2026 Financial Milestones

Since around 95% of my money is in the S&P 500 at 3 different places, I keep track in my head daily how much I have and I only actually look at it every 3-4 weeks. When I look at it every 3-4 weeks I'm usually right at what I thought it was in my head, but its not unusual for my total to be 3-4k more than I thought. On a few rare occasions its been 3-4k less than I thought. Today for the 1st time in 4 weeks I looked up my balances at the 5 places I have my money at and I have 19k more than I thought, I've never been more than 4k off. I have about 4.4% of my portfolio in semiconductors. That semiconuctor fund has grown more than 5 times what it was when I retired in 2017.
 
03-20-2015: €100,000
09-24-2018: €200,000
09-24-2019: €300,000
06-03-2021: €400,000
06-07-2024: €500,000
10-02-2025: €600,000
06-15-2026: €700,000

Another 100k. This time it took only a little over 8 months.
 
RISP said:
03-20-2015: €100,000
09-24-2018: €200,000
09-24-2019: €300,000
06-03-2021: €400,000
06-07-2024: €500,000
10-02-2025: €600,000
06-15-2026: €700,000

Another 100k. This time it took only a little over 8 months.
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Great!!
 
We just crossed 5m net worth, age 46. I'm considering retirement for the first time, if I get RIFd from megacorp. Wife now makes more than me and has more career growth opportunity so I could potentially stay home and take on more kid, household & rental responsibilities. Pretty exciting to potentially have the option but I also feel a sense of dread that it will all go away. I also have anxiety over the idea of retiring early at peak earning years and not having enough to help our kids and future generations if they need it.
 
"not having enough"

I think you are way beyond this point.
 
TickTock said:
columbus,

What's your annual spend?
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I need to look at that better but according to my empower dashboard I think it’s around $100k, maybe upwards of $150k. Things are miscategorized so need to spend some time on that. We’ve never really done budgets, just generally frugal. We eat out too much.
 
columbus said:
We just crossed 5m net worth, age 46. I'm considering retirement for the first time, if I get RIFd from megacorp. Wife now makes more than me and has more career growth opportunity so I could potentially stay home and take on more kid, household & rental responsibilities. Pretty exciting to potentially have the option but I also feel a sense of dread that it will all go away. I also have anxiety over the idea of retiring early at peak earning years and not having enough to help our kids and future generations if they need it.
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That’s fantastic, well done! You’re running a little ahead of us (6.1 at 53) and I understand perfectly what you’re thinking though. My wife is also making more than me and her career advancement is well beyond mine.

My advice is to think through the college costs and private medical insurance if you both retire early.

I understand the anxiety as well, it’s normal. And the freedom of worry from being let go is real, too. But you may not be emotionally prepared if it happens, I have a long thread about that on here and am still working for now.

I think you’re very close. Very. Be patient and maybe stick around until 49 and then take a hard look. How much is home equity?

Keep us posted and nicely done.
 
columbus said:
Wife now makes more than me and has more career growth opportunity so I could potentially stay home and take on more kid, household & rental responsibilities.
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Congratulations.... Our Daughter and SIL are considering him becoming a SAH dad when the 3rd one comes along in a month or so. They don't have a million, but the daycare is more than he makes as a mechanic. Plus he has a shop at the house so can make some on the side....
 
columbus said:
We just crossed 5m net worth, age 46. I'm considering retirement for the first time, if I get RIFd from megacorp. Wife now makes more than me and has more career growth opportunity so I could potentially stay home and take on more kid, household & rental responsibilities. Pretty exciting to potentially have the option but I also feel a sense of dread that it will all go away. I also have anxiety over the idea of retiring early at peak earning years and not having enough to help our kids and future generations if they need it.
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I was like you. Making good money. Thought I was crazy to walk away from money I could have only dreamed about 20 years earlier. Watch out though. When your pile is 25x expenses then 30X, then 40X expenses does that still not feel like enough? Point being you can worry and work or realize you have enough and go live your best life.
We retired with about 42X expenses and now sit at a whopping 119X expenses. Money takes care of itself. Think about lifestyle. Before you retire, you worry if you have enough. After you retire you worry you have too much.
 
chemEguy said:
That’s fantastic, well done! You’re running a little ahead of us (6.1 at 53) and I understand perfectly what you’re thinking though. My wife is also making more than me and her career advancement is well beyond mine.

My advice is to think through the college costs and private medical insurance if you both retire early.

I understand the anxiety as well, it’s normal. And the freedom of worry from being let go is real, too. But you may not be emotionally prepared if it happens, I have a long thread about that on here and am still working for now.

I think you’re very close. Very. Be patient and maybe stick around until 49 and then take a hard look. How much is home equity?

Keep us posted and nicely done.
Click to expand...
I just read your thread as well for perspective, thx for sharing. Our primary residence equity is around 500k, and then rentals are around 1.5m. We only have about $50k for each kid in 529s so far. Retirement is spread out over Roths, 401ks, 403b, 457, 401a, brokerage, some HSA. I’ve started doing some backdoor Roth contributions through a work option as well as my personal Ira using after tax funding. I have no clue on future healthcare if we both retired but would need for whole family. I assumed very expensive but have a single friend that retired a few years ago in Florida that pays next to nothing as he shows no income. Anyway, I’ll probably end up working another 5 to 10 years but nice to talk through options. Maybe I’ll stumble upon work I’m more passionate about. Megacorp has been good to me but there are trade offs for sure.
 
COcheesehead said:
I was like you. Making good money. Thought I was crazy to walk away from money I could have only dreamed about 20 years earlier. Watch out though. When your pile is 25x expenses then 30X, then 40X expenses does that still not feel like enough? Point being you can worry and work or realize you have enough and go live your best life.
We retired with about 42X expenses and now sit at a whopping 119X expenses. Money takes care of itself. Think about lifestyle. Before you retire, you worry if you have enough. After you retire you worry you have too much.
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Thx! We’re both pretty frugal, not into fancy stuff, but do like to travel and eat out. If I had more time I think we would eat out far less but would probably travel more and I’d probably get back into golf. I’d definitely make more trips out to CO to visit friends, hike, ski, and hot springs. Ok, maybe I better keep working a bit longer for this lifestyle creep lol.
 
columbus said:
I just read your thread as well for perspective, thx for sharing. Our primary residence equity is around 500k, and then rentals are around 1.5m. We only have about $50k for each kid in 529s so far. Retirement is spread out over Roths, 401ks, 403b, 457, 401a, brokerage, some HSA. I’ve started doing some backdoor Roth contributions through a work option as well as my personal Ira using after tax funding. I have no clue on future healthcare if we both retired but would need for whole family. I assumed very expensive but have a single friend that retired a few years ago in Florida that pays next to nothing as he shows no income. Anyway, I’ll probably end up working another 5 to 10 years but nice to talk through options. Maybe I’ll stumble upon work I’m more passionate about. Megacorp has been good to me but there are trade offs for sure.
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We opted to forgo the 529 plans and pay cash. At the time when the kids were little, I felt there were too many unknowns to go that route and we funneled into retirement instead. It probably cost us a bit more but I still think it was the right decision and I’d do it again. Both kids are at Big Tens and on the law school track.

I priced health insurance yesterday online as a refinement to my Fireproofme model, about 26K a year for my wife and I. Not cheap.

Rental never appealed to me but I understand the reasons folks opt for it.

In any case I think you’re setting up well. I’d use the next few years to really understand your expenses and how you’ll cover them with early retirement.
 
COcheesehead said:
Hitting my 6 year anniversary of retirement. Life’s good.
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Just a baby. Congrats. Not exactly a milestone but when I did my quarterly update I realized our portfolio growth in one quarter exceeded our highest combined annual W2 income by nearly 100%. I sat staring at the spreadsheet, triple checking the figures.
 
Another milestone I reached in June 2026, but then lost, was having more than $2M in Roth accounts. Much of that was gain, and not due to the amount that was converted from IRA. I have to sit down and add up all the conversions over the years, but it had to be a small portion of the current total.
 
Some great Milestones!!! I May of this year I graduated to a new 7 digit number and still have sustained that new completion number. Life has been great!!!!!
 
Ronstar said:
DW gained a comma in her Ira a few weeks ago. Then lost it. Then got it back. Jockeyed back and forth a few times. Her mood depends on her number of commas. 1 she’s sad. 2 she’s happy. Hopefully she can now keep the 2nd comma forever. I can’t handle the mood swings.
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Lol!!!
 
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