A major life event derailed my progress and changed how I think about money

At the end of 2022, I decided to set some money goals for myself.

One key takeaway after a nearly nine-year career writing about people who are good at managing money is that they have multiple income streams. While there's a cap on how much you can save, there's no limit on how much you can earn. The wealthiest individuals dream up ways to make more money, rather than think about how to tighten their belt.

With that in mind, I came up with two objectives for 2023: diversify my income streams (ideally, create at least one passive stream) and buy my first property (ideally, an investment property; at minimum, a primary residence that I could "house hack" to offset my mortgage). I even wrote about these goals to hold myself accountable.

In a perfect world, they would go hand-in-hand: succeeding at objective No. 2 would mean creating another revenue stream (in the form of rental income) and, therefore, achieving objective No. 1.

And so in January, overcome with that inflated optimism one feels at the turn of the year, I got to work: I spoke to multiple lenders, got pre-approved for a mortgage, found a realtor, started looking at properties, and continued putting cash into a savings account earmarked for my down payment.