Freed by 50

2025 we hardly knew you. Somehow it’s been both an incredibly long year, and it’s gone bye too fast. I feel like summer happened before I even registered what was going on. And even though we ticked all the boxes for fun fall activities, it was over in a blink.

This is going to be an interesting goal review because having just read my post from the beginning of the year, I missed on a lot this year. Goals are meant to be aspirational, and if you find you’re always hitting your goals, you need loftier goals. However I didn’t think I aimed too high and still whiffed on quite a bit.

I’m not going to be too harsh on myself, though. Goals are a tool to help us in life, but we still have a life to live, and I had a ton of fun this year. I think my kids won’t have anything to complain about when they think about 2025, and although we focused on little trips this year, there’s a big one coming up in early 2026 that will blow their little minds.

Financially, I had one of my best earning years ever. I honestly expected it to be down from last year, but I cashed out a lot of company stock before it took a downturn and I’m very fortunate to have done so. When I ran my final net worth calculation of the year, I was shocked to see my net worth has gone up $445k in 2025! It’s also a $160k jump over last year’s $285k increase, and last year absolutely blew my mind. To put that in perspective, that’s a greater increase in one year than my total net worth after my first six years of tracking. As I pointed out in my Escape Velocity post, the majority of this increase was driven by stock gains, not my own contributions, and I didn’t change the value of my house in the equation this year.

This was the whole reason I created this blog in the first place. If you’re new here, or even if you’ve been following along the whole time, this is what late stage financial independence looks like on paper. Year over year gains…and yes, losses too…can be really big numbers. This year I’m fortunate enough to be looking at a huge gain, and hopefully I’ll see a few more of those in the next few years to help reach my goal. At the same time, I’m starting to look at asset allocation as I’m about to be three years to 50, and sooner or later I’ll have to move away from 100% equities.

Now, on to the goals review!

• Pay off my car – Failed – Technically I still have time to decide if I want to do this, but the car loan is down to $12k and I had some unexpected expenses come up around the holidays. I don’t want to go too low on cash right now, so I may let this run until February.
• Reach the next stage of FI – Failed – While I did get to a point where my investments are earning more than I can afford to contribute, the majority of my contributions go into my retirement accounts and not my pretax account. I am “only” 40k shy of the goal, which means I got 2/3 of the way there in 2025, but I’ll need to hit that $650k number to check this one off the list.
• Write a book – Miserably Failed – I didn’t take even a single step towards this goal. No excuses, it just wasn’t a priority with my primary job in flux.
• Start a YouTube – Failed Again – At least I did take the time to write out over two dozen topics and start putting together episode frameworks, but I didn’t create a single video. It’s not that I want to have the whole thing sketched out before I start, but I do want at least a handful of episodes ready so I can start with some momentum.
• Find a new job – Failed – It wasn’t for lack of trying. I applied to a lot of internal roles and a handful of external roles. Although I’m being picky about what I want to do, so are hiring managers. I didn’t get a single callback or even feedback on my applications. On the upside, my job feels a little more safe than it did a few months ago, and I seem to have a decent new manager. Still, I need to be prepared and keep looking.
• Complete Dry January – Success – Despite my job trying to drive me straight to a bar, this was completed as successfully as I could expect (I ended it on the last days of January). I can’t say it did or didn’t do anything for me. I wound up avoiding social situations for three weeks of the month. I didn’t notice any change in my sleep, mood, physical characteristics or overall health. While I established that yes, I can not drink for a month, I think “all or nothing” is a bit over the top. Although it’s healthy to not drink for a whole month, it’s also unhealthy to avoid friends in one of the more depressing weather months of the year.
• Find the Others – Success(?) – One person. I found one person who thinks in a different direction than the others. We’ve become pretty good friends, but I don’t get to hang out with them as often as I’d like. Still, finding people who look at the world differently is difficult and I didn’t expect to stumble into a group of them.
• Book more trips – Major Success – We focused on a lot of little trips this year. We drove to beach vacations, amusement parks, indoor water parks and a lot more. One non-trip that I’ll throw in here is that I hosted a backyard hibachi party for my high school friends and their families. I hired the chef and did all of the theming, and even convinced a friend to fly up from Texas for the party. Although we didn’t go anywhere, having staff for the party to help serve and clean up made it feel like a vacation at my own house, and even now almost five months later everyone still talks about it.

Looking at my personal life in 2025, I spent a lot of time with friends and my immediate family, and had a lot of really fun times with them. I didn’t get to see my extended family much at all, which has become a sad reality of life and maybe something I should look to address in 2026. I can’t think of any personal growth I did over the last 12 months, and that’s hugely disappointing. This will definitely have to be addressed in the coming year.

My work life was one of the most confusing years of my career. I had the second most lucrative year of my career. My job was in flux for the entire year, and from a “get things done” perspective, I got very little done. As a people manager, though, I probably worked harder to keep the team going and keep their morale up than I ever have before. Even now I’m not sure how to view this year. On one hand, it feels like a completely lost year in my career, but somehow I got paid a ton of money for it. At this point, I could probably coast like this for two, even three years, but as an ambitious person it would drive me insane.

If I take a step back and think of my life as a movie, if I were watching the movie, right now I’d be screaming “Quit your damn job!” and “Get healthy!” So, as I consider my goals for 2026 these are going to be a focus.