2024 Review and 2025 Plans

As is my tradition on this blog, I'm writing a review of my year, and as is also my tradition, I'm writing it a good few weeks into the New Year! I always find it useful to take stock of where I am in life, how I've progressed over the last 12 months, and what I want to change in the year ahead.

My 2024 was a year that was mostly taken up by two big projects: my husband Claudio's UK visa application and planning our wedding. Both of these took a lot of time, effort and money, and in the case of the former, stress and worry. Fortunately, Claudio's visa was approved, and our wedding was a really special day that we enjoyed even more than we expected. It's wonderful to now be married and also to have the right to live in the same country, but I'm really glad we can now remove those two big tasks from our headspace. Though of course, 2025 is going to bring some brand new challenges!

Here's my recap of the year, our travels, and what we've got planned for 2025...

2024 Recap

Our 2024 started on the happy note of having just got engaged, but it was also quite a uncertain time for us. Claudio had arrived in Europe a few weeks earlier after finishing his work contract in Chile, and we had moved back into my parents' house after Christmas while we figured out what to do next.

We'd been living together in a nice little flat in Santiago until May 2023, but had decided, for various reasons, that our future was in Europe. I made a series of big decisions, which I thought would bring us more stability: changing career from TEFL to marketing, going to Malta for three months to complete an internship at a marketing agency, and then accepting my first full-time job in the UK the following month. I even chose to be based in Bristol over London, although I much prefer London, because I thought it would be a better option financially. 

Unfortunately, I wasn't aware of just how awful the cost of living situation in the UK was - my salary is more than what we were both earning in Chile combined, and I thought I'd be able to get set up in a little flat before Claudio arrived in December, but I realised shortly after accepting my job offer that that wouldn't be possible. My parents encouraged me to move into a flatshare in Bristol, which I had big reservations about, and I spent a miserable few months there. It was incredibly depressing to have worked so hard to better myself, only to end up with a quality of life that was far worse than what I'd had before.

As I hated living in Bristol, and Claudio couldn't join me in the flatshare anyway, it made sense to move back home in the new year and start commuting into work. It was a relief to live somewhere clean and comfortable again, and also to have most of my salary left over at the end of the month. 

We began looking at our next options, but there wasn't a clear answer. To be honest, I would have been happy to go back to our old life in Chile, but Claudio really wanted to give life in Europe a go. However, there were no countries in the rest of Europe that seemed like the right fit in terms of jobs or lifestyle, and I didn't earn enough for Claudio to be able to apply for a UK visa as my spouse.

But in March, while passing through London after coming back from holiday, we both realised that this was the city where we really wanted to be based. We did some more research into the UK spouse visa, and found out that we had a way of getting around the minimum salary requirement. So we decided to go ahead and apply. This was a super stressful and expensive process, involving Claudio returning to Chile for a few months in order to complete the application. It was a challenging time all round, but thankfully, the application was approved, and he was able to return to the UK, this time as a resident, at the end of September.

A couple of months later, we went off to Chile together for our wedding! This was such a special way to end the year after what had been quite a tough 18 months for both of us. Our wedding day was filled with happiness and love, and it was great to go into the new year as a married couple.

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Looking back, it feels like not much has changed since January last year, as we're still living at home and going into Bristol every week. I'll be honest; I'm nowhere near where I wanted or expected to be in life at my age, and there have been many moments when I've struggled a lot with this and been very harsh on myself. Throughout my life, I've always been very ambitious, hard working and high achieving, and it seems like I must have either been quite unlucky or made some poor choices in order to be nearly 30 and not successful enough to afford to live independently. Aside from the effect on my self esteem, I'm also extremely concerned about the impact this could have on our entire future if our situation doesn't improve quickly. 

But I try to remind myself that we made some big steps forward in deciding where we want to be based, getting the visa sorted, and getting married. I also try to remember that almost nothing I've wanted in life has ever come easily - I've often had to fight harder and be more patient than other people in order to reach life's milestones. I know that this won't change, but I also know that in most cases, I have ended up achieving my goals eventually. We're going to keep working hard, and hopefully 2025 will be a breakthrough year for us.

2024 Travels

Now onto a lighter topic! 

2024 was a year in which I travelled less compared with 2022 and 2023, but we still had a couple of epic trips.

In March, we went to Rome for the first time and had a lovely time exploring its sights, including the Colosseum, one of the New Seven Wonders of the World. Of course, we took the opportunity to visit the Vatican City while we were there, which brought me up to a total of 30 countries visited in my life so far. I'd always hoped I'd reach 30 countries before turning 30, so I feel pretty happy about that!

For most of the rest of the year, our time and money were very focused on the visa application and wedding, but we did have a few nice weekends away: London at the start of May, Swansea at the end of May, and then London again in November.

Then of course, we spent time in Chile for our wedding. We also had a short but really enjoyable minimoon in Argentina afterwards, and overall had a great few weeks enjoying the summer and time with family and friends.

2025 Plans

The first big thing we've got coming up in 2025 is our honeymoon - we've booked a very special "once in a lifetime" kind of holiday and are really excited about it!

For financial reasons, we don't plan to have any other big trips this year - maybe a short-haul holiday in September/October depending on how things work out for us. But hopefully I'll find some nice content for this blog anyway!

The other big plan for this year is to move to the London area after our honeymoon. At the moment we're only on one income, and it's a low one, so we're aware things are going to be difficult at first. It would be amazing if Claudio got a job before we went, but it's not at all easy to land a job in London while living a couple of hours away in the middle of the countryside. It's definitely going to be much easier for him to pick up work once we're actually there, even if it's not something using his degree, so we've decided we need to just go for it. Maybe living there will be all we've hoped for, or maybe it won't, but sometimes you have to take chances in life.

Let's make this year a great one!

My 2024 highlights from left to right, starting from top left: The Vatican City; The Colosseum; Bracelet Bay in Wales; Feeling Christmassy at Covent Garden in London; Our wedding in Quintero; Park Hyatt Hotel in Mendoza, where we stayed for our minimoon