How am I doing?

[moosejaw]

I mainly lurk as a Mustachian, and followed some principles to dig my way out of a hole about 10 years ago.  However, reading the successes of everyone else seems to be making feel envious.

Back in 2006 my wife and I had 35k in debt, owed 750k on our home that was worth about 800k, with a mortgage payment of $4400.00 per month.  No retirement and no savings.

Since following a bit of Dave Ramsey's advice and MMM, our situation in 2017 is:

No debt. Paid for 2 degrees(40k) for wife that increased her pay by 80%. $170k in retirement.  Sold and moved homes, owe 670k on a house that is worth 1.25 or so.  Currently contributing 15% of wife's higher income job to retirement, do full match + 700.00 month to my retirement.  Kids go to amazing public schools so avoided the private school dilemma.

I see so many people have paid off their homes or have much higher returning investment portfolios, I feel pretty behind on things.  Since I just turned 40 I still have a bit of time to catch up but am feeling pretty spent(no pun intended) after grinding it our for the past decade.

For all of those who are in their 20's...Start kicking ass now.

[Heroes821]

Sounds like you're doing great to me.  Is it possible to downsize that house and keep your school district because if you can sell it for 1.2 million and buy another house at even $600,000 you'd be fully debt free.

[FLBiker]

I agree (both that you've made good strides and that you might consider downsizing).  I know it's different everywhere, but $1.2M seems like a lot of house.

[moosejaw]

Thank you guys for the kind words.

Funny you say that.  When we sold the previous home, and had a realized gain of about $400k, my
 goal was to buy a $600,000 home and be debt free within 3-5 years.  The problem, due to the Seattle housing market was the competition in the 400k-700k range where everyone comes in with cash.  It really is unbelievable.

This caused me to look a little higher in value and we purchased the current home for 995k, although all the numbers said it was worth 1.25+. 

As tempted as I am to do the BEST thing, we could not stay in the area we are in for less than a million, and we would not come close to getting the house we are currently in.  Not to mention I love the place we live.

I also managed to get a mortgage interest rate of 2.875% so our payment per month is $3500.00 with tax/ins.  Anyways, I know what you're saying but there just is NOTHING to buy below a million in the area we want our kids to be in school.

The kids thing is semi-anti-MMM.

[Heroes821]

I don't think the kid's thing is anti-MMM when you are still working. I know how expensive private school is and I imagine Seattle is horribly priced for it.  Good schools alone might be worth the extra house cost instead of paying for school.  Google says the average cost in your city is between $13,000-20,000 per kid per year.  With an interest rate that low you probably don't even want to pay it any faster than the minimum.