2024 Year in Review
Overall 2024 has been a great year for my family. We went on some amazing vacations and saw a 23% return on our stock market investments. Our FIRE plan is continuing to go faster than we ever imagined, and I’m so excited to help other families along their path to success.
My family started pursuing FIRE in 2020 during the pandemic. I also started a Facebook group back in 2020 to stay motivated and share our journey with other like minded friends and family members. This year in 2024 I am happy to announce that I launched my very own website and blog FIRE for Families! I hope this is just the start to helping many more families and young adults achieve their financial goals as well.
We met our savings goals for the year. Putting away money in our 401k and IRA’s. We started the year with $1,000,000 invested and ended the year with $1,300,000 invested. Our stock market returns (23%) have well exceeded our yearly contributions at this point. In the beginning most of our growth was from our own contributions. Now just 5 years later and our retirement contributions are overshadowed by our stock market returns.
Personally we had a great year and enjoyed lots of time together as a family. We spent 8 weeks in Poland visiting with my husband’s family. We also visited Gdansk, Poland for the first time and loved every minute of our stay there.
We took a road trip with my sister and her family. We started from the Midwest traveled to New York, Maine, through Canada, and back home. It was amazing to see the rising and falling tides of the ocean in Maine. We also loved our time in Quebec City, Canada it is beautiful. Of course we also stopped at Niagara Falls to see the fireworks and rainbow lights on the falls.
Pursuing FIRE has opened up more opportunities for us to take vacations with our children and spend time with them. Before FIRE my husband and I both worked 9-5 jobs with little vacation time. Now we have started our own consulting business and are able to travel and take time off with our kids as needed.
My 1.5 year mini retirement ended this year. I have now stepped back into consulting with my husband while our youngest child attends preschool. I have zero regrets about taking time off for my family. I am so thankful for the freedom FIRE has provided us and for the opportunities I didn’t even know existed.
My husband and I are currently making our 2025 goals and hoping this new year is just as good to us as 2024 has been!
