I try to start off a new year with our financial house in order, understanding how our financial situation has evolved, and measure our progress on a yearly level. I tend to be focused on smaller numbers (monthly, weekly spending reports, etc), all of which are critical to the larger financial picture. However, it's also really helpful to understand our financial picture on a larger basis once a year.
In exciting news, we broke the $1M mark for our retirement accounts in December! Because of M's age, he can now participate in the 401K catch up in 2017. We haven't yet decided if he will participate (we will both continue to max out the standard 401K amounts), as our cash flow situation remains unclear based on our housing/location.
As for our other assets, we continue to pay down our liabilities (three mortgages across two properties) & stash cash for an eventual decision on location. This, combined with very high salaries & a continued effort to minimize our expenses, has allowed us to double our net worth over the past three years.
Our net worth also benefited from a big rise in the stock market, and the continued real estate appreciation in Seattle.
What about you? Do you track your net worth? How has your financial picture changed, year over year?
Congrats on your awesome achievement! In that you appear to have included your home equity in your overall net worth, I'll offer that going forward you might want to consider splitting it out as a separate net worth line item. In that, presumably, we all have to live somewhere, tracking home equity on one's primary home can be somewhat questionable from the standpoint of determining a retirement withdrawal rate in actual spending dollars. Unless, of course, the plan is to move somewhere less expensive at some point and then bank the excess equity.
ReplyDeleteWe found the pace of savings really picks up as the accumulated amounts get bigger, so I'm sure you'll enjoy watching it grow at a more rapid pace in the months and years ahead.
You are correct - we will still have housing costs, but have no plans to live anywhere this expensive in retirement. We also own multiple homes, and will likely only own one in retirement, or may gift our vacation house to the kids, etc. as the time comes.
DeleteAnd you are absolutely right - once the savings achieves a certain size, the amount of growth is staggering. Those compound interest gains!
Awesome achievements!
ReplyDeleteOur net worth is itty bitty BUT at least it's been in the black for the past two years, whereas it'd pretty much always been negative before that. And I can say ours has doubled over the past three years too :)
You are doing great!!! You have to start somewhere, and doubling your net worth is a great achievement. Woohoo!
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