Happy New Year!

I hope the coming year will be happy. I’m still wracked with dread about potential layoffs, I really don’t want another job, or to leave the USA.

The markets in December plunged again, leaving our portfolio about $20k down from stock depreciation since the start of the year, about 8.44% down. Surprisingly, a lot of that in just this month with $19,010 of value being lost. With our portfolio now almost at $500k invested, we’re going to have to get used to these big swings. More to come in the end of year review blog post!

I’m keeping my pre-pension contributions to $1k for January so I can confidently have a minimum of $20k in my bank account for emergencies. In February, these will jump back up to around $8k hopefully. We need to get back on track for that $1m saved goal.

Christmas at Home

December was a good month. It was the first Christmas that my wife and I stayed at home without family and it was a very chilled Christmas. We made a gingerbread house, cooked and ate a lot of food, watched Christmas films and played games on our new PC’s. We’re completely hooked on Raft right now, a survival raft building game.

As I’m sure you’ve seen on the news, there has been some severe weather here in New England. The coldest it got to was -16 degrees celsius in Massachusetts. Sure, this is cold, but it’s nothing like the -37 we had in Sweden for 2 straight months last winter. Americans seem to be afraid of the cold and rain; we’ve still been going on runs, with the addition of some thermals.

We still haven’t tested car camping in this weather yet, but we hope to do so in January before the snow (hopeful snow?) comes.

How was your Christmas?