth in dollar value terms and third best of all time in percentage terms. My net worth grew by 43% in 2024, which is still hard for me to wrap my head around, especially with that being on top of the 55% increase in 2023. I’m very thankful to my younger self for sacrificing to build assets that are now growing faster than I could have ever imagined back then.
December was quiet for us. Well, as quiet as is possible with a baby crying every few hours… We spent most of our time at home with Aria, continuing to learn our new roles as parents and enjoying watching her change and grow. While some days are certainly still difficult, we are having many more good days than bad recently. She’s getting on a more consistent schedule of sleeping and eating, which makes our lives more predictable and gives us a chance to get some things done throughout the day. We still haven’t been spending more than an hour or two on any given day on work for the business, but hopefully we can start doing a little more in the coming months to get things caught up and get some new content out. We obviously knew that having a baby would be disruptive to our lives, but I don’t think it’s possible to understand exactly how disruptive until it happens. But that’s okay, we are embracing the new lifestyle, and we know that it will continue to evolve and change as we get out of these newborn months.
Income
Income from our business (FifthWheelPT and Travel Therapy Mentor) for December was up over 100% from November! It actually ended up being our second highest earning month of all time, behind only January of 2024. We were expecting a high earning month though because Q4 is almost always our best quarter and November was a relatively low month. After the December earnings, Q4 of 2024 ended up being our highest earning quarter of all time and pushed us just over the line for 2024 beating 2023 as our highest earning year ever. It’s awesome to still see our earnings slightly increasing, despite us spending less time than ever on the business in 2024.
Expenses
My expenses for December were just a little higher than in November due to buying some Christmas gifts early in the month. Besides that, it was a pretty normal month for expenses just like November was. While we continue living in our townhouse, our expenses are very low overall on an average monthly basis. We do plan to move in 2025 to a bigger house, but only if we find something perfect. Our current place is fine for at least a few more years if needed, and each month we stay here we are able to add a lot of extra money to our savings/house fund. We’re still actively keeping an eye out for houses, but we feel less of an urgency than before and are going to enjoy the low monthly expenses for as long as possible.
In total, my savings rate for the month was around 90% when all was said and done.
Investments
The S&P 500 was down by about 2.5% in December. After November being up almost 6% and 2024 having a really high return overall, it’s hard to complain with a pullback. Inflation seems to be starting to pick back up some, which is causing fear in markets. 2023 and 2024 were both very high return years for the market, so it will be interesting to see what happens in 2025. The Shiller PE ratio is again at one of the highest points of all time which does not bode well for forward looking returns normally, but that hasn’t stopped the market from going higher in recent years.
The Bitcoin price decreased by about 3% during the month of December. Again, after such a crazy jump in price during November, it’s hard to be mad with the drop in December. With that being said, I really didn’t expect the drop to happen yet. 2024 was following 2020 price action very closely for all of Q4 up until the second week of December. My base case was that the price would just continue to track last cycle, but December ended up being a big deviation. While a little disappointing in the short term, I think this is a really good thing for the outlook in 2025. This drop in price that we’ve gotten helped to calm down the euphoric sentiment that was starting to emerge in November and after we broke through $100k in early December. Last cycle, the huge increase in price in November and December caused sentiment to get too crazy too quickly and ended up causing the cycle to top prematurely in my opinion. Hopefully this cycle we get regular pullback in price along the way up to keep things more in check like back in 2017.
I still remain very confident that the Bitcoin price will be much higher in the next 3-6 months. None of the indicators that I track look overheated right now, so I’m patiently waiting for higher prices to take profits this cycle.
Financial Independence Progress
My net assets decreased by 0.9% in December. While a little bit of a bummer to have a drop in assets after such a high earning month, it really isn’t a big deal. This year was really incredible for my finances overall. This was really only my third monthly drop of the whole year and my sixth monthly drop in the last two years. Having an increase in assets for 18/24 months is pretty good in my opinion, especially for someone who doesn’t really work anymore.
My assets are now equal to approximately 124.1 times my average annual expenses!
Next Month
In January, we’re planning our first trip with Aria. It will just be a weekend getaway within driving distance to see how traveling with her goes before we do any longer trips. While I’m not looking forward to packing everything up, it will be fun to get out of the house for a couple days. The weather in Virginia has been pretty cold lately, so we’ve spent much more time than normal in the house, which starts to wear on me mentally over time. Besides the trip, we plan to get back on working toward our health and fitness goals now that things are a little bit less hectic.
How was December for you financially? Let me know in the comments!
Fifth Wheel Physical Therapist 