In December, after a year of working my ass off above my paygrade, I got a 32.5% raise. My boss, at the end of my performance review that led to this raise, asked if I was going to move out of my matchbox (I live in a 180 square foot micro apartment, because there's no other way for me to pay $655 a month to live in downtown Seattle).
I'm proud of my badassity not only because no, I'm not moving out, but mostly because it didn't occur to me to do so until he mentioned it. I had to take a second to say "hah, no, what?" To which he asked, "Well what are you going to do with the money?" Thankfully I was prepared for this. The raise amounts to enough for me to effortlessly fill out a 2017 tIRA before tax-time and a 2018 tIRA. He called me boring.
Also, it's been a month since I got the raise, and while I expected my December expenditures to remain the same as November's, I'm still very happy now that I have the finalized numbers: $1123 in December, compared to November's $1371 (my projected budget is $1341 monthly).
Plus, with 401k contributions and the raise paychecks in December, I made it from a net worth equal to my cash buffer (1-2k) last January to now over $20k of investments. The market was so productive this year I have $19.9k in my 401k after my first ever year of contributing.
I don't like to toot my own horn, but I'm happy with how 2017 worked out and I'm pretty sure I worked really hard to make this happen for myself. I think getting a raise was my first real challenge after discovering mustachianism, which means this might have some great sticking power for the rest of my life. I'm also just pleased to report that at the end of my first year of saving over half my take-home pay, I'm not miserable. I don't hate my life or feel like I'm wasting it or giving up my youth as a sacrifice for the future.
If this isn't nice, I don't know what is.