From what you have seen so far in my year in review series, you might think 2020 was not too bad. It seems like most of the things worked out fine for me except for that loss of electronics and Franklin fiasco. But that is not really true. We made a few other plans that just did not go well at all. Here is a review of those disappointments.


Consolidating my portfolio

When the year started I made a lot of plans to consolidate my debt funds. Like I mentioned in my 2019 year in review I had 9 debt funds and I wanted to reduce them to a more manageable 2 to 4 funds. I started out by selling a few debt funds but thanks to the Franklin issue I had to halt it. I did not want to incur too many taxes.


Vacation plans

We have been planning to go on a vacation to the US in 2020 for a long time. Our US visa expires in late 2021 and we wanted to go on a vacation before they expire. Initially we were planning to travel in October 2020. But thanks to COVID we had to move the travel plans to April 2021. Unfortunately it does not look like things will get any better soon. We might have to try and renew our visas and travel in 2021. The only issue is that I am not really sure if our visas will be renewed given that we are retired and the income tax filing will show very little income. The US consulate will be left wondering if we will really return to India or if we are planning to find a job in US.


Retirement home

For some time now, we have been thinking of buying a piece of land in a very small village for a super low price. While you already know I don't like real estate as an investment, we wanted a small place to live in our retirement when the nest becomes empty. So there is still some time until my daughter is old enough to leave the nest. But when the time comes, we want to move to this place. Build a very small house with single room and an organic garden. We wanted this place to be next to a river, back waters or a lake.


We found one place that met all our requirements, except we could not buy. Reason? Franklin wind-up again :). Yeah I know, a huge chunk of money is locked up and we don't know for how long. I did not want to use any part of the rest of the money on the land. We could not get rid of any other real estate to get that land because the real estate value has dropped quite a bit and there are no buyers. So bye bye retirement house :). Since there is still some time, we will keep looking.


Conclusion

Those were some plans that failed quite spectacularly. However, I still stick to my conclusion that 2020 was not a bad year. Compared to a large population, we are still far better off and very fortunate to have what we have. If anything feels disappointing in our lives it is only because of our greed and nothing else.