Here is a look at our Christmas tree with all the “minimalist” gifts for our 16 month old son (I went a bit mad in the end especially considering his age). We celebrated early so we don’t have to lug all the gifts up to Mr. MH’s home place. Notice the sustainable (and cheap) wrapping paper: an old newspaper we got as junk mail, some ribbon from a gift we received, a reusable gift box and even a pillow case.

I wanted to take a moment and look back on the year and take stock of a few things.

I first started this blog back in Jan/Feb launching in March having no idea where it would go but it has led to so many unexpected and pleasant surprises.

Community

The biggest of all is the community and networking it has exposed me to. Through the blog, I met up with a local reader, with whom I have since started a local meetup for like minded individuals. The first meeting was just the 2 of us, then 7 people, then 10 people and now 35 members have joined (but have not yet all attended). We meetup once a month and each and every meeting has been enlightening and inspiring. I always come away with some nugget to consider and implement into my planning. I look forward to continuing these meetups in the new year and hope to see some of you there! You can join the meetups here if it’s of interest.

I’ve also joined a whatsapp group for the Dublin meetup and have had extremely insightful conversations on there as well. There are almost 100 members on that chat at this stage.

Through that group I heard about and attended pensions awareness week where I met some people in the pension and investment industry and the Irish FIRE podcast host which led to my interview on that podcast.

Comments on the blog have also been useful as I have had an engaged readership who correct me when I’m mistaken or help me to flesh out blog posts further so that they are more useful to a wider range of readers especially where I have left some questions unanswered. Some of my assumptions or research would have gone unchecked had I not put it out there for others to see.

It is so fulfilling to be part of an active community with shared interests, none of which I would have been exposed to had I not started the blog!

Blog Performance

The blog is slowly gaining traction, going from an average of 150 page views in the first 6 months to around 900 page views a month from September on, with November seeing 1,100 views by 400 visitors. I know this is small beans in the blogosphere but it’s growth I am happy with given I’ve only managed to get out 1-2 posts/month!

I am even starting to get traffic from firehub.eu (where I was recently featured in their weekly email digest), camfirefinance.com (an RSS feed of all FIRE related blog) and boards.ie (a popular Irish discussion forum).

I have lots of content floating around my head and lots of research still to do so looking forward to getting that out there, now that I’m getting a bit more sleep!

Portfolio Performance

You may have seen my Irish and Canadian portfolio posts when I first set them up but now it’s been a few months and I’m really pleased with the results.

Canadian ETFs

My Canadian portfolio which I started in Feb is currently at 12.84%, this would have been higher had I started in January as the biggest gains from the dip in December were made back by the time I had invested.

There were a few low points during the year where I was actually starting to lose money but I held my nerve and trusted in the statistics of the stock market historical performance.

Here is how the portfolio performed throughout the year.

Looking at my previous managed fund performance (with 2.49% in management fees regardless if the fund made or lost money), I only made 4.4%/year after fees and 2.59%/year once I took out my early redemption fees.

Needless to say I am much happier with the results of 12.84% for 11 months of performance.

Irish ETFs

My Irish portfolio had a rocky start, where the day after I invested in May I lost 5.3%, but again I held on and the markets have recovered. I am now at 8.8% to the good after only 7 months in the market.

This is still subject to exit taxes and not adjusted for inflation but still I’m pleased with the results considering what I would have gotten if that money was sitting in a bank account.

All that to say, it’s been a great year and I couldn’t have gotten here without you, the readers. Looking forward to what the next year will bring and getting to share it with all of you!

Thanks again for following and best wishes from our family to yours!