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:
- Review my 2024 savings and investment (target: 30%+ of my annual income)
- Plan my 2025 529 and family sinking fund contributions (target: $25k 529, $10k family)
- Rebalance investment portfolio (target: decrease my real estate allocation from 20% to 15% in 2025)
- Calculate my rough 2024 tax bill (target: complete 2024 tax calculations and adjustments)
- 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:
- My business take-home pay: salary (after payroll tax) + distributions
- Investment contributions (public equities)
- 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 🔖
In 2024, my wife and I opened up a 529 savings account (for college expenses) and converted a joint business fund into a family sinking fund.
Rationale:
- 529 College Savings Plan: This is a backup plan. It’s a longer post for another time, but we don’t know if our kid would go to college, let alone in the US (where I’m from), Australia (where my wife is from), or another country. We also prefer for our kid to grow up with the expectation to pay for college themselves (this was my wife’s experience). Hence, our 529 goal is to create optionality.
- Family Sinking Fund: Used for starting up a family. Our current plan is to spend this outside of the US.
My action item:
Going forward, we plan to contribute more to these funds in anticipation of starting a family over the next couple years.
For 2025, I wanted to create targets based on what we value, our short-term financial situation, and long-term goals.
In result:
✅ Created targets for 2025 contributions (between me and my wife):
- 529: $25k
- Family Fund: $10k
This is on top of what we have already saved in these accounts.
3/ Rebalance investment portfolio 📈
Every year, I review my asset allocation, what assets to top-up (if needed), and if I want to sell any assets for tax loss harvesting purposes.
Asset allocation is one of the most crucial factors of my investing approach.
My action item:
Overall, I’m relatively happy with my current asset allocation (with the exception of real estate):
- ~15% cash
- ~60% public equities
- ~20% real estate/REITs
- ~5% high-risk (angel/crypto)
After researching, I’m aiming to reduce my allocation to real estate from 20% to 15% over the next year for a few reasons:
- I’m skeptical that US residential real estate will continue to see the massive boom of the last 10 years.
- Commercial real estate is also struggling due to post-pandemic shifts in hybrid/remote work and higher interest rates.
- With that said, I’m still keeping some of my real estate allocation due to its inflation hedge, passive income, and long-term growth in certain markets.
As I recoup from REITs/funds, I plan to reallocate mainly into long-term equities.
In result:
✅ Rebalanced my portfolio for 2025 (reducing RE from 20% to 15%)
4/ Analyze last-minute tax scenarios 🏦
This is the super fun number stuff for tax nerds.
My goal here is to estimate my tax bill and identify any overlooked benefits I can take advantage of.
My action item:
For 2024, I’m reviewing various tax items like:
- Foreign Earned Income Exclusion (calculate my taxes after taking FEIE)
- Tax-deductible retirement accounts including Solo401k (calculate my eligible contributions)
- S-Corp payroll and self-employment tax (calculate my last payroll for EOY)
- Roth conversions (calculate how much I can convert while minimizing tax)
- Business expenses (pre-paying by converting monthly to annual plans)
In result
✅ Calculated rough estimates on my 2024 tax bill
✅ Executed final adjustments to my eligible retirement contributions, S-Corp payroll, Roth conversions, and business expenses
5/ Research life insurance 👨👩👧
For the past few years, I admit that life insurance (and estate planning) has been on my backburner.
However, now since my wife and I are planning on starting a family, I know that it’s time I finally kick it into gear. No more procrastination.
My action item
Given that I’m a US expat, I’m currently researching US-based life insurance plans that extend to overseas Americans.
This will require me to collect life insurance quotes, reach out on eligibility for overseas Americans, compare 2-3 options, and then pull the trigger.
In result
✅ Started researching into life insurance options using this marketplace; will close the loop in Q1 2025
👉️ Download my Financial Checklist
Want my full EOY financial checklist?
Use this comprehensive checklist to run through your own finances.
Start 2025 with confidence:
In Summary
The EOY Financial Review is an illuminating exercise to do in December.
The best part is anyone can do it.
Here are 5 items I reviewed in my EOY review:
- Review my 2024 savings and investments
- Plan my 2025 529 and family sinking fund contributions
- Rebalance investment portfolio
- Calculate my rough 2024 tax bill
- Research life insurance policies
Want to try it yourself?
Download my EOY Financial Checklist—and give it a go before new years strikes.
You stand to gain a lot of financial clarity and confidence stepping into 2025.
🌐 Beyond your borders
🔢 Matt Levine had this amazing take on the model of Harvard Business Model. He references this Business Insider article on how the most sought-after job at Harvard, Stanford and Wharton is running a plumbing company in Jackson, Mississippi.
🧑🏫 Steve Meking is a 36-year-old who quit 6-figure Wall Street job—now earning $1,000 an hour from his tutoring. My takeaway: Sounds high, but depends on the subject matter. I like how he transparently shared his two income sources: a NY-based contracting firm and his private tutoring business (mainly SAT/ACT test prep).
🧠 Social snippets
He hired for Netflix, Uber, and Google. This was his biggest self-professed mistake.
We served nearly 90 paid students this year 🔥
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