I’d like to start off with a little backstory on everything occurred, but if you want to just look at the financial section, scroll down to the bottom!

2020 was not an easy year for anyone, and despite not liking to “one-up” people on suffering, I feel like certain members of the military had it much rougher than the rest of the regular (and especially non-first-responder) public. People got stuck on deployments for extra months, those stationed overseas faced much harsher lock downs than the US, seeing family and friends less due to the imposed commander directed restrictions and many other rules and regulations made this year quite tough despite the mission still having to continue.

I did have to face some of those challenges myself as well, although I saw many others having a rougher time than I did. For a quick summary, I deployed in January for what should have been 6 months. My wife stayed in Italy with the plan of going to visit her family and friends in the spring when the weather got a little nicer. As my extension to stay at Aviano got approved, we decided to look for a house closer to the work place and put in a tenative move out day around the 4th of July, which we picked due to the long weekend, me definitely being home despite the usual 1-2 week extensions, and having nice weather to actually do everything…

Needless to say, none of that happened. I got stuck at my deployment for 8 months. My wife was not even allowed to travel to work for some time due to the restrictions in Italy (as it was one of the hardest hit countries in the beginning), let alone go back to the US. We put in our notice to move just before everything kicked off (we were told Italy requires a 6 months notice to the LL if you don’t want to get hit with fees), so we were still on the hook for that – despite the fact that all PCSes were frozen, so nobody was moving out of their houses. My wife did end up somehow finding a great place with literally days to spare, and moved the entire house on her own (along with a couple people we hired to move the heavier stuff + drive the moving truck).

I got home as everything was coming back to normal. We took a multi-day trip to Florence, a day trip to Venice, and made plans for some more travel. Another couple of weeks later, the cases started rising again and Italy was getting shut down. My wife fell sick (and was tested positive to the virus), so we were both on house arrest for roughly a month. As the holidays came closer, Italy made an additional decree basically prohibiting all travel for the holidays with a ton of restrictions of having people over or going out to someone’s house, so here we are today, about to ring in the New Year by ourselves with some Prosecco and a view of the alps… I did get the “present” of finding out I got promoted, so along with that we still have each other and besides the usual muscle aches, our health, so we’re not complaining too much.

Despite this being an awful year for any kind of mental and social health, 2020 was a GREAT year for our finances, so we try to focus on that when we try and come up with the positives of 2020.

FINANCE REVIEW OF 2020 STARTS HERE

Both of our rent houses were fully rented (and paid for) for the entire year. Although there were some late payments from one of the tenants, both families kept their jobs and did not have any issues making full payments each month. This was the first full year we had no issues from our houses (outside of some minor maintenance)!

My current equity total for both houses is roughly $57K. With COVID going on, we saw many SFHs rise in value in the area. Both houses appreciated by no less than $10K looking at the comparable houses selling in the area. Although I still owe some on the hard money loan for house #2, I would say $47K in my pocket if I sold both now would be more than conservative.

Since we DID have a few issues in our houses in 2019, I still had the lion’s share left to max out into my Roth for FY2019, which I did and maxed out my 2020 contribution with ease. I currently have the 6K ready to go for next year and am waiting for tomorrow to full send that max immediately as well.

At the end of 2019, my Roth IRA was valued at $58,800.05. My balance now is $85,209.91. I did contribute $11K, but my investment there grew by $15,409!

With the deployment, I threw in the max into the TSP (60%) and was set to max it for the first time year – mission accomplished! My TSP last year totaled $35,477.50. My current balance is $69,692.84. So even after the $19.5K max, my investments grew there by $14,715.34.

Overall, my retirement accounts saw a gain of just over $30K,
or almost identical to my actual yearly contribution into them!

In addition to the above, I also added $14,820 into my taxable investments, which now has a total of $25,340.10.

Lastly, with the stimulus hitting Tuesday and paying all my current credit card debt, I have $13,892.03 in my savings, with another grand or so on the way for back pay due to my promotion.

I still have the same ~$3-4K in crypto, and may add to this position during the next pullback since it’s obviously not going anywhere, but this is my lowest priority and seen as a fun gamble over playing options.

Of course, my wife has maxed her Roth IRA for the year and is ready to punch the button on Jan 1 for her account as well. We have started dialogue of having her extra income be put aside for a future downpayment once we PCS again, but for the time being, it is her “fun money” for whatever she chooses to do. Luckily for me, she doesn’t like to waste money either and wants to invest it as much as she can past her personal emergency fund. As usual, I do not count her money in my calculations.

In late June, I posted about having a liquid NW of over $100K. Today, I have a liquid NW of over $200K. Adding in my house equity and my semi-collectable car (value has been steadily rising on Bring a Trailer auctions!) my overall NW jumps to roughly $275K.

I got to Aviano with the goal of adding $100K to my overall NW and have nearly doubled that. My new goal for the next 4 years is to get to $500K, which after that should easily get me to $1MM by retirement time (given similar levels of contributions and even at just a 7% market rise), which should have me sitting on (at the least) chubby FIRE after factoring in my pension and VA.

Hope you all have a great 2021!

It is about that time of year where the CFC campaign is starting up, we are bombarded with feel-good holiday movies, and are being preached to “give thanks” and be charitable for those that have less. A few years ago, I would donate here and there to some causes dear to my heart, but in the back of my mind I was always a little stingy and had the belief that it may be best to continue to accumulate wealth now, but give later when I can give more. This mentality was challenged and ultimately overturned during this season a few years ago.

Being Russian, my family never celebrated traditional thanksgiving while I was growing up. Being married to my wife now, who is largely traditional with the holidays and seeing how important it is in general for many Americans, I have largely changed my view on the holiday that was previously just known as “4-5 free days off!”. My first year at Aviano, I hosted thanksgiving for my shop that all of the junior enlisted showed up to. It was a headache – especially for my wife who did 75%+ of the cooking – to put together a meal for 10+ people, but it felt pretty great to make sure my folks did not feel forgotten or ignored. The next year I just recently came home from a deployment, moved shops where there were only NCOs, and my wife and I ultimately decided to take it easy with the cooking. After thanksgiving, we found out that two people living in the dorms on base committed suicide over the weekend due to being alone which, even though nobody was part of my squadron, hit us pretty hard and was the catalyst in making me take on a more charitable mindset both financially, and temporally.

Now, hopefully if you are reading this blog, you are in at least decent financial shape. We have all seen the countless ads/sound bites that most people live paycheck to paycheck and unfortunately that is the truth, especially with how COVID has decimated certain economies. I challenge you to take initiative and help without judgement to at least someone inside or near your circle if you do not give already. For example, a friend of my wife’s was getting short on funds as she works in a heavily impacted COVID industry and had a situation where she was unable to contact a family member due to the cost involved. My wife transferred her $200 with no obligation to pay us back and the kindness we were able to afford brought my wife’s friend to tears. We also ran across a dog in a nearby community that was involved in a hit and run and required surgery and antibiotics during the thanksgiving weekend. We gave 80 euros to support a go fund me the current caretaker posted and got a private response seconds later asking if the extra 0 was in error and if we were sure we wanted to donate that much. We were in shock… 80 euros is THAT much?

Overall, as we build OUR lives and save to maintain that QOL, try to acknowledge that the stability of the military and federal employment puts us in a much more fortunate position than others and consider putting some funds aside to help those that are less fortunate. While donating thousands or more later may seem more impactful than donating a couple hundred now, that couple hundred now does make an immediate and huge difference.