End of Year Post 2021

 Another year went by really quickly. Yes, another transitory year. So basically again like in the last few years, this year was all about the future and preparing myself and my finances for enjoying life a little bit more a couple of years from now.

What can we say about 2021? First of all, the pandemic from last year is still going strong. Covid / Corona lasted longer than previously expected. Last year, the consensus was that we would get a vaccine in late 2020 (we did) and that we would then defeat the virus (we did not). So, even now in december 2021, we still have lockdowns, still wear masks, still have new variants that the vaccinations may or may not help against.

On the positive side, this meant lots more home office for me. Actually, I was scared during the summer days that we would "defeat" Covid and have to go back to normal working environments at my job. But instead, the maximum that I remember is having to go to work for 2 days every week. And even after that, when things got worse, we moved back to total home office. So I enjoyed staying at home.

What happened this year in terms of vacations/fun stuff? Not much. Got a nice visit from the sister in law, so that is something I enjoyed. Apart from that not much happened, just sitting tight and waiting for things to stay normal. My wife went to Singapore without me, which is okay because it would have been a nightmare in terms of covid-related measures that need to be considered. It could have cost a lot of money if things went wrong.

Then of course there is investing. We saved a lot of money between 2017 and 2021. I went through the numbers and they are insane. We put so much effort into saving. And it becomes like an addiction to some degree, because there is always some way to spend the money to invest it and grow it into something bigger. So you are left asking yourself: Why would I spend the money on consumption (new phone, new computer, new vacation) if that money is worth a lot more just a couple of years from now? But there needs to be a balance, or else things go out of control and you dont live life as you should.

Portfolio update: A lot changed from last year. The concentration is really crazy. 80% of the portfolio is now Tesla. Big risk, little diversification. But the company is doing extremely well and I feel well-informed about them. The remaining percentages are made up of Broadcom (which has tripled since I bought it), Abbvie, Medifast, a little bit of Palantir and my genomics stocks (Crispr therapeutics, Intellia, Editas and Beam).

New stocks I am watching right now: Palantir (maybe buy back more since I sold them to buy Tesla), Rio Tinto (soon a lithium miner), Celsius Holdings (interesting low-calorie energy drink) and perhaps going back to Shopify (again, sold for Tesla). There are always more investing ideas than there is money.

A crazy thing worth mentioning: The portfolio value more than doubled compared to before the pandemic. Now, to be honest, a part of that doubling is that I was not all in before the pandemic, also we kept saving money. So it is not all gains, but also partially savings. But the amount of money we now have is beyond what I dreamed for looking at January 2023, when I turn 40 years old. It is also possible that this number will have doubled some time next year - from January of 2021. It is the crazy power of compounding on steroids.

What am I looking forward to in 2022? Here are some things:

• Saving money for stocks (not as much as before though)
• Buying some necessary items (new bed, new phone, new PC)
• Going to maledives (if covid allows)

The future should be interesting and I am looking at a situation where life should stabilize a little to the point where saving, saving, saving is not the top priority any more. I think we did well and can now enjoy the snow ball effect. It should also be noted that, after saving and investing a lot, there comes a time when any new money invested simply doesnt add up as much as before in terms of percentage added. So what used to be an additional 20% or 10% of money saved up, will over time turn out to be only an extra 5% or less of the total money in our portfolio.

Blown Away - Literally

 There are two things that are certain in life: In summer, there will be news about children who died in cars because it was a hot day and they were forgotten by their parents, and in winter, there will be injuries from fireworks because people just can't learn a lesson.

This year, on the turn from 2020 to 2021, it was possibly going to be different. Because of the Corona / Covid pandemic, fireworks were either forbidden, restricted or the sale of fireworks was limited or outright forbidden.

This meant that a lot of people would not be using fireworks this year, either because it's too complicated to get things going or because they were going to stay home anyway.

But there were already experts predicting that the number of injuries would still be high. Because of the sales ban, many people might be attempting to use illegal or old unused fireworks. This would be dangerous. So people expected injuries, torn away limbs after all.

And man... new year's eve did not disappoint. Just this morning, I read about not only many injuries, including the good old torn off hand, but also two deaths. One of these deaths included a man who got his head "torn off" by fireworks. That's what I call "going out with a bang".

I know it is tragic, but in some way it is also morbidly amusing. The one year when you might expect things to be a little more quiet, people go out of their way to get killed. It takes a lot of skill to kill yourself with a self-made, unapproved pyro rocket. And even if you get killed, having your head blown off is an achievement of its own. On the other hand, I think the media picked up the story in a very grateful manner and really sensationalized it as much as possible.

So in some way it's funny how people just never want to learn from the dangers of fireworks. It seems that there always has to be that yearly tribute of torn off hands and burnt skin, almost like in the old days when people were made human sacrifices to pacify the gods.

I do understand that accidents can happen. But when you really follow the rules, only use safe fireworks, and apply caution, usually nothing too bad should happen.

So, I suppose we'll see how the summer season turns out. How many children will die in heated cars this year? In a number of years, we will hopefully have cars that can detect a child dying inside, so it will take precaution. But until then, lots of preventable stuff will happen.