Sara’s Weekly Update #27
Welcome to my newsletter! I write down my thoughts & opinions on the topics I read/watched last week. My topics of interest are broad, please feel free to skip to the issue you like.
Hope everyone had a good holiday break and getting back to routine. Our holiday season was busy with family/friends visiting us from other cities and hosting parties. And took a trip to a resort in San Antonio, turned off my mobile, read half of a book & had some good time off.
Reflect on 2023
I try to reflect on some of the major events from the last year at the end of the year. Below are some of the highlights of 2023
Moving to TX
Moving is hard! This year we actually pulled the trigger to move from MN to TX. It’s an emotional roller coaster ride! We experienced excitement, nervousness, upset, and exhaustion at various times. We were excited to move to a larger space, nervous about how everything would work out in the new place, and upset that some of the things were not up to our expectations in the new home. And of course, we were exhausted with all the moving, making so many decisions in furnishing the home, and making new friends. We knew this year going to be hard on us on many fronts, so we took it easy on us overall. Is it worth going over all this, is moving to TX a good decision? these are some of the questions that come to our mind too. So far life is good here, social life is better here as friends are close by. Our plan is to stay here for the coming decades, so this one-time investment is worth it I guess.
Major Tech
Generative AI has taken over the tech industry. I tried some hands-on applications with RAG and I am very bullish on how it can help us in increased productivity. So many open LLM models are released including Meta’s Llama 2. OpenAI released GPT 4. Many hardware players introduced AI-specific chips, especially for LLM workloads. All major cloud providers released features around LLM.
Cybertruck was finally released, it is in a way pushing the car tech forward by using a steer-by-wire, 48v system, ethernet cable & bus architecture for cabling. At the same time, Tesla had a setback on FSD and had to limit its usage on local roads. I feel like so many accidents could have been avoided by proper marketing from Tesla & with additional hardware like radar & camera inside the car to detect the driver's drowsiness like many other manufacturers do.
Major Political events
Time’s video was good in summarizing the 2023 political events including the Chinese spy balloon, the Speaker election, Ukraine funding, Israel-Gaza war, Biden running for 2024 president, George Santos & Trump Indictments.
Simplified my financial portfolio
After seeing the tech layoffs in 2022, my investment priorities changed. I started thinking in a pyramid-like structure, first setting aside emergency funds, then I like to have a portfolio that can take care of my home expenses & then focus on pure growth.
Based on that thinking I leaned towards dividend-focused ETFs. After several iterations, I came to this final portfolio
Income & Growth - 90%
SCHD - 45%
VIG - 45%
Growth - 10%
VGT - 5%
SCHG - 5%
This roughly gets ~2.5% dividend income annually, and also the asset grows at ~10%. I feel confident in doing Dollar Cost Investing into this portfolio anytime & any amount. Every year I am thinking of increasing the “Growth” by 10% & reducing the “Income & Growth” by 10%. And probably in the next decade, my focus will shift more towards growth once basic needs are satisfied.
Looking forward to 2024
I like to look forward to things to keep life interesting. I am looking forward to some of these major things.
More time to explore
Now that we feel we are mostly settled in this new place, we will have more time for other activities. Looking forward to exploring more locally & exploring TX via road.
India Vacation
We booked our tickets to India for this summer along with our friends. Hope traveling with friends will help bear these brutal long flights :-). Also planning to visit Madurai & other southern cities. Looking forward to that.
More Generative AI
I think Generative AI will pick mainstream this year. More enterprises will adopt office copilot as their starting point, and develop RAG applications. And this should increase productivity. Going to be interesting to watch the trends here.
2024 Elections
Two major democracies have elections this year. The US election is more interesting to follow, going to test so many constitutional laws. I may get overwhelmed sometimes, as I have a vested interest in the US now. Need to meditate to accept whatever the outcome is.
Fitness
Fitness took a backseat in 2023, hoping to get back to my routines in 2024. I like the idea of getting into some sports like Tennis, badminton, or cricket, as it increases social connections too. Also planning to do 50-mile biking along the Trinity River in the spring/fall.
Reading
Reading also took a back seat last year. This year I am planning to read more. Below are some of the books I like to read this year.
Writing
I was not consistent in writing this year, as my social life got busy. Most Saturdays either we invite guests or we are invited to our friend’s home. Sunday morning seems to be the time for me to write down this. Going to start writing my blogs on Sunday morning & try to publish them before evening. Let’s see how this goes & tweak my strategies as it goes. Also planning to start a blog dedicated to tech this year.
If you have reached this far in the blog, have a fabulous Happy New Year :-)