2018 is almost over - how did you do?

[scottish]

oh in that case, must be legit.

No, I took the time to fabricate an entire page of E-trade, making sure I had everything just right, including a large amount of commissions paid to show I had done quite a few trades during the year.

Ever hear of Occam's Razor?

Jackpot!   Not to be a downer, but does this mean you have to report an extra 172K income and 45K capital gains on your tax return?   

[wenchsenior]

We're on track to spend just under 60K, which is equivalent to our lowest spending of a handful of the past 10 years.  I'm really pleased, given that we partially support a second household, had to unexpectedly purchase a new (lightly used) car after our car got t-boned, and took 3 'fun' trips (1 me only, 2 both of us; not including lots of work travel).

The downside is that we try to save just over 50K/year, and we aren't going to quite make it b/c the gov't shutdown means our last TSP contribution/match isn't happening, and also b/c some of the cash I would have used to top up the accounts this month 1) was used on unexpected down payment for car; and 2) will be used to live on with no paycheck coming due to gov't shutdown.

All in all, a very good, if not great, year.

[EscapeVelocity2020]

This is my main trading account with YTD gains of a bit over $216,000

Not to turn this in to the RoG thread, but I hope you have some of that money ready to pay the Cap Gains tax!  Good job though and sounds like a good year.  Should've rented the sailboat though, unless it was some 'one of a kind' thing.

2018 was a disaster of one time purchases for us - new windows, a new car - so I'm not even going to analyze!  Still FI, and won't need those things for another 10 or more years.

[Roland of Gilead]

Jackpot!   Not to be a downer, but does this mean you have to report an extra 172K income and 45K capital gains on your tax return?   

Yes, that is the debbie downside.   I thought when we retired I was done writing checks (was planning on getting checks and subsidies actually).

I paid $5500 in estimated tax earlier in the year to prevent any penalties (that exceeds the tax we paid last year) but I figure we will owe about  20% or so of the gains (new tax rate of 24% goes all the way to over $300,000 for married couples!).

So I have mentally set aside about 20% of 250k or $50,000 to cover taxes and figure the $5500 will cover ACA subsidy payback.

I have actually lost a little bit in the past couple of days, down about $3500 on some stocks I bought Thursday so if we continue to get a decline I could sell those for a loss before end of year to offset gains but I really like them and think they are a good value even where I bought them.

[Roland of Gilead]

Should've rented the sailboat though, unless it was some 'one of a kind' thing.

The sailboat is more of a engineering project.  We converted it to full electric propulsion with an inboard 12kW brushless motor powered by a 20kW-hr 48V battery bank with recharge via solar, wind, regen and shore power.   It needed other things though like new running rigging and rudder steering quadrant.   It is fun doing something a little different (electric drive) but if I had known I could make $250k in the market, I probably would have bought a brand new boat.   They are around $380,000 but the resale would be over $250,000 in five years where our electric boat that we probably will end up spending $200,000 on will have a resale of near nothing.

Alas I went cheap and bought an old used boat.

[BlueMR2]

On track to hit our budget +/- some depending on if property taxes hit this year or next (we get them sometime between 12/30 and 1/3 typically and this payment is expected to be about 6% of our budget).  However, getting there was rough.  We had a little over $7000 in unexpected car repairs across our 3 cars (some I was able to do my own labor on, others I was not).  One car in particular got to ride a flat bed 3 times in just over a month all for totally unrelated surprise items.  Despite that I did complete some home upgrades that were largely labor time (only in the hundreds of dollars for supplies) and early in the year I did complete my one higher end rifle build I'd been working on for a few years.  By Fall though other hobbies and any traveling were put on a hard stop until 2019.

[RyanAtTanagra]

Got the last paycheck of the year so have final numbers.  77% savings rate this year.  Was really trying for 80%, and was above it a couple times over the year, but couldn't hold on to it.  Still happy with the final rate though.  And I think pretty impressive for SF Bay area.  Also, up from 60% in 2017, which my my previous record.  2016 was 55%, 2015 53%.  I'm still on a trend upwards with every year being better, but it's definitely going to get harder to continue that.

One of the major contributors to increased savings this year was moving onto my sailboat full time in March.  Goal for 2019 is to get above 80% since I'll have the full year of reduced COL and I got a lot of the expenses related to the initial move out of the way.  But I also really want to try to go to 4 days a week this year, and will happily give up on the 80% goal if I can make that happen :-)

[BookLoverL]

I still need to do the final calculations to see what my precise final figures for 2018 are (I have a little expected spending around New Year), but it looks like I earned just under £10,000 between my two different part-time work things and spent just over £5,000, which is going to give me a 47-48% savings rate while earning around 2/3 of the UK full-time minimum wage, so I'm happy.

It's true that I've saved a lot of money by living with my parents, which majorly reduced my housing costs, but since I can't afford to buy a house yet and renting at current prices in my area would mean I was spending pretty much the same on rent as everything else I spend on unless I was living with roommates anyway, I think that's fair game as a strategy. And my budget wasn't super barebones either, it contained a bunch of long distance train travel to meet up with my boyfriend, two holidays, and probably like £100 in library fines, amongst other things. So if I did need to take on a larger portion of bills and housing costs, there's definitely things I could still cut.

[w@nker]

NW about flat for the year.  Down about $300k from intra-year peak.  No worries.  Still on course.

[Fish Sweet]

Not counting the money I've spent on supplies and materials for a fledgling crafting sideline (that I've made a whopping $700 of profit off of so far, HA!) I've spent just a hair over 17.5k this year-- my lowest year yet.  Roommates, cooking at home, and not doing my usual international travel have made this possible, but I also got slapped with some unexpected big expenses (new mattress, replacement of expensive electronics) so I think it evens out a bit.  Not sure if I'll be able to manage the same numbers next year (planning on traveling internationally again to visit aging family members, at the very least), but hopefully by then my business will be rolling along and bringing in a little more money.

Still, now that I know I can, and have done it, and still managed to live a very joyous and satisfying year full of laughter, fun, and social outings, the occasional splurge and a lot... lot of fancy beers, probably too many fancy beers.

[Dicey]

oh in that case, must be legit.

No, I took the time to fabricate an entire page of E-trade, making sure I had everything just right, including a large amount of commissions paid to show I had done quite a few trades during the year.

Ever hear of Occam's Razor?

yep. but on the interwebs, everything can be "simple".

great job on your trading prowess.  send links to your investing book when it gets published.

Oh, come on, @wannabe-stache! @Roland of Gilead has been around since 2012. He's a valued member of this community, not some latecomer who just created an account to try to sell you something or generate blog traffic. He is sharing his real life, real time experience, the same way @sammybiker is. They are actually setting and achieving audacious goals and letting the rest of us watch while they do awesome things. Your comments seem unnecessarily dick-ish. Please stop.

[SpareChange]

Total spending for 2018: $16,876.58, which is $1,508.38 less than 2017. Sweet. That was as low as it's gonna get though, as inflation from apt rent, health insurance, etc will overtake any marginal cost cuts I could or would care to make at this point.

Total income was $96,161.19, and total saved was $67,984.44, for a gross savings rate of 70.7%, and an after tax savings rate of 80.1%. I did not include the employer paid portion of my health insurance in any of the above numbers.   

Happy New Year's to all!

[LWYRUP]

I thought 2018 was going to be an epically awful year due to some high expenses.  The numbers show it was not great but not quite as bad as I feared.  Assuming mortgage paydown counts as saving, then in part due to the benefits of a generous gift we saved 40% of our income.  If the gift is excluded, we saved 30%.  If mortgage paydown can't count as saving, and the gift is excluded, it was 20%.  Net worth as a whole was down due to investment losses but we had a great run for many years before that so I can't complain.   

I expect in 2019 we will be able to slash a lot in unusual / one-time expenses, but we also have some planned home renovations (money already earmarked in a savings account).  So I expect 2019 numbers will be similar, with a lower daily burn rate and a big slug of home renovation spending evening each other. out  Then, 2020 numbers should be a lot better when the home renovations are done. 

In about 3-5 years I hope to leave my government job for a more profitable one and my wife will start to work again once all three kids are in school.  If we can keep lowering expenses during that process, we should hopefully be able to start blowing things out of the water then. 

My primary goals in 2019 are health / fitness as #1, career as #2 and finances as #3.  With three little kids in an expensive area, we're playing the long game rather than racing towards FIRE.

[TL8]

Our net worth went from about $860K in January 2018 to... about $860K in December 2018. Considering that a significant portion of our net worth in January 2018 was due to a small bitcoin purchase I made years ago ballooning to an absurd value, I'm pleased we were able to avoid a drop this year. We spent about $120K and saved about $120K after taxes. I'm quite pleased with the approx. 50% after-tax savings rate. That's good for us.

[aneel]

Our spending was ~$68k. We unexpectedly had to out our son in a private therapeutic school for which we paid 10k for during 2018. That brings us down to $58k which is still a bit higher than I would like. $15k was mortgage payments, but as I expect to have those 29 more years, I don't plan to discount those. I think it's time to check the lifestyle inflation!

[Zikoris]

Yep, now that the year is done it turned out pretty well - total spending of $28,229, 64% savings rate. Net worth increase of about 40K, on a net income about 77K.

And Vietnam is really cool so far.

[WYOGO]

As a SINK, I have some basic dependent costs that are frankly missing and it allows greater flexibility to structure life more to my own personal liking, with little regard to the preferences of others, rules or other extreme actions generally required or at least taken to meet targeted goals.

Despite purchasing a simply phenomenal Model S over a year ago now, savings rates were still in the 70% range with all tax advantaged space fully maxed both post and pre as permitted by tax law or employment policy. Brokerage funding has continued and balances in the corresponding buckets is still on track to be substantially optimized for future tax avoidance scenarios.

Quite a bit of adventuring has been enjoyed in 2018 and 2019 is starting off well in that regard. Income increased at a rate above expectation and despite a gloomy overall market annual return.

It’s been a good year with more attention focused on what I want things to look like, instead of compulsive obsession with the cost of a crown of broccoli. This for me is healthy growth and balance.

It is also nice to read the high savings rates reported here. There is quite a bit of prosperity being enjoyed and much to be grateful for. Onward and upward...

[EnjoyIt]

We spent significantly more money on travel this year as compared to previous years and I thought we would end a bit over preferred budget.  But, we had significant cost savings in other areas of our life keeping 2018 spending about where we want it to be.  We spent less on alcohol, utilities, gas, eating out, clothes, and we were able to reduce our property tax this year (we live in a state with high property tax.) We converted spending that yields low value to spending on experiences and higher value.

[2Birds1Stone]

We ended up hitting $75k increase in net worth. (+14%)

Combined Spending - $37,250
Combined Income - $128,000
Combined Net Worth - $515,100
Combined 2018 Savings Rate - 71%
Years of Combined Expenses - 13.8X
Current WR% - 7.23%

[Cool Friend]

I did okay, but not great.  Paid off $10,000 in addition to the regular $350 monthly payments on my student loans, which are my only extant debt.  Will have paid off another extra $10,000 in a couple weeks.

Spent more than usual on my hobby, but only bought those things with carefully placed discounts and coupons, and only bought things that would be easy to resell if I needed/wanted to, to recoup that money.

But, I'm really blowing it with food and beer.  I've fallen into the very lazy habit of ordering delivery when I'm too "tired" to cook at least once a week, and have been mostly mostly eating lunches out at work.  I actually love to cook, but have developed some impractical standards--if I can't spend a couple hours making a great meal, I don't want to do it at all.  It's stupid and I need to cut the shit.  There are plenty of fast and simple meals I could be making, and I have the tools and skills to do it.  I really need to punch my own face this year to tackle this area of wasteful spending.

edit: forgot to mention I got  my 401k setup at 10% this year, so put that in the Good Boy column!

[rocketpj]

Not a very Mustachian year for us in terms of living expenses, but our total stash has gone up dramatically.

At the end of 2017 I stopped working full time at my old job, and now only do a shift every couple of weeks.  That happened because I took a huge leap and bought a mixed use residential and commercial building that needed a lot of work.  In balance, my spouse got a promotion at her work and almost replaced half of my reduced income.

So we made a conscious choice to have a lower income, and I think I only 'earned' about $10k this year.  I didn't save much of that, though we did put a fair bit away into my wife's tax sheltered account.  On the other hand, I spent the whole year upgrading the building, with the payoff being a final sign off by the building inspector on Dec 27th.

Value of bldg when I bought it - $650k
Expenses to upgrade it - $140k
Value of bldg now it is completed - $1.2M

So despite a low income/low savings year, I 'made' $400k. 

I now find myself in the position of having to make a choice between selling the building and pocketing the after tax profits, or filling up the rental units and paying it down over time.  Net profit on rents would be about $7k/month after mortgage, utilities and long-term maintenance costs (it will need a roof in a few years). 

Technically that puts me into a partial FIRE position, but I expect to work at something while I manage the building, and there is still a bit of work to be done. 

[JSMustachian]

The MMM lifestyle is working very nicely for my family.

Our spending for 2018 came in at $51,500. Not bad considering we did a small home renovation ($6,000) and added costs of a newborn and daycare. Total investments and regular scheduled principal payments totaled $86,000 which is a 70% savings rate for our gross income.

We are aiming for less than $50,000 in spending for 2019 to keep the lifestyle inflation in check and hope to save as close to $100,000 as possible.

We have 19% of our FI money so far. Several more years to go but things are looking very promising.

[Cool Friend]

I did okay, but not great.  Paid off $10,000 in addition to the regular $350 monthly payments on my student loans, which are my only extant debt.  Will have paid off another extra $10,000 in a couple weeks.

Spent more than usual on my hobby, but only bought those things with carefully placed discounts and coupons, and only bought things that would be easy to resell if I needed/wanted to, to recoup that money.

But, I'm really blowing it with food and beer.  I've fallen into the very lazy habit of ordering delivery when I'm too "tired" to cook at least once a week, and have been mostly mostly eating lunches out at work.  I actually love to cook, but have developed some impractical standards--if I can't spend a couple hours making a great meal, I don't want to do it at all.  It's stupid and I need to cut the shit.  There are plenty of fast and simple meals I could be making, and I have the tools and skills to do it.  I really need to punch my own face this year to tackle this area of wasteful spending.

edit: forgot to mention I got  my 401k setup at 10% this year, so put that in the Good Boy column!

Just wanted to update that I put my last year's of expenses in order with my Mint profile and while I'm 100% right about the takeout and beer (I am afraid to tell you even under anonymity what I spent on Seamless alone last year), I otherwise did exceptionally--2018 was the most financially responsible year of my life..  Can't wait to outdo myself in 2019.

[rentalnewbie]

Wow, some really impressive saving rates of over 70% here!

@Cool Friend I ordered seamless exactly once last year and maybe another time that my husband did when I was on a work trip. That shit is expensive, I almost died seeing the total. But it's also amazing that someone will bring restaurant food to your house. Still, we know you can do better and wish you luck improving in 2019 :) At least you know what the problem is.

[SimpleDreamer]

I'm new to the MMM site, but 2018 was a great year for us: we officially crossed the $1M net worth line!  It doesn't feel like nearly as big of a deal as I though it would though.  I suspect it will feel bigger when our net worth excluding the house reaches the $1M mark.

Up to this point in life, after we became debt free, we just tried to stick to a budget and put money away.  For 2019, I'm going to be more intentional about tracking our progress.  Based on our budget, our savings rate is over 70%.  That could turn out to be slightly higher or lower - I made some changes to my W-4 and will need to update my spreadsheets once I have a more accurate estimate of take-home pay for the year.

Our spending budget for the year is ~$24k (excludes health insurance), plus we have a $6k allowance for vacations/fun that I will be surprised if we even spend half of, so in total $30k excluding health insurance.

I love reading everyone's stats - it's great to see so many people spending less and saving a lot more!