The Power of Live Events (and Travel)
I recently returned from a 3+ week trip to Doha, Bali and Singapore and to say it was life-changing is an understatement.
It was extraordinary and it reminded me of a few major things:
Travel:
Travel has a way of taking you out of the normality of day-to-day life and opens you up to new experiences, connections, and cultures.
It helps me realize just how wonderfully small the world is, even when visiting wildly different cultures, and how 99% of people are fundamentally good and just trying to live their best lives.
When you don’t travel, it’s easy to look at “others” in a negative or fearful light, but just getting out in the world dispels you of that silly myth really quickly.
Connection:
This is now the second trip I took this year where the connections I made were the absolute highlight of the trip.
One of the beautiful aspects of having ChooseFI Local Groups throughout the world is you can connect with people in hundreds of cities across the globe.
Meeting Andy in Barcelona and Elisabeth in London in June and now Jason and Reina in Doha and Jon and Carolyn (and their lovely family) in Singapore were the true highlights of those legs of the trip.
It’s all well and good to travel and see world-famous landmarks and eat great food, but there’s something magical about the random serendipity of meeting people and getting to see how they live, what they love to do and seeing the city through the eyes of a local.
FI Events and Local Meetups:
We talk a lot about just how magical live FI events are, and the FI Freedom Retreat that Amy Minkley hosted in Bali was a perfect example of this.
It is hard to describe the level of connection that occurs when you get 50+ FI-minded people at a multi-day event.
FI helps transcend all the boring chitchat we usually put up with in social situations and allows you to dive deep with people.
Simply put, I cannot recommend you attend a FI event highly enough. There are still CampFI tickets available for some upcoming events and Katie & Alan Donegan and I are planning more ‘Extraordinary Events’ in 2025.
I’ll talk in much greater depth about my trip on an upcoming podcast episode with Ginger, so stay tuned!
With the help of our amazing hosts Jon and Carolyn, we also helped kickstart the Singapore ChooseFI Local group! Over a dozen people showed up for a lunch meetup and the conversation flowed for 2 solid hours.
If your local group needs a post-Covid restart, you can help fix that by taking action and proposing an event in the Facebook group!
We all have to take action to see our lives take the shape we want and we can’t sit back and wait on other people to do it for us.
2025 IRS Contribution Limits (with new info)
Last week I included a section on the 2025 Updated IRS Contribution Limits and a bunch of eagle-eyed readers caught what I missed in my jetlagged induced haze:
Starting in 2025 thanks to the Secure 2.0 Act, there are new “super” catch-up contributions allowed for people aged 60-63 in many of the account types that we know and love.
Here is the most comprehensive information that I could find (chart from last week with new info in bold):
2025 Updated IRS Contribution Limits
The IRS just released updated contribution account limits for 2025:
- 401(k)/403(b)/most 457 plans/TSP employee deferral: $23,500 ($500 increase)
- Catch-up contributions for the above (for those 50+) remains at $7,500 (ages 60-63 can contribute an extra “super” catch-up of $3,750 for a total catch-up of $11,250)
- Employee + Employer combined limit to defined contribution plans: $70,000 ($1k increase)
- IRA contributions: $7,000 (no change)
- Catch-up contributions for IRAs (for those 50+): $1,000 (no change)
- Roth IRA income (MAGI) phaseout range for single and head of household: $150k-$165k
- Roth IRA income (MAGI) phaseout range for married filing joint: $236k-$246k
- HSA contributions: $4,300 for self-only coverage ($8,550 for family coverage). 55 and older can contribute an additional $1,000 catch-up contribution.