23 For 23 Part 1
Our top 23 Goals, Tips & Advice for 2023 Success
We did a 21 goals for 2021 part 1 and part 2 post. We didn’t do one for 2022, but are back with 23 things for 2023.
The world has changed. But those 2 posts hold up well. Sure, some items that were good in mid-2021 ended up being wins for a while but we wouldn’t recommend them now 2 years later (Hey there BlockFi & CoinBase - you allowed for easy purchases in 2021 and allowed for a double on any crypto purchased when we wrote our post (plus some dividends)…but we got out in 2022. Our advice of “start crypto” would have lead to big gains. Now that everyone is aware of it, keep your money off CEX.)
Some of the items on this years list will be a repeat because they are that important. But many of the items will be brand new.
If you do these 23 things, you will be in a better place. Mark it.
1) Make More Money
Lets start with an obvious one, but one that people still get wrong. In 2023, you should look to make more money.
This wasn’t on the 2021 list, not because it shouldn’t be a top goal, but because we thought “no one believes you should live like a poor”. But in 2021 we were new to twitter. Now we are older, wiser, and have spent 18 months on social media…and hell, we see crap like this tweet all the time in different forms….
Sure, if you save half as much and target a goal 45% relatively lower you can hit your goal sooner. But what a silly comparison. We break it down in its entirety in our post “Making More Money is ALWAYS Financially Better”, but making more gives you better financials to spend more AND save more.
And with inflation going crazy, we feel even more vindicated.
$80k a year isn’t going to last long when your expenses are up 20% (omlettes up 60%). In one year, you went from living on $80k to having to live on the equivalent of $64k. Another year of food and energy up 20% and you are looking at the equivalent of $51k.
And more importantly, you are leaving almost no buffer even in the rosy backwards looking world FIRE is based off…
Live too long? 40% failure rate
Inflation runs hot and negative real returns? over 90% failure rate
Inflation moderate, but stocks and bonds underperform? you can fail 100% of the time
And you can be one of the 5% of the population who lives to 100 and have real returns be poor. That is double whammy of FIRE failing. That is a long time to be eating cat food and scraping by. (See the results here)
In short, go make more money. You get to spend more & save more and build in a buffer in case it all doesn’t work out.
We have added 2 sources of income since 2021 and pre-2021 we were proud luddites who never had a social media presence. If we can figure it out, you can. Increase your W2 and work on side income in 2023.