2025 Year in Review

I wrote my first year in review at the beginning of 2019, summarizing 2018. I really enjoyed both thinking about the previous year and writing about it, so I did the same every year. Until the beginning of 2025 when I just… didn’t.

2024 was a difficult year. I wrapped up my podcast (listen to the last episode where I talk about spending $20K on a project that didn’t work) and I felt really aimless. I thought the universe would tell me what to do next if I listened really carefully, but more and more time passed with no divine inspiration.

I stopped doing The 12 Week Year, tracking books I read, and exercising. Eventually I turned my focus fully back to my web clients (building/rebuilding sites, maintaining sites, helping with email marketing and a few other things).

I still don’t quite feel like myself, but I feel better enough to sit down and write this. So here’s how 2025 went!

Business

I worked with a few new clients on new websites and maintenance of existing sites. More people than I can remember before came to me because their previous developer went MIA. I love helping these clients because I always want people to have a reliable person they can work with on their website!

I didn’t do a ton of marketing, but I did manage to get a few newsletters out. I posted a few times on Threads and Bluesky, but LinkedIn makes me feel more and more cringey every time I go there, so I have not posted there much.

I updated my ManageWP to MainWP post and wrote two other articles about feedback (one, two).

Redoing my own website this summer was a big project but I’m very happy with the result! I also finally got my portfolio situated. I’ve always struggled with how to convey web projects without relying too heavily on the design (because sometimes clients will bring a custom design or we’ll use a template), but I’m happy with how everything turned out.

In December, I migrated a handful of sites for another agency from Flywheel to WP Engine and I may do the same for my own sites in 2026.

Finances

I still love talking about finances!

I added what I could to my SEP, maxed out my HSA (because my healthcare expenses have gone up quite a bit) and contributed to my Roth IRA.

I have been tracking my expenses in YNAB for years (business and personal) and I kept a better eye on that in 2025. (I briefly looked into ActualBudget, but decided to stick with YNAB.)

I also trimmed expenses (another one of my hobbies 😆).

  • Switched from Calendly to TidyCal
  • Got rid of ClickUp
  • Removed The Events Calendar from client sites and replaced them with Google Calendars
  • Migrated from Buzzsprout to Spotify free (plus cleaned up the website/podcast)
  • Switched from a poor performing Veerotech server to a semi-dedicated KnownHost server (this was actually a slight increase, but the support has been fantastic and I’m very happy with the move)

I also stopped using FreshBooks at the end of 2025 and cut over to Wave starting in 2026. FreshBooks was $270/year when I started using it in 2018 but has risen to $410/year. I think that’s too much for basically no new features and only 50 clients. After getting some recommendations on Wave Pro, I trialed it and made the switch. It’s $190/year and so far so good!

Community + Learning

When I started freelancing, I joined the Business of WordPress Slack group. It was an amazing and active group for many years, but has tapered off in recent years. I still haven’t found anything like it, but I keep trying.

I joined The Playhouse late in 2024 and have tried to make the most of it!

I joined again in December 2025 for 2026 and will see if it continues to work for me.

I was also a part of Liz Wilcox’s email marketing membership but I found it too overwhelming, so I dropped that. I know there are people who are able to jump into something and take what they need, but I jump into something and see the hundred things that I don’t have the bandwidth for and get overwhelmed.

I try not to purchase a lot of courses, but I did buy:

Personal

2025 got better as it went on.

  • Travel. My son, partner and I traveled to San Francisco in the summer, which was lovely! I was especially stoked about the temperature (65 degrees daily) and our hotel. My partner and I visited his parents in Florida twice. We don’t really have any upcoming travel plans yet, but I’ve been thinking about it.
  • Family. My son is in his senior year which has been hard for me. It’s wonderful to see how he’s grown and to be a part of his exciting life, but part of me is very anxious about the future and the unknown. I’ve been in mom-mode for a very long time now. He’s still deciding on a college and has two more auditions in January (he wants to go to school for music education). My partner and I lost four cats in 2025. They were all older (17 and 18), and we miss them so much.
  • Health/Fitness. On the bright side, my ankle is doing fantastic 🙌. On the not-so-bright side, I’ve really fallen out of a routine and have been trying desperately to get back into one. Things are just changing all around. I’ve found myself having more doctors’ appointments. It seems like everything needs to be checked out.
  • Creativity. I still love doing creative projects. Our 2025 Christmas card was a letter that I designed with content and images. I did the flowers for my son and his date for the prom and homecoming. I’ve done a lot of band projects – videos, the festival program, senior posters, etc. Right now I’m going through my son’s karate photos and organizing them into an album.

2026 is going to be a year with a lot of change, so my goal is to go easy on myself. What about you? How was 2025? What are your hopes, plans and dreams for 2026?

Rene Morozowich

Rene

Rene loves helping service businesses showcase their offerings by building and supporting websites and collaborating on email marketing.