Hello dear readers. Long time, no write.
This post was written way back in March but I have been struggling with the risk vs reward side of putting so much personal information out into the public. The reward being: sharing information that may help others or others may relate to and not feel alone in the journey but the risk being: increased risk of being personally identified and targeted for phishing or other cyber attacks or being sued by someone who took any of my personal path as advice, despite the disclaimers. For any other bloggers or public figures, especially in the financial space, that are reading this, I’d love to hear your thoughts on how you cope with this.
Anyway, I’m continually being nudged to not be driven by fear and as I’m feeling brave this morning – here is a look back at 2025 and a catch-up on where life has taken us. It is another long one, so please feel free to skip around.
I have read (and been told in therapy) that looking back and taking stock of how far you have come can strengthen resilience, motivation and meaning. When I started listing the milestones, I realized this had not been a quiet year at all.
It was a recalibration.
Table of Contents
Wheel of Life Exercise
In an effort to break the milestones into categories I was reminded of the wheel of life coaching tool. The idea is that you rank your current satisfaction with each of these areas:
- Health & Emotional Wellbeing: Feeling strong, energized, and emotionally regulated—body and mind in harmony.
- Career & Meaningful Work: Work that challenges, engages, and aligns with your values without draining you.
- Money, Security, Time Freedom & Rest: Financial resources and personal time that give freedom, choice, and peace of mind.
- Family, Parenting, Friendships & Community: Deep, supportive connections that nourish and sustain your relationships.
- Partnership / Love: A supportive, loving relationship where shared life feels balanced and safe.
- Home & Environment: A physical space that feels comfortable, inspiring, and like a personal sanctuary.
- Fun, Joy & Play: Regular delight, creativity, and playful experiences that energize your life.
- Personal Growth & Learning: Developing skills, insight, and self-knowledge to live more intentionally.
- Spirituality / Meaning: Living with purpose, alignment, and a sense of connection beyond the everyday.
I thought it would be interesting to do a retrospective comparison of how the year started vs how it’s going now.
I’ll share by comparisons per category below and then go into some detail for each category to summarise the year and why the values have changed.
The scale for each of these is here:
1. Health & Emotional Wellbeing
- 1: Drained, anxious, body and mind feel unsafe
- 5: Functioning, but stress and energy dips are frequent
- 10: Energized, balanced, emotionally resilient, and at ease in your body
2. Career & Meaningful Work
- 1: Misaligned, draining, or purely obligation-driven
- 5: Competent and steady, but effort-heavy or emotionally taxing
- 10: Engaging, autonomous, and fulfilling work that aligns with values
3. Money, Security, Time Freedom & Rest
- 1: Constant worry about money or no control over your time
- 5: Stable but occasional stress or time scarcity
- 10: Financially secure with plenty of personal time and freedom
4. Family, Parenting, Friendships & Community:
- 1: Isolated, disconnected, or strained relationships
- 5: Regular contact, some support, but patchy or shallow connections
- 10: Deep, reliable, and nourishing relationships with family and friends
5. Partnership / Love
- 1: Disconnected, conflict-heavy, or emotionally unsafe
- 5: Functional, with effort required to maintain harmony
- 10: Supportive, loving, and balanced partnership built on trust and presence
6. Home & Environment
- 1: Chaotic, uncomfortable, or uninspiring space
- 5: Comfortable and functional, but not fully aligned with needs
- 10: Sanctuary-like, inspiring, and deeply supportive of life and mood
7. Fun, Joy & Play
- 1: Life feels dull, obligatory, or joyless
- 5: Occasional enjoyment, but inconsistent or limited
- 10: Regular delight, playfulness, and experiences that energize and inspire
8. Personal Growth & Learning
- 1: Avoiding self-reflection or learning
- 5: Actively developing, but inconsistent or effortful
- 10: Consistently growing, learning, and living intentionally from insight
9. Spirituality / Meaning
- 1: Feeling disconnected, purposeless, or unaligned
- 5: Thinking about meaning, sometimes acting on values
- 10: Purposeful, aligned, and connected to a sense of larger meaning
Here is the comparison between Jan 2025 and Dec 2025 across each category.
The average across all categories for Jan was 6.6 vs 8.9 in Dec, a solid 2 point increase. Not bad for a 12 month timeframe. Read on for the rationale behind each of the scores and the reasons for the growth.
Key highlights from the year
- We bought our dream home!
- We grew our family with 2 kittens!
- I celebrated a milestone birthday!
- I moved into a new role in AI
- I prioritised joy
- I grew personally and spiritually
- I ended the year feeling healthier, more grounded and more regulated.
Money highlights
- We saved a meaningful portion of our down payment from current income, reducing how much we had to withdraw from investments.
- I maximized my available retirement contribution room.
- We earned several thousand dollars by moving cash between competitive savings offers while it waited to be used.
- Our net worth remained broadly steady through a major home purchase and a turbulent market.
- I experimented with Bitcoin and received a fairly expensive reminder that boring investing is still the best path to wealth.
Health & Emotional Wellbeing (2 → 8)
This was the biggest growth area.
Health scares
In Jan, I’m not exaggerating when I say, I thought I was dying, hence the 2 rating. It felt like my body was systemically and systematically shutting down. I had a page long list of symptoms that continued to grow each week. I was convinced something was seriously wrong. Mr. MH and I had conversations about what would happen if I died and contemplated putting life decisions on hold until we knew more. We were travelling at the time and I considered coming home early to try and get in to see a doctor. Another suspicion was that it was perimenopause.
Long story short – it was a vitamin D deficiency!
Once that was identified and I began supplementing, nearly all of the symptoms improved within a couple of weeks.
Don’t look back in anger
I looked back at my last 2 full blood workups from the past 5 years and not one checked my vitamin D, despite the fact that 96-98% of Irish residents are deficient. I also wondered whether earlier life stages, including pregnancy and extended breastfeeding, had contributed to depleted stores.
I fully suspect that the root of my earlier physical and mental health issues which caused me to take 18 months off work and essentially move back to Canada, were also linked to this, though possibly not entirely. This was a major financial hit, both from lost income and the cost of a cross-continent move.
While I am angry and feel let down by the medical system, I also feel it led me to a period of accelerated growth and spiritual awakening and has landed me where I need to be for this chapter of our lives. Evidenced by a full 2 point average increase across all categories of life satisfaction in less than 12 months.
Another thing to watch
Later in the year, another health concern led to follow-up imaging. The findings looked reassuring, but one area could not be fully characterized and needs to be monitored. That brought another wave of fear.
Fitness
Fitness wise, I maintained the weight I had worked to lose the previous year, even after falling out of a consistent workout habit. Daily walks, summer paddleboarding and spending more time outdoors helped. I do need to up my game here though in terms of strength training and getting back into walking which are goals for the remainder of the year.
Mental Health
As you can imagine, the year began with a great deal of fear and uncertainty.
As it progressed, I put a lot of energy into personal and spiritual growth: reading, meditation, therapy, nervous-system regulation and learning to work with the boundaries of my neurodivergence rather than constantly trying to override them.
I can honestly say I have never been in a better headspace.
It is wild how much can change in a year.
Career & Meaningful Work (8 → 9)
The year started at an 8 as I like my job, the people I work with and feel valued and well paid. While we were travelling and I was having inner turmoil about my health, I also interviewed for a new role in my company, ‘cause why not do everything all at once. I got offered and accepted the role which came with an unexpected and hefty pay rise. I officially started the role in Feb and spent the year finding my feet. The role is in the AI space which has been an interesting learning journey for me. I will likely write another post specifically on what I’ve learned so far.
I ended the year at a 9. I enjoy the work, the challenge and the learning, and I was able to preserve a reduced workweek which I need to manage my energy and quality of life.
The missing point is meaning. The work is interesting, but it does not always feel connected to the contribution I ultimately want to make. For now, though, it gives me financial stability, room to learn and space to explore what meaningful work might look like in the future.
Home & Environment (7 → 10)
The house hunt
We’ve been looking at houses since before we moved home, I was getting 2-3 emails daily with new houses in different areas. We had a certain price range in mind for the max we wanted to spend in the area. Last summer, we got an estimate for building a house both via prefab and local contractor. It was a reality check. We shifted our expectations and while we were travelling last Dec, I was scouring the map view for the area we were hoping for and came across a house we had overlooked before due to the price. Given our reality check, now the price didn’t seem so high for what it was. It also ticked almost all of both of our wish lists. I spent last Christmas daydreaming, going to bed each night visualising ourselves living there and mentally decorating with Pinterest boards.
We contacted the sellers, viewed it shortly after returning home, signed contracts a month later and moved in 5 months later.
Serendipity and synchronicities
The house had been for sale for over a year with different realtors – the price was high for the area. It had been officially sold to another couple but they broke the contract and bought in the city instead. While the sellers could have legally pursued them for breaking the contract, they felt their energy was better spent searching for buyers that actually wanted it.
I really feel the sale fell through because it was meant for us. If you’ve read The Celestine Prophecy, this felt very much like a synchronicity. Synchronicity is the idea that meaningful coincidences appear when you’re aligned with your inner growth, gently guiding you toward the next step you’re meant to take. Right place, right time kind of thing. The idea is, the more you take note of these, the more they start to happen, like the snowball effect.
We are still both delighted with it and I’m grateful every day that I get to live here. It gives us light, space, privacy, nature and access to water, while still keeping family, schools and shops within reach.
Synchronicity number two
In our talks of what we would do with the house, Mr MH. and I had agreed that at some point in the future we’d like to change the flooring from vinyl to hardwood but since they were so new it would be a few years, if ever.
The sellers needed a long closing date as they still needed to find a house to move to themselves, so there was always a risk of something happening between signing and closing. Two months before closing, the sellers contacted us to say the entire ground floor been flooded and all the floors needed to be replaced. Most people would have been upset but to me I actually ran in excited to tell Mr. MH we were going to get our hardwood floors and not even have to pay for it or live through the renovations. This felt very much like another synchronicity.
In the end, the insurance company couldn’t find contractors to do the work in time for closing so we got a bank draft for the repairs and we carried out the renos ourselves. We suspected it would be Christmas before they were completed but we didn’t really need the ground floor so were ok with this. We had hoped to do the work for cheaper and bank the rest but in the end, we managed to use almost all of it but included upgrades to engineered hardwood and new tile including underfloor heating for the tile part so feel it’s worthwhile.
A 10 score
The scale description of a 10 was “sanctuary-like, inspiring and deeply supportive of life and mood.”
That is what this home has become for me.
There will always be another project. But the feeling I have when I look out at the trees or step outside with a cup of tea is “I cannot believe we get to live here.”
Money, Security, Time Freedom & Rest (5 → 8)
I rated this area a 5 at the beginning of the year because, although we were financially stable, I was carrying a great deal of fear—about my health, employment, the markets, the economy and the future of AI.
Financial security looked good on paper. It did not yet feel like safety in my body.
Mortgage roller coaster
When we moved back to Canada, we sold our home and put all of the proceeds into the stock market. We made very decent gains both in the exchange rate and the 18 months we had that money invested. Due to that recency bias, we thought we’d take a chance and leave the money in the market right up until we needed it for a house so we wouldn’t miss out on gains while it sat in cash (knowing this is against sound financial advice!).
After we committed to buying the house, the markets dropped sharply. Our closing timeline also shifted, which meant we needed the money sooner than expected. We had to sell while the portfolio was well below its recent peak, although still above what we had originally invested.
That distinction was both mathematically true and emotionally useless.
On the day we went to sell, before logging on to work, I went to put in the order, the displayed price of our largest holding suddenly appeared to fall by half! I was sick to my stomach, I ran to Mr. MH saying, the value had halved and we wouldn’t have enough to buy the house. I waited until the markets opened to place the order and they had come back up to closer to the original, a glitch it seemed, but my god, it was a test of our resolve.
The other complication was that we were only approved for a small traditional mortgage since I had hardly worked in the year we moved home and the average income for the last 2 years was a lot lower than if I had worked. There were other options for a net worth mortgage but they would have taken more time and had more hoops.
At this time, I had a lot of fear. I was fearful about my health. I was fearful for my job security due to organizational changes. I had fear about the future of the markets due to all the turmoil with our neighbours to the South. I had fear about AI and what that was going to do to the economy.
At the lowest point, this was no longer about returns, it was about safety.
The balancing act
Due to all this, I really wasn’t comfortable having a big mortgage, even though I know that mathematically, long term it makes more sense to have the largest mortgage and invest instead. Because of this, I also didn’t want to liquidate everything and lose out on potential market gains, even though at the time because of everything going on in the US, I really felt unsure about market growth opportunities in the next 5-10 years outweighing mortgage rates. It was a real balancing act with lots of spreadsheet simulations to figure out how much we wanted to put as a downpayment.
In the end, we settled on a downpayment of roughly half the purchase price. We also managed to save a meaningful share of that from current income before closing, which reduced the amount we had to withdraw from the portfolio.
Was it mathematically optimal? Unlikely.
Did it help us sleep better at night? Yes.
Making cash work while we waited
Once we had sold the investments needed for the purchase, we did not want the cash sitting idle. We moved it between two reputable introductory savings offers paying around 5% while we waited for closing. That small amount of admin earned us several thousand dollars.
Saving for income tax
I don’t have taxes withheld through the year, so need to set aside money for income taxes as a lump sum once a year. I found another intro offer for an investment account that offered a 10% match on monthly auto deposits up to a set amount per person, so we setup 2 accounts for both Mr. MH and myself and plan to max them out to get the full match, which reduces what I have to set aside for taxes. In addition, I chose to put it in a TFSA (tax free savings account) and invest it in low-risk bonds to hopefully make another few % (maybe being greedy and risky but we have the 10% match to cushion us – a calculated risk), hopefully this will lower my overall tax bill a little further.
Get rich quick attempt
I really struggled with the drop in net worth psychologically, even though I knew we were not technically at a loss, it was a real hit emotionally, especially with all the other fear that was going on. I decided to take a gamble on a bitcoin ETF and put a large portion of our remaining portfolio in it in an effort to make back some of the “losses”. The standard advice for any 1 stock pick is no more than 5% of your portfolio – I blatantly ignored this because I was reacting to fear and urgency. I initially thought I’d put it in for 3-6 months, make a bit of the net worth back and sell to put it back into less volatile ETF. After only a few weeks I was already up 8%, I thought, oh maybe I will just keep this as a diversification.
Fast forward 6 months and I’m 23% down from where I bought.
I’m not under any pressure to sell so will hang on but consider it a lesson learned. The slow boring path is the best path to consistent success. If I’d left it where it was it would be up 12% in that same timeframe. So, 35% difference, albeit unrealized.
The shift from 5-8
Despite the house purchase, the badly timed sale and my crypto detour, we ended the year modestly ahead of where we had begun. Contributions and market recovery helped, as did saving part of the down payment from income rather than withdrawing all of it from investments.
Our current investment breakdown looks like this:
Looking at Apple’s performance for the year (8.98%) which makes up 28% of our portfolio.
And VUN’s performance for the year (10.85%) which makes up 26% of our portfolio an overall increase of 5% isn’t too far off given we had to sell so much for our downpayment right at the bottom of the charts.
When I did up our expenses for the year, we spent a lot but I feel like it was spent on things we value and even with the increased spend, all going well, we are still 7 years away from full financial independence.
From my spiritual learnings, if you are in a fear mindset, you will attract more fear or lack, if you are in an abundance mindset, you will attract abundance.
I feel like I have shifted out of fear and into abundance. It will be interesting to see what 2026 brings as a result.
Fun, Joy & Play (8 → 9)
One of the messages I got by tapping into my subconscious during a therapy session last year was to do more of what I enjoy. This year I tried to make that a priority.
Play became a form of regulation this year, not something earned or justified, but a way of settling my nervous system, softening rigidity, and reminding my body that it’s safe to relax, explore, and enjoy life.
In Maderia, we met up with friends almost daily to walk, eat and catch up. We ate at restaurants for the majority of the trip.
Throughout the year I went to 3 concerts with friends or family, getting quality time in on top of the joy of music and a healthy dose of nostalgia.
I celebrated a milestone birthday in style, kicked off by going to see Hamilton on tour with a friend, then a family day at the lake, a full spa day with some favourite people at a large outdoor spa and a weekend away with Mr. MH where we got dressed up and went to a Michelin Star restaurant.
I made jigsaw puzzles. I played and finished several video games. I listened to podcasts and read books. I paddleboarded, spent time in nature, cuddled kittens, went to the cinema and shared meals with people I love.
The only room for improvement here is for creativity and play without the goal of something productive. I have been getting so many nudges that this is something I need to focus on. So many books and podcasts have reaffirmed the importance of creativity and play. The consistent insight is that creativity and play are not tools for output but states that calm the nervous system, reduce anxiety, restore a sense of aliveness, and reconnect us to meaning simply by being engaged in them. This is something I need to work on.
Personal Growth, Learning & Spirituality (8 → 10)
There is so much overlap between personal growth and spirituality, I’m combining the update on those.
These categories were already pretty strong due to the work I’ve been doing in therapy and self-discovery in the inordinate amount of reading and podcasts I’ve listened to on neurodivergence, parenting and general health and wellbeing. A new special interest. I’ve done a lot of trial and error in terms of finding what works for my nervous system and what doesn’t.
This year I continued on this path but expanded into spirituality. I might write a longer post on my experiences here but suffice to say I feel much more connected to a greater consciousness and grounded in myself.
I completed courses on meditation, energy work and breathwork that helped shape my practice through the year. I also attended a local yoga and wellness retreat.
Some of the books and audiobooks that influenced me included:
- The Celestine Prophecy
- Miranda Hart’s I Haven’t Been Entirely Honest with You
- Martha Beck’s Beyond Anxiety
- Dolores Cannon’s Between Death & Life
- Lee Harris’s The Future Human
- Deepak Chopra’s Digital Dharma
- Sara Landon’s You Are a Channel
I listened to over 100 hours of podcasts, mostly the Mayim Bialik’s Breakdown Podcast and the Telepathy Tapes which cover the crossover between spirituality and science with topics ranging from nutrition, sleep and fitness to transindental and near death experiences, meditation, somatic work, quantum physics and connecting to a higher consciousness.
I’ve also been doing a lot of self-directed learning for work on AI through courses, podcasts and reading.
Family, Parenting, Friendships & Community: (6 → 7)
Family
This category is a little lower, mostly because of lack of time available to obtain the 10 score for deep, reliable, and nourishing relationships.
For part of the year, several family members lived close enough that spontaneous connection was easier. We could meet after work, walk together and let the smallies spend time together.
After our move, several demanding commitments landed at once: work, study, renovations, school-year logistics and learning how to maintain a new home. Weekends became a rotating festival of errands, laundry, cleaning and house tasks.
By the time the most intense period passed, we were catching up on seasonal maintenance and then sliding into winter hibernation mode with the cold weather, but I’m hoping that over the holidays we can start getting back into the morning walks.
Parenting
Like most parents, we are doing the best we can with the tools and capacity we have. I feel like the work I have been doing on myself has given me more capacity to be more present and patient as a parent. Understanding my own neurodivergence, I’ve tried to make our home neurodivergent friendly and supportive. Doing our best to help Little MH feel safe, curious and supported with whatever he encounters in life.
Friends
We did get to the city a few times for a few dinners with friends, had people to our house in the summer, and mixed in catch ups with concerts and spa days.
Community
Community wise, we went to a few events at our local community centre and met more of the locals, there is a local walking group that meet a few times a week that we’ve started going to which is a nice way to meet more locals and hear their stories.
I also started a monthly book club for a few neurodivergent friends which I setup and summarise the books for discussion.
Partnership / Love (7 → 9)
Solid ground
I feel like because of the work I did in therapy, our relationship started off the year on solid footing, somewhere between a score of 5-10 where 5 is functional, with effort required to maintain harmony and 10 is supportive, loving, and balanced partnership built on trust and presence. While I feel like we mostly always fit the 10 description, there are times when we need to work harder on connection.
Connection
I also feel like we have a strong score that improved through the year as we tried to make time for connection with things like morning walks together before work and day dates or quality time when our son is in school and I’m off. This is obviously helped by our decision to live off 1 income, it massively helps with balance, energy availability and distribution of family and house workload. That being said, life is still busy and habits can slip so we have to keep making efforts to prioritise connection.
The thing we will focus on in 2026 will be trying to find a way to shift my sleep cycles so we have more overlap. I go to bed when our son goes to bed, leaving no time for ourselves to connect in the evenings. My sleep has been improving somewhat with the vitamin D. With the increased quality, I think I could stay up a bit later or take a longer break from work in the afternoons before our son gets home from school and then work a bit later. I also need to exercise more which should also help with energy and sleep, giving more capacity for everything else in life.
Final reflection
All in all, 2025 didn’t bring much growth in net worth, but considering we bought our dream home, weathered a turbulent market and made a few less-than-brilliant investment decisions, ending the year steadier still feels like progress.
The bigger growth was in how I think about safety and success. At the start of the year, safety meant having the right number in our portfolio and trying to optimize every financial decision. By the end, it meant feeling calm enough in my body to make decisions without fear running the show.
Health became less about powering through and more about having the energy and capacity to actually enjoy my life. “Enough” started to look less like squeezing every possible return out of our money and more like having a home we love, time together and a life that feels good while we’re living it.
Money, work, home, relationships and time all shifted in a way that feels calmer and more intentional. I’m definitely not claiming that I now make every decision from a perfectly grounded place (hello Bitcoin) but I feel much less driven by fear and urgency than I did at the start of the year.
That feels like pretty meaningful progress.
How did your year fair on the wheel of life?