That is an amazing progression of net worth over time. 26 years for the first and only 3 for the second? For us it took about ten years for the first and we aren’t at the second yet, but it will be less than 10 years for sure, unless we have a massive market correction in the interim.
Yeah. I didn't do a very good job of building wealth for the first part of my career. I had good intentions. I first discovered FI in the late 1990's through
http://www.retireearlyhomepage.com/But then lots of things happened that got in the way - some unavoidable, others not.
In 2007 I really got serious (and also lucky) I got a job at Google, sold my house in Baltimore right as the housing crash started but before it hit full swing. Those two things got me going in the right direction in a big way.
I did have about 550K in retirement accounts at that time but not a huge amount of taxable investments, maybe 60K total - despite making really good money but like I said, sometimes life gets in the way.
So I put the profits from my house into the market in early 2008. Took a major hit over the next year (from 700K to about 350) but kept adding every month and by Feb 2011 hit my first Mil.
I will tell people over and over that the 2008-2009 great recession was the greatest thing that ever happened to me financially. I was very lucky to sell my house right before and then start and keep a great new job right at the beginning of it. It didn't hurt that my life had gotten much simpler by then, so I could focus on growing wealth.
I sometimes look back on the past and think that I could have done this much better. But that's not productive.