The hubs and I have arrived! We just barely scraped past the 1M mark yesterday (thanks for the good week, stock market!), and think it will take a couple of months with no crash to shore up. We’re super excited but it’s hard to not be able to share our excitement with anyone, so we’re back on here. (Actually, we would have gotten here sooner, but we put away a hefty sum into a donor-advised fund to reduce our tax burden and kickstart our charitable giving, and that doesn't count toward our NW.)
This weekend is actually our six-year college graduation anniversary, and we’re reflecting on how we’ve come to this point. We both grew up middle class. My family especially was always very frugal, so as soon as we got our first real jobs we started maxing retirement accounts and saving aggressively. My husband was not very frugal, but was able to buckle down and we worked together toward this goal. When things got stressful at work he became more interested in financial independence.
Throughout this, we've gone through periods of recalibrating our lifestyle to make sure that the things we spend money on are actually making us happier. When you get used to certain conveniences it can be difficult to scale back, but when you scale back too much it can be difficult to stay motivated... so it's definitely a balancing act to determine how much is enough. We’ve saved at least 80% after-tax income per year for the last 4 years (first two were rough with the economy because of graduating in ‘09, but we were still at >40%). The stock market has helped a lot, and during the last 3 years my husband’s compensation has increased to astronomical levels. We posted to this forum for advice 2.5 years ago at $250,000 NW, and I can't believe how far we've come since then.
Although I have mostly lurked, this forum has been a huge help to keep us inspired by the badass feats that abound. So thank you to this community for helping us stay motivated and focused!
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