How much do you focus on (investment/NW) milestones?

[montgomery212]

I only started reading these forums within the last few months, but I’ve been a live below your means person since I graduated law school 12 years ago.  Did you start focusing more on milestones once you were surrounded by an MMM community that’s doing the same or just because milestones (hopefully) start coming faster?

It took me 7 freaking years to get to my first 100k in my 401k (2008-2009 happened in the middle of that), and I feel like I barely looked at my account bc it was such a long upward climb and probably bc I was so young then that retirement seemed like a hypothetical. Then it was another 3.75 years to get to 200k (18 months of unemployment in there slowed me down). I remember getting “antsy” for 200k once I had hit about 190k or so bc I knew it was close.  Then 18 months later was 300k (first job ever with a match – so that has helped speed things along in addition to this crazy market). I had always said once I’m at 300k, I’ll breathe easier, consider taking some job risks etc. And now what do you know -- it’s only been 4 months since 300k, and I’m already trying to figure out how long 350k and then 400k will realistically take.  Is this another version of the OMY syndrome people talk so much about here?
 
I’m 37 so not looking to retire just yet, but as I’ve posted earlier, crazy unhappy with my government job so I need to make some career moves.  Those career moves will inherently involve some risk (bc the private sector where I was for the first 9 years of my career and then laid off is inherently less stable) and could involve a paycut esp. if I were to start my own business in a few years, so my focus has been on building up my retirement and other investment accounts as much as possible and then leaving at the “perfect” time, where I’ve gotten the full benefit of the government matches etc. but still am marketable enough to be able to jump ship (knowing there is no such thing as perfect).

[soccerluvof4]

I didnt focus on anything really financially till early 40's. I had everything just in savings accounts but didnt take advantage of 401ks nothing. I was so focused on running my business and thought i would just pay for things as they come. Having 4 kids and thinking to myself this business isnt going to last forever the way the industry is changing I better get my act together. I stumbled upon MMM and 5 years later fire'd. Now I focus on it everyday. Always trying to learn more for, things I should of done when I was younger and still shooting for more milestones.

[wenchsenior]

We started adult life (career type stable job/income, mortgage, etc) very late, and to my regret, I didn't get serious about saving right away. We weren't particularly 'spendy' and never ran cc debt, but the first few years all our money went to paying off student loans, car, house, furniture, appliances, etc.  DH contributed to his 401k and I made sure we had a 5K emergency fund and that's all.

I didn't get serious about tracking income vs spending/saving until about 5 or 6 years later when student loans and our car were paid off.  At that point, we definitely started to save more.

But still I didn't start thinking in terms of setting short-term goals and celebrating milestones until 4 years after that, when we took on supporting older relatives.  It created a huge cash drain,  especially initially.  All of a sudden we had a second mortgage, a second car (with loan), and a whole second household to pay for.  At that point, necessity demanded that I get very serious about our money.

 To stay motivated, I began tracking every penny in and out of the house and setting goals for debt repayment and savings.  By the time our finances stabilized again a few years later, the habit was ingrained, and I now try to always have a few spending and savings goals that I can track (graphing progress really motivates me).

E.g., right now I have a goal of increasing our bi weekly savings amount this year by 200$ over last year's; and saving enough money in our slush fund taxable account to surpass the amount of our only debt (mortgage).  That should happen sometime late in 2018, at which point I will have to find a new short term goal.

I set longer term goals also (amount of $ needed to be FI, of course), and I enjoy tracking progress toward those.  But shorter term goals keep me more motivated.

[golden1]

Once a year I look at my retirement tab on my finance spreadsheet.  I have targets for where I am supposed to be at each age.  Right now I am two years ahead of schedule since the markets are good. 

[Laura33]

I think a lot of this is personality driven -- some folks love spreadsheets, others not so much.  For me, I pay attention when it feels like it matters; otherwise, it just sits on autopilot.  So for ex., I tracked very very closely for the first 5+ years out of school, when I was single and paying off my (relatively small) loans and starting my very-beginner 'stache; every $10K was a huge, huge deal.  My primary driver was fear of poverty, so I was completely focused on getting my net worth and savings up to what felt like a "safe" level. 

Then I got married and suddenly had a built-in safety net, so I stopped paying much attention to particular milestones any more; sitting here today, I remember my last SL payment and the first time my account crossed $75K much more clearly than whenever it was we reached $500K.  I didn't really have many specific goals beyond "pile up a giant 'stache," because I didn't think it was even possible to retire before 65 (see "fear of poverty," above), so why bother?  They're just numbers on a computer.

Then I went through a bad period a couple of years ago and started to think about just chucking it all (as, I think, is typical during those kinds of periods), and I realized that we were FI and could RE if we cut our budget some.  That realization has engendered a lot more discussion with DH and an actual FIRE date and target number.  So now I am once again much more interested in my new milestone, because achieving that will significantly affect my future plans!  (Also because this market is just bat-shit crazy, and it blows my mind to watch my investments grow like that.)

[Slee_stack]

I micromanage my numbers a couple times a week.  I enjoy it.

I don't actually care so much about milestones, but I do like to be on top of where my interim money is sitting.  i could put stuff on auto pilot (deposit), but I like to 'be involved'.

I didn't do this nearly as much in my 30's.  Maybe for the last 5 years or so.

[Imma]

I'm 27 and I've always been focused on reaching financial goals. I grew up without a lot of money and in an unhappy family. As a teenager, I was counting the years until I turned 18 and I was smart enough to know I would need as much cash as possible to turn my life around as soon as I became an adult. Things got more complicated when I was I diagnosed with an auto immune disease in my last year of highschool and I knew I was never going to be able to hold down a fulltime job. When I left home, I left with about €10.000 . This allowed me to rent a two-bedroom apartment with a lease in just my name. I always had roommates to share the costs, but this way it would be my apartment and I'd always have a roof over my head.

I went to college parttime off and on for years, when I had energy and money for it. My income and expenses were fluctuating a LOT during this period, but I was always putting away money to save up for a deposit and my s/o and I bought a small house when I was 24. At that point I had accumulated nearly €20.000 (more than our combined yearly income) and I had to start saving from scratch. I have been super focused ever since. I was a long term reader of MMM before I became active on the forums, and I have always checked my investments and savings accounts very frequently, but this year is the first time I've actually set a financial goal for myself. Until now it's always been 'save + invest as much as possible'. Now there are targets.

I've always been a long term planner and I've always been extremely goal orientated, it's just my personality. I can imagine I will be focused less on certain goals once I'm well along the way to FI. Right now, I'm checking my investments frequently because I want to hit the €3000 goal. To me, that's a huge amount of money. I can imagine that when you have six figures in your investments, the novelty wears off. But maybe it doesn't, I wouldn't know. I hope to be able to tell you one day!

[eddie]

I'm 35, married, with one kid.  I focus a lot on financial goals and milestones.  It's the way I'm wired.  I love setting tangible goals.

My #1 thing to track is net worth.  It's been fun to see the number go up and up especially with the good market recently.  It took my wife and I the entire decade of our 20s to get up to 100k NW.  We didn't meet until we were 27-28.  Her grad school was really expensive and we both started off in low paying jobs given our degrees.  Our most recent 100k NW was made in the last 8 months thanks to higher incomes and a good stock market.  That boggles my mind.

I've tracked my NW since I was in my early 20s.  I've always been a $ and numbers person and seeing my parents divorce when I was 18 and basically have a zero net worth to divvy up between the two of them really seared in to my brain that I did not want to ever be in their financial situation.  Literally married for 20 years, not happy, and have nothing tangible to show for it other than 3 kids.  I'm glad my brothers and I are tangible and alive though :-).  My parents were good parents until the last year or so of their marriage.

My wife and I have changed our big life goals a few times in the past couple years but the higher our NW and the lower our debt, the more realistic the goals are.

[TheAnonOne]

27 here,

My answer is 'too much'.

I have personal capital on my phone so I glance at it maybe once a day or a few times a week. I do look forward to goals, and even though I have been crashing through milestones faster and faster I still feel like I have more to do. Going from 300k to 400k NW took >a year but 400k to 500k only took 9 months. Now 3 months later I will be passing 550k.

It's all a big game to me, and none of it feels really "real". For whatever reason, I feel like when my liquid investments hit 600k->750k (currently a bit under 400k) it will feel "real" but given how I have reacted to past goals, I will just set a new one.

[EmFrugal]

I only got very serious about tracking our savings in the past few months. Before that we mainly focused on paying off our credit card balance each month and avoiding dipping into our mutual fund. When the day came that we were suddenly dipping into our mutual fund and our checking acct had about $100 in it, I got very serious about turning things around. Because if we didn't, I would have to go back to work full time. I definitely didn't want that with three little ones at home.

Now, I track our expenditures daily. I have our monthly fixed expenditures taken into account already (bills, DH's bar association fees, preschool tuition, etc) so it is the variable spend that I track daily. This allows me to be very engaged but not focused so intensely on the net worth number. I wind up calculating our net worth once a month just to track progress. It has been so rewarding to see the hard work pay off, but also not feel like we are depriving ourselves. Just cutting out tons of waste and inattention to spending.

For us, net worth is all about peace of mind. We're at a comfortable place where we feel like we have "enough." My DH is an attorney as well and left private practice for the government. For now he is very happy there because it allows a much better work/life balance for our family, but I continue to build our savings so that if the day comes that he would like to dial back or shift gears, he can do so with peace of mind.

Hopefully you can get to that number that gives you peace of mind to take a risk when you're ready, but without driving yourself nuts! Like Laura33 said, it's all about finding what works best for you and gives you the right sense of balance.

[aceyou]

At the end of each month I do a net worth update.  I go through all my account balances and update each thing. 

Reasons I do this:
- By looking at things periodically regarding spending/investing/etc, you notice trends, which gets you thinking about new/better ways to do things. 
- Make sure that each year my actual numbers are pretty close to my projections.  I figure if year after year I'm pretty close, then my FI projections are probably at least ballpark correct. 
- Tax efficiency purposes..figure out how much I should be "Roth'ing" next year vs putting into traditional accounts.  Stuff like that.
- I'm weird so I think it's fun:) 

[ol1970]

I think there are some big ones that you track/and or give you a sense of accomplishment.  I remember very vividly the day I deposited a bonus check and  my after tax account rolled past $1M...nothing changes but it’s a good day...I went out for mac-n-cheese and German beer at my favorite restaurant lol.  That was 13 years ago : )

[dreams_and_discoveries]

I like having something to aim for, and a solid way to measure progress.

Then again, I am a geek and love spreadsheets.

[MrThatsDifferent]

Because I had been previously so unconcerned with finances and didn’t even grasp the concept of networth, I’m obsessed with it now. I track every day and check my accounts every day. It keeps me focused and motivated.

[2Birds1Stone]

I really like having short term goals and long term goals to focus on.

Unfortunately NW milestones are tough because the richer you get, the more the market dictates your performance. So I'm less focused on it now, than I was when my contributions made the biggest impact.

Now I focus on cutting spending, optimizing the utility of my money spent, and other things that will help me enjoy my transition into financial independence (cooking, mending, gardening, 3rd language, my health, fitness, etc)

[KTG]

Currently I am obsessed with it lol. I check it daily. Sometimes multiple times a day. Can't help it.

I think part of it is also because I deleted many of the news and social media apps off my phone, and I have Excel and my MM tracking spreadsheet on it. So I have less to look at on my phone than I used to.

[By the River]

A couple of times a week right now because I'm very close to a round number.   Then it will be more like monthly after that with my "official" spreadsheet updating quarterly.

[Retire-Canada]

Did you start focusing more on milestones once you were surrounded by an MMM community that’s doing the same or just because milestones (hopefully) start coming faster?

As soon as I had a FIRE $ Target I cared a lot about my investments because there was a specific measurable end point. I celebrate every $50K and $100K milestone for sure. I can't wait to FIRE. Once FIREd I won't care all that much since I have no post-FIRE money goal beyond not running out of money. ;)

Congrats on your progress so far. Cheers to your future achievements! :)

[Arbitrage]

I paid a lot of attention to it when we were just starting out with our savings.  Celebrated every $25k milestone.  My net worth calculations have gotten more complex since then, but I estimate it once per month, after paying the mortgage.  I do look at my accounts more frequently than that, as I usually enjoy it, though not as frequently when the markets down.  In down markets, I only check when I think I'm getting close to a rebalancing trigger. 

I don't celebrate the milestones much anymore, but did do a little mental dance when breaking $1M in NW a few months ago.  Will probably do the same when our liquid investments alone get us above $1M.  Beyond that, who knows.

[Bobberth]

I used to teach HS personal finance so I started keeping track of my net worth as I was working through it with the kids, October 2002. Since then, I have gone through spurts where I monitor and update monthly and other times updating it once a year, usually at the end of the year. It all depends on what is going on. For the last 1.5 years, I have been all over it, looking at it at least once a week mainly monitoring my liabilities. I'm not a big fan of paying down debt early but one day when I was looking over my net worth statement, I noticed that if I paid off a couple of loans instead of buying an additional rental property, the amount saved by not having the loan payments would be about the amount of gross rent I would receive from buying an additional rental. Even better because there would be no expenses or tenants to manage! All for about half the 'cost' of another rental. So I've been highly focused on getting those loans paid off (all rental real estate related-took out student loans and a car loan to keep cash to build our rental portfolio). Once the loans are paid off, the active interest will be gone and most likely I will go back to only looking at it periodically. And start looking for another rental property.