Huge Milestone Reached: $250,000 Net worth!

Due to recent all time highs in the stock market, I am proud to announce that my accounts have now reached an all time high and have finally pushed through to the $250,000 mark! This has been a highly anticipated milestone for me for years now and being able to finally hit it at the age of 28 reinforces how realistic the concept of compound interest and compound savings are. When I first started investing at the age of 18, I was only putting $100 per month away into the stock market. I was a student at the time working part time jobs and I was glad to be investing something. Years started to go by and I was getting discouraged because my money wasn’t growing the way I wanted to. Getting to $10,000 seemed like it would take forever and the idea of early retirement or financial independence was seeming like somewhat of a pipe dream. Fast forward 10 years and I have now amassed $250,000, with no debt, and that does not include things like equity in cars or other personal items. This is cash and stock investments that continue to grow on a daily basis.

This brings me to my main thought which is don’t get discouraged. Whether you are ten’s of thousands of dollars in debt or just starting out with no money saved you will be able to make strides quickly to achieving your financial freedom. There are numerous sucess stories of people paying off things like $100,000 in student loans in just two years, or downgrading cars they owed thousands of dollars on for cheaper vehicles with no payments, Investing in real estate to cover their own personal house expenses and so on. What I like so much about the idea of financial freedom is that it’s really so simple. While so many people may think its unattainable, impossible, or even plain stupid, it really just comes down to simple math. By making some small changes in your lifestyle and attempting to optimize your savings and earnings, you too can achieve financial freedom and pursue retirement years before you thought was ever possible.

In order to be a transparent as possible I’d like to share with you my numbers, what the money is allocated in, and what the future plans are to reach the next milestone of $300,000. 

Currently I have: 

$185,772 invested in the Vanguard Total Stock Market index and money market funds.

$38,736 invested in my work 457 plan (I wish I would have started this sooner).

$25,716 in my checking account- This is higher than I want it to be. I’m just waiting on a friend to be ready to start investing into some real estate. (Hopefully he’s reading this).

$631.67 invested in one individual stock from when I thought I could be successful in buying individual stocks…Lesson learned. I purchased this stock for $500 about 8 years ago and have held onto it since because it has fluctuated in price so much. Luckily I’ve still earned money on it and plan on selling it soon and investing it into my index funds.

This leaves me with a grand total of 

$250,855.67

The beauty in this is seeing the amount of money in interest and dividends I earn rising so quickly. Just by having this amount of money invested I have earned approx. $22,000 in interest in the past year alone. This plays perfectly into the Warren Buffett quote “If you don’t find a way to make money while you sleep, you’ll work until you die.” 

The goals for the next milestone of $300,000 are going to be to continue to max out my Roth and 457 funds, continue investing into my Vanguard brokerage account, and possibly try to increase the amount I’m putting into that on a monthly basis. Then I’ll begin to invest in real estate to earn some passive income that will help propel me towards my future goals. I hope to be writing back to you in about 6 months saying that I’ve reached this next milestone so stay tuned for more future net worth updates.

I appreciate you guys reading this and hope you see that just by buckling down and saving as much money as possible you can reach big numbers that never seemed possible before. I wish everyone luck towards their financial goals and ask if you have any comments or questions to please let me know. Thanks 

-Matt-