Hi folks. 2022 has been quite a journey to look back on! I definitely felt like it was a complicated, life-changing year. A lot of firsts for me – graduated from my master’s, started my first job here, first time to really move, first anniversary. We still dealt with the heavy changes that came with COVID and for me, still continuously coping with the lack of a strong social support group.
I felt anxious about money and my social situation the most, as both of them are new for me. It truly is difficult to uproot your entire life and transfer to a new country with a different culture and new people and social norms to learn. This year emphasized the void in my life of missing my family back home and having only a few good and no best friends to turn to for in-person activities. I feel like because of the isolation COVID brought and the added cultural struggle to fit in, I also lost some of my easygoing confidence and (worse) interest in making friends and getting to know people. I still have not thought about ways to get around this, and the thought of moving away to a different city, with more people of my own country will make things easier for me.
Financially, we’ve been doing well. I am not earning the most, but we still had a massive improvement to our net worth from ($50,700) in July 2022 when I started tracking our finances in earnest to ($16,000) in December. That’s pretty good! Things just got a bit tighter since we ran out of a lot of our savings and inflation is still ramping up, but I am hoping and praying we are able to pay down all our debt this 2023 and start building for our retirement in 2024.
| Income | $6,300 | |
| Expenses | ($4,000) | This is improved from our September look back, and includes combined expenses |
| Assets | $17,500 | Mostly savings and checking accounts still |
| Debts | ($35,800) | Combined student loans |
| Net worth | ($16,000) |
