My 2015 Financial Year in Review

I thought about reviewing my 2015 finances at the end of the year, but I decided against it. I didn’t want it to get lost in the shuffle of all the other year-end reviews. Plus if you were anything like me, you were focused on the holidays. I didn’t have time to read too many article, much less in-depth ones covering a whole year.

Finally, I want to publish what I feel are my best articles when people are mostly likely around to read it. Now is a great time, because you can learn from my mistakes and have a terrific 2016, right?

I started to write this and realized that I had a ginormous amount to say on each area. It didn’t make a lot of sense to put it all in one article and lull you to sleep, so I divided it into a few different areas that I’ll cover over the next couple of weeks. (If you find this stuff boring, don’t worry, I’ll be working in other content as well.)

Here are the areas, I’m covering:

1. My 2015 Finances Reviewed: Stock Investing
2. My 2015 Reviewed: Real Estate
3. My 2015 Finances Reviewed: Blogging/Income
4. My 2015 Finances Reviewed: Net Worth (and Everything Else)

The first of the series will be posted in a few hours. I will update this post and link to the articles as they go live.

I’ve written most of the articles already and they have a common theme. They all start out with a challenging situation. In fact, the news on almost all fronts looks very bad. However, if you can make it to the end, you’ll find that overall each area has positives that may even outweigh the negatives.

It may sound trite to suggest that everyone should review their last financial year, but they really sound. If I didn’t have a personal finance blog, I doubt I would have sat down and wrote it out. I learned a lot by taking the time to put it on paper screen. I’m also a lot more optimistic on where my finances are going now that I’ve blasted through most of the challenges.