Simple Budget, Simple Life

Here's a recap of my finances over the years: 2016 -  Unexpected review of 2016: hitting $200k in net worth 2017 -  End 2017 review - net worth at $287k 2018 -  End 2018 review - net worth at $372k  2019 -  End 2019 Review - inching close to $500k net worth  (~$440k) 2020 -  End 2020 Review - net worth at $550k 2021 -  End 2021 Review - closing in to $700k net worth 2022 -  End 2022 Review - failing financial goal for the first time, $660k net worth 2022 wasn't a good year for me and I spoke about it  here . I summed up 2022 with: To sum up 2022: I paid tons of money on fertility treatments and embarked on the the most painful (physically, mentally and for my pockets) -  IVF . The worst? Seeing no result despite the money and efforts poured. Stocks, crypto crashed which means a beating on my net worth. Income received couldn't cover the losses. The best thing that happened was a new job, with a better compensation. I hope the 2023 recession won't affect my rice bowl. 20

I wondered how I should kickstart this post - should I be positive or negative about this? After 1 year 4 months, I finally crossed $700k in networth - returning back to where I've been at, back in Dec 2021.  I am disappointed.  For the past many years, I've always been growing my networth, at around $100-$150k/year. I had big plans to hit a net worth of $850k by December 2022, but the universe had other plans for me. Instead, I only managed to reach $646k, leaving me with a $204k gap to my target.  Ever since I became more aggressive in my "investment" portfolio in 2021, being sucked by greed to deploy most of my cash into stocks and crypto, I fell heavily, along with the crashes. Crypto wiped out 5 digits savings, so did the stock market.  To be honest, ever since the crashes and a bad hit to my net worth, I actually didn't do anything special to improve. I didn't make drastic spending cuts, I didn't stop my holidays, I didn't continue investing (no