We are mid 40's.
I don't have a milestone to report right now but it does always feel good to rehash past accomplishments as a confidence builder. Being new to this board, I thought I would give myself a little pep talk with taking a look at how far we have come.
I never made more than $24,000/year until I turned 30 in 1998 and landed a nice job. I went about 10 years with an income of between $90-$125/year average. The wife was probably in the $25-$40k range in most of those years and bumped to about $60k in the mid 2000's.
When I started my new job, we had about $10k in CC debt, probably $35k in student loan debt and $8-10,000 in car loan debt. Plus small children. It was horribly stressful in our 20's because of this.
Once I started making a nice income, I made it my job to get us out of debt. Within 2 or 3 years, I had paid off all our CC debt and the student loans. Paid off the car loan and bought a new suburban. which I paid completely off by the 2nd or 3rd year we owned it.
I distinctly remember each time we paid off a CC and then each student loan. Those times when I wrote the check and dropped it in the mail box were as good of a feeling as I have ever had. I was obsessed with being out of debt and started making sure my 401k was maxed each year and also had a few small investments here and there.
We made a couple moves for my work and after 2 profitable home sales with the moves, ended up back "home" where I grew up. We built a house. Probably way more house than I should have but with the kids heading to JR high at the time, we built it so that our kids and their friends would want to be at our house. They were. Everyone always knew where their kids were and it was great. It was a big financial commitment but it was worth it from that standpoint.
Work wise, the final move wasn't a good one as I disliked my new job and after a few years decided to start my own business from zero. That was about 7 years ago.
It has gone pretty well overall. I don't make quite what I did before but the perks of self employment are great and my wife has a great employer and is making around $70k. So we weathered the storm and got the kids off to college.
I didn't put much of any money away during this time but my wife has bumped up her 401k contributions each year and is finally on board with planning for retirement. which I am excited about.
For years, I was just making all of the financial moves and paying things off sitting in my office after her and the kids went to bed. I'd give her an update on our financial situation but she just didn't have much interest in it. but she did appreciate what I was doing. She just isn't much of a planner and was bored by it. I think it worked out great though as I did some things that if she were consulted, we wouldn't maybe have done. The result is, we only have debt on our house and a small cabin. No other.
She now is starting to see that we need to get back on track with savings if she wants to do all the travel etc that we have always talked about. Don't get me wrong, we've traveled quite a bit. Our kids have been on several cruises, and tropical vacations as well as to Hawaii and all over the country. But her and I want to really ramp up the travel as we approach our 50's and beyond. therefore, she is starting to want to get involved in saving.
I hadn't done a personal financial statement in a probably 4 or 5 years. With the business and with the kids in HS I just lost interest and desire to stay on top of everything. It did impact savings due to no focus.
So I did one recently. These last 7 years have really slowed down where I wanted to be but hopefully, we can get back on track.
We have about $325k in retirement accounts. With real estate and assets I have our net worth at just over $800,000.
All things considered, I don't think that is too bad for basically the past 15-16 years, 7 of which I was starting a new business.
Now that the kids are off to college and we can focus on building the nest egg while getting a big vacation each year, it has us re-energized.
