Can you believe it’s nearly the end of 2024? 🤯 

It’s truly been an eventful year in business and life. I’ll be sharing my annual review with you in the next couple editions.

Today, in 5 minutes or less, you’ll learn:

• 🤑 5 financial moves I'm making before 2025 hits

• 🏡 Why I'm reducing my real estate allocation in the coming year

• 📋️ Download your own year-end financial review checklist

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📋️ My 2024 Year-End Financial Checklist

Are you financially ready for the new year?

At the end of 2023, I shared my EOY financial checklist.

This is a comprehensive checklist that anyone can use to go from feeling lost to confident in their financial plan heading into the new year. 🎉 

This year, I’m going to shake it up.

In this edition, I’m going to deep dive into the financial checklist items I’m personally actioning before January 1, 2025.

Here are 5 examples of items on my list:

1. Review my 2024 savings and investment (target: 30%+ of my annual income)

2. Plan my 2025 529 and family sinking fund contributions (target: $25k 529, $10k family)

3. Rebalance investment portfolio (target: decrease my real estate allocation from 20% to 15% in 2025)

4. Calculate my rough 2024 tax bill (target: complete 2024 tax calculations and adjustments)

5. Research life insurance policies (target: buy one in Q1 2025)

Let’s get into it:

1/ Review 2024 savings and investment contributions 📊

In the past, while I was a full-time tech worker, I regularly saved and invested 40%+ of my income.

In 2024, as a self-employed business owner, my income fluctuated a lot depending on the month.

So I didn’t auto-invest and haven’t kept track of my investment contribution %.

My action item:

I asked myself: did I save and invest at least 30% of my annual income?

After crunching the numbers, I looked at:

1. My business take-home pay: salary (after payroll tax) + distributions

2. Investment contributions (public equities)

3. Savings contributions (529, emergency, honeymoon, family)

This was a challenge to analyze because I don’t track my spending religiously anymore and mix finances with my wife. But I landed on a rough calculation.

At the end of the day, I invested ~35% of my take-home pay (1) this year.

On top of that, I also contributed to various sinking funds. So not too shabby.

In result:

✅ Saved and invested over 30% of my income in 2024

2/ Plan 2025 contributions for 529 and sinking funds 🔖