We’re back up to $250k! That’s nice to see even if it is arbitrary. Looks like things are going back up little-by-little.
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Your post was encouraging so I checked mine! An imperfect measurement because my Mint account only has my personal accounts but includes shared transactions with DH. So this is sort of my personal NW? Before our wedding (April 2022) it was $145k and then after it was $115. So I’m on the upswing, too!
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Yay market!!
This is putting on the pressure about whether to pull some money out of the market while it’s still down (to get some tax loss harvesting if we’re going to pull it out anyway).
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another drop, less than last time (is this why I took that bigger contract job?)
3.44% estimated WR/116% funded
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Just posting because we really really thought at the beginning of the year that maybe this would be the year we hit the next huge goal- and well; month after month it’s just going down. Very discouraging. We are still investing, and still trying to save where we can (our cash is not going down, so that’s good- at least it isn’t us.)
But well, we won’t be hitting that $2m this year. 
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Woah, you’re close to $2 million?! That’s incredible!!! Like, mind-blowingly awesome, and I think we’re close in age too. I hope you feel accomplished and proud 
I think a lot of us won’t meet our net worth goals this year, lol. I had a firm number in mind, as I do every year, and I still hope it could happen but I know it might not. On the grand scale of things I don’t think it will matter too much even if it’s extra nice to meet goals on time.
What will you do to celebrate when you hit $2 million? Retire maybe?! Or go on a trip or something? Haha, I like to celebrate vicariously 
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We hit $1m last year, and at one point got as high as 1.75, but now we are back at $1.5.
I am insanely proud we have managed to save so much. The spending is kicking up now that we have kids; but we have always been super frugal with decent paying jobs. Now I’d say we have high paying jobs, and spend more, but we invest first. I really wanted to hit $2m because then my husband and I can both say we are millionaires, you know?
This is our retirement and taxable investment accounts, plus cash. I don’t put my house in there, so I guess it isn’t really net worth. (Though the house wouldn’t get us there either.)
It is crazy though that when it hits this level your investments can go down more than you make in an entire year in just one month. The swings are wild.
And the compounding is so true. $1m took us 15 years. The next half million took 2.
I think we probably won’t retire early until like $3-5m. Just because of kids college and stuff like that. But we’ve gotten a bit better about spending a little more. Can’t save everything; can’t take it with you an all that.
But man, I really want to be able to say we are millionaires.
(And also- I did not do it alone. My scholarships paid my Bachelor’s degree and my parents paid my expenses in college. My husband did ROTC to pay for college- so we started out with only about $5k in his student loans. When he finished his PhD, I worked during my Master’s degree and we pretended he didn’t have a real job yet, so we were able to pay cash for that. My second master’s degree work paid for. Lack of student loans is a BIG deal. My parents have given us a few thousand dollars for gifts each year. We’ve always known we have family who could help us if we need it; and that security lets you take more risks.)
It’s so weird how you compare yourself to peers though. Like I 100% know we are wealthy and doing well; but it seems like everyone around us has so much more than us, and we wonder how they can afford boats and RVs and all the kids activities and private school; but they probably don’t have the savings, and we know a lot of them get a TON from their parents. And then we wonder things like “why is my career stalled” and “I haven’t done anything with my life, I was supposed to make a difference”. It’s weird to have a six-figure (barely) job and feel like you aren’t successful. My husband especially feels trapped. I’m trying to coach him that enough is as good as a feast; and he doesn’t have to climb a career ladder. We have what we need and we have flexibility. It’s just so weird to know we have such a good cushion and a good position and feel like we are the “poor” ones who need to buckle down and save more because everyone around us seems to be doing bettter.
Sorry, that big long rant should have maybe gone on my journal… It’s been a bit of a struggle lately to feel like we are doing enough to save for our kids, and save for our retirement, and spend on all the things they need/want.
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No apologies necessary! I think this is the perfect place to talk about such things. Also, I think you are millionaires if you have over a million, even if it’s combined! I’d celebrate now, haha!
I know people IRL who feel similarly to you, that they are doing just ok because of the peer comparison, even though they’re wealthy. It seems really common among certain demographics (IME people who grew up very upper middle class and in somewhat of a bubble, and then stay in a similar place) and it seems like an enormous amount of pressure without a lot of room for contentedness.
IDK if that’s your background, but I went to high school in a very wealthy area (after living previously in working class areas) and the culture shock was real. I almost felt like I was speaking a foreign language, lol. I noticed early on that most people who were obviously very wealthy considered themselves normal, middle class, or at most “comfortable”. And I learned it was not ok to point out the obvious, lol! My high school friend and I got in a huge argument as teenagers because she was so upset I referenced her family as wealthy 
and she insisted they were not!
I didn’t even mean anything negative by it because I truly don’t have negative associations with wealth, I mean I’m here because I want to be really wealthy! To me it was just like, a literal fact. I think we were talking about politics and I said something like, but as a wealthy person don’t you think xyz and she was appalled. I think it was a comparison thing for sure. She kept pointing out that compared to Wall St. hedge fund people her parents weren’t wealthy or true Old Money oil and transport families, they weren’t wealthy, or people with jets, etc. But like…that’s not really a fair comparison. I mean, by that logic I could argue that I am elderly, because I’m wayyyyyy older than a baby!
I find it interesting that this type of comparison is often made by people who otherwise pride themselves a lot on data and science and logic. One thing I’m super curious about is the history of this dynamic. Every so often there are hints of it when I read older books, like a reference to someone having just a modest estate. The poor cousin trope, but like, the cousin is still nobility yet feels very put upon due to being less fabulously rich than other relatives.
Do you ever think about moving somewhere more diverse? Or, I guess, do you regret living in the type of place you do because of this dynamic? I found some big advantages to living in a really rich town, like the public school was awesome, it was incredibly safe, everything was so well kept, etc. People were so educated! The whole first year I lived there I felt like I spent a lot of time nodding and pretending to know what people were talking about, lol. I’m really grateful I had the chance to live in such a rarefied type of place, but it definitely felt a bit like Disney Land.
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this got me
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I’m on track to end the year with my net worth lower than the beginning of the year and this hasn’t happened since 2013 when I bought a car.
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My net worth is almost exactly what it was in December 2021, in spite of income and increased property values. A rocky market and a major renovation will do that to a person.
In a few different places I’ve seen people comparing them to those around them and feeling like less. I don’t feel that way, and I’ve been thinking about why.
I’m the wealthiest person out of all my friends. I live in a low income area. I’m living a middle class life in a working class environment.
If you ever want to feel rich forever, go live in the hood and have amazing friends with lots of love and not much money.
It means that most meals and activities are my treat. I give a lot of gifts and don’t receive many. It’s a weird dynamic, but I’m not hiding my income and not being cheap with what I value, which is my friends.
Anyways. That’s what I’ve been thinking about, thanks to you folk.
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It IS interesting to think about. We live in a very middle class to upper middle class place, and clearly spend less than a lot of other people around us- everyone is constantly going on vacations to far away places. And much more stylish home decor, so on. But I feel like we’re doing really well- and I’m not sure if that’s because compared to starting out we are, or if it’s because I know there’s lots of debt and inadequate retirement savings at play? Or if it’s just because internally I really don’t measure wealth by the demonstrations of spending? And that’s not meant as a superiority thing, it just doesn’t occur to me to think “oh they’ve got a very nice rug they must make a lot of money!” Similar to how I rarely think about how I look, this may be more of a brokenness is me evaluating myself against others the way normal people do haha.
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I was thinking about that too Smacky! I also don’t have that issue and I am definitely not the richest among my friends, so IDK if that’s the main factor?
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My IRA is just now back to what it was in April 2021. Even with the decent amount I’ve added, it’s still down 15% from the high in November 2021.
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I haven’t tracked market fluctuations but we are not much up for the year from where we started.
On the one hand, I’m worried because our household (Ponder) earns a LOT and It makes me concerned we are not taking good care of our resources, as per community obligations. I do know I started a business and that took a portion of our savings each month.
On the other hand, I feel like I’m going to finish the year wealthy because we will own many more shares than we did before, I have a small business that will move from setup to revenue generating by the end of the year (probably not profit and income generating yet), and our backyard is awesome.
Wait, what does that last one have to do with anything? I have been working for a while on “being happy with what you have” and this week something shifted (probably helped by reading a book on how a clean house is not morally more superior, handy because since I moved out of home I havent been able to keep a tidy house). I’ve felt for a while that our backyard is really well set up and we’ve worked hard to make it work for our family, but it’s not magazine swoon worthy. Plus our house is always untidy. This week we’ve used it so much that my brain clicked and was like “OH, IF ITS WORKING FOR US THEN IT IS A PERFECT BACKYARD AND HOUSE”.
And then y’all had this handy conversation here so I had somewhere to share about my experience!
Will repost this in my journal.
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Our net worth will be down about $98,000 CAD because I reduced the valuation of the house from market value to appraised value in our net worth calculations this year. If that were discounted we would be up a couple thousand.
We have regular GICs and a couple market linked GICs, but otherwise we got out of the market a couple years ago. We don’t have the room to handle market downturns financially. Plus the market has stressed Hubby out for decades, and hence, me too!
We are nowhere’s in the rich category, but we have Hubby’s pensions and live in a low to middle class neighbourhood, so everyone thinks we are wealthy.
The disadvantage of living here is Hubby had to do some growling at all the door-to-door solicitors when we first arrived. But they don’t bother us now.
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This month was wild. We “saved” about $4k, but our networth went down by $11k 
but we own more shares of stuff than we did at the start of the month so at least there’s that!
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We’ve thought about moving many times, but so far, my husband’s job seems limiting. It is too highly specialized, he is just high enough up in the chain now that any job is super competitive. He’s had a hard time finding anything else. (He did get an offer in Seattle, a higher level position, with a decent salary cut from what he makes in Iowa…so, uh, that’s not going to work.)
We are lucky that while our neighborhood is very insulated, the area of Iowa we live in is at least more diverse than most of the state, sort of. It is still rather segregated; we have more minorities than other areas of Iowa, but still a ridiculously low number. Now that my daughter is out of daycare, she goes to a rural school, so she is starting to make friends with people who have a much different level income than us. She is meeting friends who live in small apartments with large families and learning that not everyone lives the same. And at least as far as exposure to other cultures- we have tons of international students, and therefore a great amount of international cuisine. Our school district is good, but not amazing. And with the politics on the school board right now, I actually have a lot of concerns where it is going.
I went to a high school where there was HUGE income divide. Very very poor and very very rich. I was on the upper end of the middle of the school, but like you described, thought of myself as “middle class” or “comfortable” when we were clearly a lot higher than that. But as far as the really ‘rich kids’ went, I wasn’t one at all. (My family didn’t do international vacations, I didn’t get a new car when I turned 16; but I was in expensive activities. But I went to school with the Bush twins; ‘my grandfather was president, my father is governor and about to be president’ is a different level. The kids in their social circle matched them way more closely than I did. I didn’t live in the super fancy neighborhood that tracked to the school.)
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Isn’t it crazy how all this works?
I am far enough from retirement that ‘buying on sale’ seems like it should be good; but man, it is hard to see those drops.
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Dropping below June, psychologically important number missed by $2900. If we drop below the next horizontal line I’ll probably look at trying to pick up more contract work.
3.6% WR, 111% funded.
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