Well, what a year! It’s finally time for my 2020 Personal Review, and boy has it been a crazy one.

Nobody saw the global pandemic coming, but there have been so many other things going on in my life too! It has been pretty manic at times and hard to process everything that has happened. Hopefully my ramblings below make some sense as I attempt to put 2020 into some sort of order!

Work

The best way to start my 2020 Personal Review is from a professional point of view. On the work front, this year has seen a lot of change. I still have a lot of frustrations with the way my company is ran. Nevertheless, this year has been pretty good for me at work – or should I say at home!

Work From Home

I’ve been working from home since mid-March, when we realised Miss Way was ‘vulnerable’ due to being pregnant at the time.

This has been incredible for me! Not only do I prefer working at home anyway, but the timing has been perfect for me to be able to spend loads more time with Baby Way once he arrived.

As I write, most of the company are now back in the office, but I’m holding out at home! I’m hoping this can turn into a more permanent thing, at least for a few days per week.

Promotion

In this post I detailed how frustrated I was at being overlooked for promotion this time last year. At long last, I received my new title in November! It was a little bittersweet due to the situation described in that earlier post, but better late than never.

This new position puts me in a really lucky position. I’m not yet in the higher rate tax bracket, but not far off. Hopefully over the coming years, further salary progression will be possible due to being at the bottom of the ladder for this new position.

I’m also now given a car allowance, as well as potentially being in line for a small annual bonus, although I doubt that will be the case this year!

Slowing Down?

This promotion was key for me in my longer term plan. As I set out in Delaying FIRE to Enjoy Today I have been considering going down to a 4-day week. I didn’t want to request this before getting my promotion in case it worked against me in those decisions. Now I have the new role, I would feel much more comfortable asking!

As things have worked out, I haven’t needed to take this step yet. I never envisaged writing a 2020 Personal Review having worked from home for most of the year! This has given me the extra time with Baby Way which I so desperately wanted. Miss Way also hasn’t gone back to daytime work yet, which means I don’t need to cover the childcare while she’s out.

As we go into 2021, Miss Way does intend to take up a bit more work, so watch this space!

Salary Sacrifice Pensions

Another project of mine this year was trying to convince my company to adopt salary sacrifice pension contributions. This would essentially mean all staff have an increase in their overall remuneration, with no extra cost to the company.

Finally, this scheme was approved for adoption in our January 2021 payslips. My initial move will be to keep the same take-home pay as I get now, with the remainder sacrificed into my pension. The company even decided to give us 100% of the employer’s NI saving, which makes the scheme even better! This will mean I get more put into my pension pot each month, and my take-home pay stays the same as it is now. Nice!

Baby Way

Without doubt, the biggest change this year has been becoming a parent for the first time! Baby Way arrived in July and he’s an absolute joy!

Life is certainly different now, as we are constantly juggling childcare with chores and work tasks. We’re getting there though. Hopefully as things return to normal we will actually be able to get some family help to ease the load somewhat! What we would do for a couple of hours to ourselves!

Covid

Well it wouldn’t be a 2020 Personal Review with out mentioning good old Covid!

This time last year, we were looking ahead to 2020 and thinking what a crazy year it would be. We were about to have our first child!

How naive of us to thing things could be so simple!! As with everyone, Coronavirus gave us a real slap around the face.

We’ve struggled in many ways due to the global pandemic we’re all living through. We were so excited to share Baby Way with our family and friends. We had so many plans! Unfortunately, Covid has ruined it all.

While we’re in a pretty good place compared to many, it doesn’t mean we’ve found the year easy. Baby Way has met his grandparents and aunties/uncles, but only at a distance / with masks over faces. He hasn’t even met most of our family or friends!!

We have regularly faced the dilemma of how close we should let people get to him. So far, we’ve been pretty cautious and followed the rules. We really want him to meet everyone, but it just doesn’t seem worth the risk at the moment – especially when a vaccine is hopefully not too far away.

Fingers crossed for a return to more normal social contact as 2021 progresses.

Tennis

Speaking of the impact of Covid, this has been a pretty strange year for my tennis! Coming into 2020 I was excited to be taking over as Chair of my club, and looking forward to fighting for a 2nd straight promotion. We had loads of plans for the club, mostly social events.

All of the above had to be scrapped, including the league season which ended up being non-competitive (no promotion or relegation). I’ve spent most of the year navigating forever changing guidelines from our governing body. This hasn’t been how I wanted 2020 to go, but there have certainly been positives to take. I was completely thrown in at the deep end and have navigated the club through the worst of the pandemic (I hope!). Feedback from members has been fantastic, and we have actually gained a significant number of new members, mostly because tennis was one of the only things allowed through the summer!

Fingers crossed for 2021 being a more normal year, where we can catch up with all of those social events and have the club bar open all summer!

Wedding

As you will have seen if you follow our Monthly Spending posts, we’ve continued to (slowly) plan for our wedding.

We have a date set in July 2021 for our big day. At one point, it looked like there was little chance of this actually happening. Thankfully, the good news on vaccines recently has given us some hope that we may still be able to go ahead.

We’ll have to make a judgement nearer the time based on the restrictions at the time. Fingers crossed we’re able to have the day we want.

2021

That’s it for my 2020 Personal Review! There are so many reasons to be excited looking ahead at 2021. We hope you all feel the same!

In the coming days, we’re intending to post a few other updates, including:

• 2020 Financial Review (tracking progress towards our FIRE goals, current savings amounts etc)
• Our usual monthly spending post for December
• Annual spending review – a summary of all of our spending in 2020

Let us know how your 2020 went and what you’re excited about next year in the comments!

Hope you have a great Christmas period and all the best for 2021.

Mr Way