If you’re like us, you probably thought 2020 was going to be epic (in a good way). We were certainly feeling optimistic when we returned home in January after 10 weeks traveling around Europe and South America. 

The last part of our trip we spent exploring Peru’s Machu Picchu, the Sacred Valley, and Lake Titicaca. Then we wrapped up our journey in the Galapagos Islands, frolicking with giant tortoises and iguanas on beautiful white sand beaches.

When we got home we had all kinds of plans for 2020. On the docket were three weddings (in Marin, Seattle, and New Jersey) and two financial conferences -- the inaugural Financial Freedom Summit (St. Louis) and FinCon20 (Long Beach).

However, as we all know, any plans for 2020 would be waylaid due to COVID-19. To make matters worse, 2020 also gave us out-of-control wildfires on the West Coast, social unrest, and an ugly partisan election year.

While it would be easy to dwell on all the bad stuff that happened during 2020, we wanted to spend some time looking at the positives. 

First of all, we’re still alive and healthy (at least at the time of this writing)! After my near death experience, I cherish all days above ground. Secondly, we actually managed to accomplish quite a bit this year, despite the many limitations from the pandemic. 

Here are 12 glasses of lemonade that we’ve made with all the lemons that 2020 has thrown at us.

 

Projects

One of the biggest keys to a successful FIRE lifestyle is to always be working on interesting and fulfilling projects. We’ve worked on all kinds of projects in the almost six years since we FIRE’d, from planning epic trips to building websites and online courses.

Here are the big projects we tackled in 2020:

 

1. We Wrote a Book!

We had always wanted to become published authors, and we were able to accomplish that goal in 2020. Similar to our journey to FIRE, we stumbled onto this project by accident. A publisher discovered our blog (RetireBy45.com) and reached out to us in late October, 2019 to write a book about FIRE.

They were looking for a fast turnaround of just a couple months, but we were about to leave for our 10-week trip. Fortunately, they really wanted us for this project, so they offered to extend their target publication date for a few months. 

We agreed to deliver the first chapter during our trip, which we completed during our Transatlantic cruise. The end result was our debut book Start Your FIRE: A Modern Guide to Early Retirement.

 

2. Writing our Second Book

After completing Start Your FIRE, we certainly weren’t expecting to turn around and write another book. However, as fate would have it, our publisher liked our writing and asked us if we’d like to take on another project, Investing for Kids. 

At first, we weren’t sure we could write a book geared toward 8-12 year olds since we don’t have children, but I’m really glad we decided to take it on. This book was a lot more challenging than our first one, because we wanted it not only to be educational, but also interesting and fun for kids. We couldn’t be happier or more proud of the final result! We even sold out on Amazon for a couple of days and reached #1 in a couple of different categories!

 

3. Road Trip!

We completed the manuscript for Investing for Kids at the end of June, and we spent July going through the editing process. So, by August, we were starting to feel really antsy and cooped up. By this point, pre-COVID, we would have gone on two additional trips and been prepping for a third.

Although the pandemic was still happening, hospitalization numbers had come down a bit, and we made a calculated decision to do a road trip up to Seattle and back. We did a lot of planning to make it as safe as possible, booking Airbnb’s where we would have the entire place to ourselves, and spending most of our trip outdoors in nature.

The end result was a wonderful two-week getaway. We drove along the Pacific coast on the way up, spent some time in the Seattle area with friends, met some other friends in Portland, and visited a variety of amazing national parks. We even purchased an annual Parks pass so that we can spend more time exploring our vast National Parks system!

 

4. Declutter Challenge

At the beginning of December, Allison decided to give me a very unique Christmas present. Anyone who knows Allison, knows that she is a bit of a hoarder. This is something that was ingrained in her by her parents, who developed something of a scarcity mindset from their immigrant parents.

While there’s a positive side to keeping items that you might need in the future, it can get out of hand. So, Allison’s gift to me was to take on a Declutter Challenge for the 12 days of Christmas. She had to give away one thing on Day 1, two things on Day 2, and so on through Day 12. By the end, she gave away over 78 items.

At first, I wasn't sure if Allison would be able to keep up with this challenge to the very end. Silly me. I should have known that once she puts her mind to something, there is no stopping her!  

The end result was getting rid of tons of stuff that we had hiding in our closets, pantry, and storage room. It was such a great feeling! She’s even motivated to go through our separate storage unit in 2021. You can check out her progress on our Instagram account.

 

Health

If there’s one thing the pandemic has taught us, it’s that your health and fitness are so vitally important. It’s not just about avoiding the coronavirus. You also want to make sure you’re keeping your body and mind as healthy as possible.

Here is how we’ve been maintaining our health this year:

 

5. Keeping up Our Workouts

Many people have succumbed to the “Quarantine 15” -- gaining 15 pounds during the pandemic. We didn’t want this to happen to us, so we made sure to find ways to continue working out as best we could.

Our building’s gym closed, then opened, and then closed again due to our county’s health guidelines. So we had to improvise by stocking our living space with some basic equipment to maintain our fitness: yoga mats, exercise bands, and weights. Allison likes diversity with her workouts, so I created eight different routines utilizing the equipment we have (plus bodyweight exercises).

(Note: for weights, we used giant cans of fruits and mixed veggies we bought from a local restaurant supply store back in March, and then an adjustable weight kettlebell). 

We also have access to our building’s swimming pool for swimming laps. While swimming in cold weather is not really Allison’s thing, I’ve committed to swimming three days per week. 

 

6. Getting Outside

One of the simplest ways to improve your mood and mental state is to get outside into nature. We make a point of walking every single day for at least an hour. Fortunately, living in Northern California provides us with nice weather year-round and beautiful scenic areas to explore just beyond our front door.

If at all possible, try to make it a habit to get outside every day. Walking is a great form of exercise, sunshine provides natural Vitamin D, and it feels great to get out into nature and breathe fresh air.

 

7. Home Cookin’

Allison has always been our home chef, but she’s stepped it up quite a bit during our shelter-in-place. Normally, we would go out to eat a couple times per week, but restaurants in the Bay Area have been shut down for most of the pandemic, except for take-out. We have been trying to support our local restaurants by ordering food to go and tipping generously, but all the take out packaging made us a little uncomfortable.

The bright side is that Allison does an amazing job of making meals that are both delicious and nutritious. Fortunately, we have access to great local ingredients. We get our produce from our local Chinatown, which brings in fresh fruits and vegetables daily from nearby farms. 

You can purchase great produce relatively inexpensively at ethnic stores. If you don’t know what something is, take a picture and do a reverse image search to find out what it is and a recipe to use it in!

To make sure we eat a diverse and healthy diet, Allison created a spreadsheet to keep track of all of our meal planning.

 

Connecting

Human beings are social animals, and the pandemic has made it all but impossible to connect with our fellow humans. We can’t meet up with friends, hug our family members, or even shake anyone’s hands.

We fully respect all COVID-19 guidelines, so we too have not been able to fully connect with other people. However, we have found some ways to make a few connections during this crazy time.

 

8. Zoom Calls

Like everyone else, we’ve had to embrace Zoom calls in lieu of getting together in person. We’ve used them for family calls on Thanksgiving and Christmas, for FIRE meetups, and for catching up with friends. Allison had a regular call with old high school classmates for a while. We even made some friends in the FIRE community, first meeting them online and then connecting with them in person. 

While it’s not the same as in-person get togethers, it’s certainly better than becoming a hermit and completely detaching from friends and family. If you don’t like Zoom, you can try alternative video-conferencing tools like Google Meet (formerly Hangouts), FaceTime, or Skype. There’s even a platform that looks like an 80’s video game called Gather.town!

 

9. Helping Our Neighbors

We live in a very diverse building of 134 units with people from all phases of life. Many of our neighbors are seniors, so when the pandemic hit, Allison and I decided we would do what we could to help them.

We figured one of the best ways we could be of assistance was to go grocery shopping for those at high-risk of catching the virus. Every two weeks or so we send out an alert to about 10-15 people asking if they need anything. We figure we’re going shopping for ourselves anyway, so we might as well get stuff for vulnerable seniors while we’re out.

It’s been a rousing success. Our neighbors are thrilled that we’re able to help them, and it feels good for us to be able to do something good for others. And we even get the occasional homemade batch of cookies, pies, or soups in return for our efforts!

 

10. Virtual Conferences

We were really looking forward to attending two FIRE-related conferences in 2020. It was going to be the first year for the Financial Freedom Summit in St. Louis; we were excited to meet up with our FIRE tribe! And FinCon, which we had attended the previous two years in Orlando and Washington DC, was going to be on our side of the country in Long Beach, CA.

Fortunately, the organizers for both conferences realized early on that the in-person events weren’t going to happen and moved them online. While it’s impossible to get the same benefits from a virtual summit, you can still gain some valuable knowledge and connections virtually. We got access to a number of interesting and informative video presentations, and we were able to connect with like-minded money nerds via Slack and other chat tools.

 

Finances

In addition to the impact of lives lost, the COVID-19 pandemic has also had a devastating effect on many people’s financial lives. After a rapid and steep decline in the stock market in March, we have started seeing a K-shaped recovery period, which has caused an even greater disparity between the haves and have-nots.

Here’s how we reacted to the financial events of 2020:

 

11. Followed our Investment Strategy

Fortunately, this wasn’t our first rodeo. We were heavily invested in the stock market in 2008-2009 when the Great Recession reduced our holdings by about 50%. So, when the markets plummeted in March, we knew not to panic. 

In our retirement accounts, we saw that our stock funds were taking a beating, while our bond funds held steady (which is what they’re designed to do). Our asset allocation, which we have set to be 60-65% stock and 30-35% bonds (moderately aggressive), started to get out of whack with 50-55% stocks and 40-45% bonds.

[Note: the other 5% is in other investments like REITs and Precious Metals.]  

Normally, we would have just waited it out, but we decided on a different approach. In keeping with our investment strategy, we sold shares in our bond fund (VBTLX) and purchased additional shares of stock (VTSAX) to bring us back to our 60/35 asset allocation. Eventually our holdings not only recovered, but we ended up with a nice return for the year.

Here is a snapshot of the performance of a portion of our investment portfolio in 2020. These holdings consist of about 70% stocks and 30% bonds. You can see it was down by almost $200k in March, but rebounded and ended up $200k by year end.

This is a great learning experience for newer investors. Never panic when bear markets emerge, which they always will eventually. Just know that the markets will always recover, so you’re better off not trying to time them or overreact to them. Create your investment strategy and stick to it! It may feel like the sky is falling and your money is gone for forever, but if you stay the course, you will inevitably come out ahead. 

 

12. We Gave Money Away, Gratefully

We realize that we’re very fortunate to be doing well during this crazy time, so we wanted to be a little more generous this year. Knowing that many people are going hungry, we made a sizable donation to our local food bank. Nobody should have to go hungry, especially when it’s not your fault that a pandemic may have taken away your job and livelihood.

Check to see what organizations in your community can help those less fortunate.

Additionally, we made sure to contribute generously to the Holiday bonus program for our building staff. They worked tirelessly all year to make sure our building was safe, clean, and secure while juggling kids, families, and online school. 

And lastly, we donated to a number of organizations to help get the vote out during this election cycle. We feel it’s vitally important for our democracy to ensure everyone has the right and ability to select their local and national representatives.

 

What’s Next?

Now that we are about to put 2020 in the books, we can start looking forward to 2021. I think it’ll start off slow, but once the majority of the population gets their COVID-19 vaccination, we’ll be able to start opening up businesses and activities again.

We are very much looking forward to getting back to normalcy. We’ll definitely get vaccinated as soon as it’s available to us. If possible, we’re hoping to get to one of the weddings that was postponed from 2020 (Allison’s younger sister).

Once we get the green light to start traveling again, we will continue working on our “60 by 60” goal (visiting 60 countries by the age of 60). We have 30 more to go in the next 10 years, so we need to get going soon!

What are your goals for 2021?