A Dead 2024 and A New-Born 2025 - My Speech

 Happy New Year!!!

Due to my geographical location, I was among one of the last regions to enter 2025. By the time midnight came around for me, most people had already celebrated the New Year. Well, we're all in 2025 now, and it's that time of year when I engage you again about the year ahead and what I thought of the previous year. 

You know me by now to some extent that I'm mostly writing about finance and money since 2021. It's a personal task I decided to embark on to learn by doing and not follow the normal education route required for such disciplines. This has meant more of my time is spent studying economies, how inflation and central banks work their way around money, what roles politics plays in all of it, and the most important part of it all; personal finance. Famous motivational speaker Les Brown once said and I paraphrase " If you regularly read a lot of books about any particular subject for at least 5 years, in that time, you'll become one of the top experts in that field". Ladies and gentlemen, I ran away with that quote and tried to live by it daily. Let me give you some motivational nuggets from 2024.   

Wow! What a year 2024 has been. It passed away like a wild wind. Guys, I failed miserably at all my New Year's resolutions of 2024. I wrote this same type of article by January 20th, 2024. This time around, I'm writing it on January 1st, 2025. Yeah! that's how quickly I want to get back on track. If you failed at your resolutions like I did, please don't make the same mistake. I didn't read as much as I was supposed to. I'm not giving excuses but I was very frustrated at life in Q1 of 2024. By the time I got back home from my regular job, I was so tired the only thing I wanted to do was sleep and be left alone. By the time Q1 of 2024 was concluding, I made a decision to move again. This time, I changed states, changed environments, and basically embraced uncertainty in the hope that I could rediscover my mojo. Indeed, there was some sense of balance in the new risks and challenges I embraced from moving. You see, that is the result of being willing to accept change. If your life is not going as planned, maybe think of a change like I did. You don't have to move. If you search deep within you, you will see what changes you need to make. For example, I had to leave social media for a while. Even now, I already deleted Facebook and Instagram after seeing how much time I was spending on it as 2024 faded into memory. Of course, I deleted those simply because I'm not yet productive with the apps. I have a friend who is making some extra little cash with these same apps so there's no need to do away with it like me. It's all about productivity.  

Just like in stochastic modeling and some statistical modeling in general, predictions of the next event can be done with some certainty if the previous event is known. Calm down! what I mean is, we are just going to build on how 2024 transpired and, use that information to target 2025.  We go into 2025 knowing the world has suffered greatly from inflation and the uncertainty around it. We know the US is having a new administration, and we know most stock portfolios are in the green. We know cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin had a stellar 2024 and clocked $100000. We know that major wars like Russia-Ukraine, Israel-Hamas/..Iran, the US-China trade war, etc are on the brink. Finally, we know that the US Federal Reserve has the whole world watching them closely to see what they'll do with interest rates. I may work a regular job, but in all my time following global events, everything revolves around where interest rates will be. Nothing shakes the world like this key metric from the US Federal Reserve. No matter what is happening in the world, those people at the top are always asking themselves one question; "how does the FED respond to this event ? ". The answer to this question dictates how money/capital moves. Such movement is what creates stress, hard times, or easy times for the majority of people from the US to some granny in some remote village in whatever country you can think of. 

                                                               

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This article is already long enough and I already told you where we or let me say I, will be focussing on going into 2025. You may say "this doesn't concern me but let me burst your bubble". if you are irresponsible with money, your money will keep leaving you as the FED breathes, and vice versa if you are responsible about money. This is the system and we must go into 2025 following what these guys are saying and doing. A lot can be said but I have written already how US interest rates affect you and me. 2024 already gave us the hints for 2025. A date change doesn't change much but psychologically, it offers some kind of new page. But remember! time lost is time gone. 

Enjoy your 2025!!