MEGA MILESTONE: $400k!

Eyyyyy check it outttt!!!

My 25-and-still-gung-ho-about-FIRE-self would have thought this would be a slow­er pace than pro­ject­ed; How­ev­er, tak­ing just over 10 years of work­ing with a salary that recent­ly crossed six fig­ures is not too shab­by at all. I ben­e­fit­ed at the begin­ning from a robust bull mar­ket and con­tin­ued to invest in my accounts even when the mar­ket was down. Slow and steady wins the race!

Accord­ing to my spread­sheet, here is when I hit some major mile­stones (for the first time): 

$100k: July 2016
$200k: Feb­ru­ary 2018
$300k: May 2021
$400k: May 2023

So, the first $100k was basi­cal­ly all sav­ings and took me rough­ly 3 years. The sec­ond $100k took just under 2 years, the next $100k just over 3, and this $100k 2 years almost exact­ly. I feel like that’s not the usu­al time­line, but things got a lit­tle crazy in there with me try­ing out the whole No W2 thing and mul­ti­ple bear markets. 

I’m not plan­ning on leav­ing the work­force for a while now, so I have plen­ty of time for this nest egg to con­tin­ue to com­pound and grow. 

When I hit $100k, the make­up of my net worth looked like this: 

That’s 5% cash, 9% for the val­ue of my car at the time, and 86% invest­ments. Now it looks like this: 

Turns out my abil­i­ty to make graph­ics has improved as well in the ensu­ing 7 years!

This is the part of the post where I would nor­mal­ly talk about how close I am to my FIRE goal. If I were still aim­ing for $635k by 35, I’d be near­ly two-thirds of the way to the goal. How­ev­er, my goals in life have changed (as pre­vi­ous­ly men­tioned) and $635k would no longer be suf­fi­cient for the kind of lifestyle that lets me be my best self. I know, though, that if some­thing were to hap­pen to me that would impede my abil­i­ty to work, I would at least be able to sup­ple­ment what­ev­er dis­abil­i­ty pay I’d get. And hon­est­ly, that pro­vides a fair amount of comfort. 

Also chang­ing the cal­cu­lus is my rela­tion­ship sta­tus. Things tend to fluc­tu­ate in my life depend­ing on who or if I am dat­ing any­one. Pre­vi­ous­ly, I’ve made room in the plans for the future to include, but not lim­it­ed to, kids, a house in the sub­urbs, liv­ing in the mid­dle of the woods, and tak­ing care of elder­ly par­ents. I have zero ideas what my life will look like in even the next few years, so the best thing for me to do is con­tin­ue to save some mon­ey for retire­ment (10% to my 401k), put some mon­ey aside for future large expens­es (maybe buy­ing a new place to live, a new car, a big par­ty, etc) and just gen­er­al­ly tak­ing care of myself and liv­ing a good life. 

I’ll also be look­ing for­ward to con­tin­ue see­ing my net worth go up and see how long it takes me to hit the fabled $500,000 mark. Onwards and upwards we go! 

As always, thanks for read­ing! Have you hit any mile­stones lately? 

Love,