2020 Goals recap

Recapping 2020 Goals (which, TBH was a very hard year to meet any goals).

Here is what I wrote in my final post of 2019:

Looking ahead to 2020, I already have 2 trips planned for January, 1 in March, and hope to take many more. I’ll attend CampFI Southeast Week 2 in Gainesville again, and the following weekend is a trip to Little Rock and Nashville over the MLK Weekend. March will welcome the EconoMe Conference in Cincinnati, and I hope to see many of you there! Those three trips combined will take only 1 vacation day, so I’ll finally be building up a little bulk of time off from work.

I have already submitted paperwork to HR to increase my 457(b) contributions to meet the 2020 maximum of $19,500. This year it’s a nice round $750 per pay period (26) versus $730.76 and leaving 24 cents worth of contribution room! LAME! That TWENTY-FOUR CENTS could become a couple whole dollars by conventional retirement age! 😊

My 2020 $6,000 Roth IRA contribution is sitting in my Vanguard Money Market Account, ready to be deployed early in 2020 for the maximum “time in the market” to work its magic.

I’ll complete another minimum spending requirement on my current Chase business card just after the first of the year, so that means another 50,000 + 4,500 for the points earned on spending $3,000 in the first 3 months, will be posting to my account for future travel planning.

And one goal I didn’t even know I had for 2019 was to give more generously than I had in the past when I held more of a scarcity mindset. I am going into 2020 with the intention of giving more away than I did in 2019.

Travel

I’m glad I front-loaded my year with so much travel, because as we all know, that pretty much stopped by the middle of March. Not mentioned in the list above was the unofficial SkiFinCon trip to South Lake Tahoe, which I tacked on a night in Vegas and a night in Reno beforehand, and two nights in the Dallas/Fort Worth area on my way home to Florida.

I also made two road-trips to visit my parents in Indiana. Dad had spinal fusion surgery in July, and we thought it would be a good idea for me to be there for his first few days of recovery. But as it turned out, he was up and walking 5 miles before breakfast 2 days post-op. I also made a second trip at Thanksgiving, since I didn’t think I would want to make that kind of drive in December (and it’s snowing 12+ inches up North as I type this). Good call, Josh!

Retirement accounts

With my paycheck that arrives this week, I will officially max out my 457(b) plan for the very first time. Last year I was close, but those darn 24 cents kept me from getting the full $19,000 in there. I also made sure to contribute my $6,000 in Roth IRA contributions in early January, which happened to backfire this year since I put that full amount into a REIT index fund which lost a huge chunk of value when Covid-19 wrecked commercial real estate values and rents. No worries, I figured other index funds would recover more quickly, so I transferred the $5,237 that remained into the Vanguard Total International Index fund and I’m at $5,997 (plus September dividends that were reinvested into 1.172 shares now worth $37.67) with those dollars. Hooray, slightly above where I started in January with my 2020 Roth dollars – $6,034!

Credit Cards

I did indeed finish up my minimum spending on the Chase business card, and I got a couple referrals to friends on Twitter. And then Chase closed all of my personal and business credit cards. I transferred out some of my points (to Hyatt and Southwest) then cashed out over $3,000 in Ultimate Rewards to pad my Emergency Fund as the pandemic was beginning. I also called and recovered the annual fees from 3 of the cards, netting an additional $694 to help buffer against potential loss of income.

Income

The only loss of income I actually saw this year was the elimination of overtime, which we had previously been permitted to work as much as we wanted. Our workload didn’t actually drop any – we’re still setting new permit records – we’re just expected to do more work for less money. This is a primary reason I have been considering leaving my job sometime in 2021.

I was eligible for the full $1,200 stimulus payment back in April/May timeframe, but since I was suddenly flush with cash, I didn’t need that money. I quickly donated $300 to the ChooseFI International Foundation, a registered 501(c)3 that was ramping up efforts to help parents suddenly forced into accidental homeschoolers. The CARES Act allows a $300 Above-the-line charitable deduction on your 2020 taxes, so please consider giving this season before the calendar runs out.

I wound up donating nearly as much in 2020 as I did in 2019, and that was with the big reduction in overtime pay. By late November, my performance review raise kicked in, so I should end the year slightly under last year’s total income, although a 27^th paycheck arrives on December 31^st that would otherwise be paid on January 1, but the banks are closed for New Years, so the artificial total will be slightly higher because of 2 extra pay-weeks.