I would like to wish all my readers a very happy new year! May this year bring more happiness and cheer. I hope 2019 has been kind to you and you were able to achieve your goals. As for me, 2019 has been the first full calendar year in retirement and it was just fabulous! I am still getting used to the life in retirement although it has already been nearly one and a half years.


In the last one year I published more than 50 posts on various topics including health and fitness, financial planning, my financial report, various projects that I have been working on over the year and then some. I did not have any specific goals for 2019, just some long running continuous goals. Spent a lot of time with family. I've continued to eat healthy and making slow progress in my fitness. However, we enjoyed and ate like crap (biriyani, cake, ice cream) yesterday in celebration of the end of 2019. And to compensate, we are fasting today ;) the first day of 2020. Hopefully we can make this a new tradition. Made some financial planning for the future and got rid of some burdens. My finances are doing fine, not according to my plan, but it is completely alright. And last but not least, spent a good amount of time on various projects I have always been wanting to do including rain water harvesting and investment analysis app.


For 2020, things are not going to be any different. Just continue doing the same but more efficiently. Want to publish 50+ more posts and continue to help people reach their financial goals. The markets have not been kind to the multi-cap funds in the past two years. Hopefully your asset allocation took care of things for you. I am hoping that the markets will cool off in large caps in 2020. Or at least the growth will catch up with the valuations. I am planning to go for mid-cap investments because they seem slightly better valued (but not great). Want to complete another app which will do some level of forecasting so I won't have to figure out market conditions and my taxes.


My suggestions for 2020 to my readers (who have not yet retired) is simply

  1. Eat healthy, stay fit. It is not about how long you can live, it is about how young you can be.
  2. Spend more time with family and less with work!
  3. Continue with your SIPs irrespective of where the market takes you.
  4. Make sure you stick to your asset allocation (unless you know what you are doing; for most that is not the case).
  5. Try to cut down your spending.
  6. You probably got (or will soon get) your appraisals and new salary. Consider increasing SIP by at least your increment.
  7. Finally, have fun and enjoy life!


All the best and wish you a happy, healthy and a prosperous new year!