Skip to content
Housing — updating the new apartment we moved into to make it more comfortable.Education — mostly payments to junior developers.Vehicle — garage rent and upgrades to my wife’s garage, which I started using in autumn.
Share
Explore
Intro
Here we go again! This is my 2025, and I’m continuing a series of posts about key parts of my life, reflecting on the past year.
The main purpose of this summary is to reflect on my past, understand what I’ve done well, and make plans for the future. It’s also a good way to learn English.
1. Family
At 34, a family section finally appears in this yearly review — and most importantly, it comes first.
The 4 Burner Theory wasn’t new for me, but last year it stopped being just a theory and started to feel very real. The idea is simple: life has four burners — family, friends (also entertainment and hobbies), health, and work. To really focus, two of them usually have to be turned down, or even off.
In my case, it looked like this:
Work was the one switched off. Why? Because no one ever says, “I wish I worked more.” After more than ten years of nonstop work, a pause felt necessary. If not now, then when?
Marriage and kids make life feel real and complete, but at the same time, it’s hard, everyday work. I’m still new to this and need time to find a better life balance next year. One thing I’m sure of: we definitely need a babysitter.
2. Career and self-development
While writing this section, I noticed that one phrase nicely sums up everything:
Last year, I felt I needed to do more at work than just write code and add new bugs. It felt risky, but my mindset was simple: win or learn. And, as it turned out, I learned a lot.
Kharkiv has many students with solid programming basics. In Ukraine, junior developer salaries are usually quite low at the beginning. This isn’t unusual — it’s how IT companies work here: find good juniors, mentor them, and resell their work at a higher value.
I registered on djinni.co with a work email to look for students. Since I was going to cover their salary myself and was motivated to find people who could grow with me, I knew exactly who I was looking for. I found one student quickly, then more followed, and we started a side project using what I consider the best tech stack in web development.
At that time, I built a nice streak:
After two months, we had some results, so I prepared a small demo for the CEO, including slides to share my thoughts. One of them was this:
I think it shows my motivation. The idea didn’t work at that time for the company. That’s it.
Back to the starting phrase… I didn’t stop writing code because I had no job — definitely not:
It’s more because of Claude Code. It’s insanely powerful in experienced hands. The only problem is… I can’t keep up with all the agents and their constantly changing setups — slash commands, plugins, hooks, skills, MCP, subagents, and more 🤯
Nevertheless, I continue to code and learn whatever I want — no pressure, only pleasure, and no salary 🙂
3. The war: over 1M enemy troop losses
There is no doubt that the war is a central part of every Ukrainian’s life. But I want to say something else too: life goes on, and we still need to plan, build, and live our lives.
I will remember 2025 as the year when so much of the news was about Trump (and his team) — Trump said this, did that, changed his position, played gold, said more nonsense, and so on. I quickly got tired of such news and started skipping any news about Trump.
It was another year of ups and downs for Ukraine and the AFU. On one hand, we had intermediate wins — the Spiderweb operation, constant attacks on the enemy’s energy infrastructure, and finally “real sanctions” on the shadow fleet. On the other hand, we faced manpower losses too, corruption scandals, and other new challenges — including Trump.
4. Financial health
My expenses in 2025:
A few notes on categories that may look expensive:
According to my calculations, in 2025, the first step toward financial freedom — covering essentials like food, baby, utilities, medicine, and mobile — would cost about $525 per month. This is a tight estimate; in reality, it’s closer to $600.
In the second half of 2025, I tried Airbnb. It was easy to start because I have a free one-bedroom apartment. I set a fairly high price (~$50/night) because I wanted to keep it mostly for myself, to work or play Stalker 2/CS 2. In total, I earned about $740, with only minor damage to the walls.
Overall, my finances are in good shape. I’m not interested in deposits or bonds — I would prefer a fully legal investment account in Ukraine that I can be transparent about in this blog. But in the ideal case, I want to build a small business that creates a win-win. Blah blah blah...
Final word
So yeah, I’m now a husband and father, with just one wish — to see the war come to an end 🙏
Previous summaries
Want to print your doc?
This is not the way.
This is not the way.
Try clicking the ··· in the right corner or using a keyboard shortcut (
CtrlP
) instead.