Importance of milestones

[cronewitch]

Miy milestones would be:

Net worth of zero, maybe no debt at all or some debt with offsetting assets.

Financial assets of:
1,000
5,000
10,000
25,000
50,000
75,000
100,000
200,000
Quarter Million
Half Million
3/4 Million
Million
Quarter Billion Etc.

Net worth of
1,000
10,000
50,000
100,000
200,000
Same as financial asset milestones

The first few are very hard and even more important than the later ones. Getting to zero after going into debt might take years.
Student loans, car loans paid off or having things of value to offset is hard. If a high school grad gets any debt at all to set up an apartment, buy a first car etc they may not have assets more than a pile of used clothes, furniture and cars for as long as they pay on the debt. College grads might take just as long to pay off student loans or build equal amounts of assets.

I try to encourage people struggling to get to zero or save that first thousand or two while building a life, getting married, buying houses and raising babies.

It gets easier, much easier later, much later. Once you get to zero all that money you took to buy assets of pay off debt can go straight to the goals. Once you have financial assets of 10K you have achieved a major thing. It means your living below your means for a long time. You can double that goal much sooner since you often don't have heavy debt and are used to living below your means.

I didn't start until I was old and divorced and the first few years I only saved 2K a year so 10K was about 5 years. Now I am old and save about 3K a month and now my financial assets grow faster than I can save. I made 73K in the market last year and 25K so far this year. Now is very easy but you need to get to the first goals the hard way living very much below your means. Even with all the crashes my assets grow like a rollercoaster.

[gsbrq]

I remember being incredibly excited when my retirement fund hit $10k....seemed like it took forever to get there, and it was hard making big sacrifices while seeing such slow progress. But it has definitely paid off, and sometimes it surprises me how much progress I've made in the last 10 years.

[wodehouse]

I may hit the big $1mil net worth mark this year. Quite exciting for me.

[Deleted]

I'll admit that $200,000 has been a milestone for me. But there are others including your car, your house, etc. Many of these are very personal.

[lynnerself]

The only milestone I ever got really excited about was the one million net worth. There is just something about that number. To actually be a millionaire.
(But then with the down market we were below for about a year, so I guess we hit it twice

[schildi]

Feb 17, 2011 20:02:23 GMT -5 lynnerself said:

The only milestone I ever got really excited about was the one million net worth. There is just something about that number. To actually be a millionaire.
(But then with the down market we were below for about a year, so I guess we hit it twice

Thank the down market! You got to feel good twice!

[cytoglycerine]

For me, I usually "celebrate" milestones when the first number in the figure changes...Like 49,999 to 50,000, and 199,999 to 200,000. I also get a flutter of excitement when the figure becomes one digit bigger (thousands to tens of thousands, etc), or in the case of debt, when the figure becomes one digit smaller. I also like seeing cool numbers like 55,555.55 or 123,456.78


Maybe I just really like the numbers more than the "milestones" lol.

[formerexpat]

I'm surprised no milestone between $1m and $250m - that's a lot of distance!! Celebrate 12 times up until you are a millionaire and then never again? I'd add $2m, $5m, $10m, $25m, $50m and $100m.

Other than casually telling my wife we passed the $250k mark while randomly out at dinner, we didn't celebrate. I suspect the $1m mark will be a celebration...at least a dinner out but maybe a nice little MilliVacation or something.

[DVM gone riding]

I was excited when I hit 10k in retirement (right now my NW and retirement savings are about the same amount) It took a lot less time to get to 25k-helps the market is rebounding so fast. I am very excited about looking fwd to 50k and it makes saving for it easier.

[mesquite77]

Damn, I lost a long reply. Anyway 1/4 million in NW was much "cooler" for me to think of it as than $250k. It has been my favorite so far - better than 1/2 million NW or $1m in financial assets. I'm hoping that my anticipation doesn't hurt the mini celebration of $1m NW when we hit that. I'd enjoy a nice dinner or weekend away to celebrate with my wife for something that only us (and the YMers hear about).

[Deleted]

Some serious numbers in here. For us it is smaller than that....

POSITIVE net worth... now we are in the red for 148K
So the day we are in the black by $1 I will be happy

[backontrack]

I remember hitting $100k in my 401k and the secong $100k came much quicker! I was excited to realize my 401k is over $200k now!

[spartan7886]

I don't calculate our full net worth very often, so I tend to miss a lot of milestones. Some of the milestones along the way are neat, but I'm not too worried about missing them. The only one I'm really looking forward to is $1mm. Well, that and my 80 points, which is a financial milestone of a different sort but still 27 years off. It was kind of neat, though, last week to be calculating it for the first time in probably a year and discover we had almost exactly $300k.

[Deleted]

I didn't think about it much until a bunch of us from the old YM joined NetworthIQ about about 2 1/2 years ago.
Here's a link to the YM "tag": www.networthiq.com/tag/YM

Joining forced me to start adding things up; e.g. the multiple retirement accounts, individual stocks, et cetera. It was a nice surprise.

But I have to admit hitting $5M would be cool. I think we could live off Tbills and not think too much about money at all, LOL

[floridayankee]

Feb 17, 2011 18:35:27 GMT -5 cronewitch said:

The first few are very hard and even more important than the later ones. Getting to zero after going into debt might take years.

We're well above the zero mark, but for now, we're bouncing around the losing / treading water line. Even though the retirement funds are increasing and the mortgage decreasing, my personal (pessimistic) estimation of our home value is decreasing quicker.

The home next door has has been on the market for nearly four years and finally has a pending sale...the asking price was $60k less than we paid in '05 and three doors down is a house up for short sale at $80k less.

Ouch.....

[Wisconsin Beth]

Feb 18, 2011 10:12:35 GMT -5 @bonnap said:

I didn't think about it much until a bunch of us from the old YM joined NetworthIQ about about 2 1/2 years ago.
Here's a link to the YM "tag": www.networthiq.com/tag/YM

Joining forced me to start adding things up; e.g. the multiple retirement accounts, individual stocks, et cetera. It was a nice surprise.

But I have to admit hitting $5M would be cool. I think we could live off Tbills and not think too much about money at all, LOL

DH and I were talking last night about our taxes and I started wondering what our networth is. So thanks for the site.

[telephus44]

This year we will hit the $100K net worth mark, and also conveniently $100K in financial assets, thanks to falling home values.

I keep thinking that $250K looks so far away - but I also feel good that my investments can actually move $500 in a day.

[raeoflyte]

Very nice reminder Cronewitch--I appreciate it. It was very neat to look at our retirement accounts at the end of the year and realize how much we have (even though we didn't fund them nearly enough the last decade).

[steph08]

My goal is $100k in my retirement account(s) by the time I am 30. I have 4.5 years and about 72k to go! But hopefully once my DH graduates from college next year (went back at age 30 to finish degree), we will be able to increase our retirement contributions, though I do a good 19-20% a year now, but I really want to open a Roth.

[Sum Dum Gai]

I should probably go update my networthIQ. It's been about a quarter I think. I should be getting awfully close to six figures in financial assets. Net worth still a bit below that from student loans and whatnot unfortunately.

[SVT]

Feb 18, 2011 15:06:32 GMT -5 steph08 said:

My goal is $100k in my retirement account(s) by the time I am 30. I have 4.5 years and about 72k to go! But hopefully once my DH graduates from college next year (went back at age 30 to finish degree), we will be able to increase our retirement contributions, though I do a good 19-20% a year now, but I really want to open a Roth.

Same goal here, with the same exact time frame, 4.5 years. I have like $120k to go though lol

[DebMD (banned)]

Feb 17, 2011 22:27:20 GMT -5 backontrack said:

I remember hitting $100k in my 401k and the secong $100k came much quicker! I was excited to realize my 401k is over $200k now!

Welcome momontheclock!!

Karma: 1
[ Exalt ]

[cronewitch]

I find it hard to believe how fast mine is growing sometimes, and surprised then when it goes the other way. A few years ago my house was appreciating and investments growing. I hit 400K in investments 4 years ago I think and it seemed 500K would be really soon, but it all went south then grew again. Took me years to get from 400K to 500K but now up to about 545K and growing thousands a week sometimes thousands a day. It makes it harder to save my money since it doesn't seem to matter much. Saving my own money is the only thing under my control. I am now saving 20-30K a year and just waiting and watching for the next two years.

[DebMD (banned)]

Feb 18, 2011 15:06:32 GMT -5 steph08 said:

My goal is $100k in my retirement account(s) by the time I am 30. I have 4.5 years and about 72k to go! But hopefully once my DH graduates from college next year (went back at age 30 to finish degree), we will be able to increase our retirement contributions, though I do a good 19-20% a year now, but I really want to open a Roth.

Welcome!!


Karma: 1
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[DebMD (banned)]

Feb 18, 2011 14:53:33 GMT -5 raeoflyte said:

Very nice reminder Cronewitch--I appreciate it. It was very neat to look at our retirement accounts at the end of the year and realize how much we have (even though we didn't fund them nearly enough the last decade).

Welcome!!
Karma: 1
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[patchwork150]

milestones are huge for me. They are such a motivator!

When I was in debt, every $ closer to black was a milestone... I was so excited with every 1k down. It was a HUGE feeling when I reached debt free on my 23rd birthday (august of this year).

Milestones in the positive are motivators too, but not as much as getting out of the red was! I just reached 10k in savings in November/December ish and I am approaching 15k soon. I don't know what it's like to be in this position, I am so new at it lol, so I can't say what kind of milestones are important to me yet- just being here still feels so good!

I charted my regression out of debt with an excell bar graph, and I do the same with my savings goals. : ) I am a visual person lol.

[DebMD (banned)]

Feb 17, 2011 21:50:29 GMT -5 mesquite77 said:

Damn, I lost a long reply. Anyway 1/4 million in NW was much "cooler" for me to think of it as than $250k. It has been my favorite so far - better than 1/2 million NW or $1m in financial assets. I'm hoping that my anticipation doesn't hurt the mini celebration of $1m NW when we hit that. I'd enjoy a nice dinner or weekend away to celebrate with my wife for something that only us (and the YMers hear about).

Welcome mesquite77 !!

Karma: 1
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[SVT]

LOL, I was thinking about net worth when I said I have $120k to go. I have a little over $60k to go to get to $100k in retirement accounts.

[Plain Old Petunia]

SVT, I thought "this person has negative 20k in their retirement accounts? How does that work?" Lol.

I was pushing 250k a few years ago, but with falling stock and real estate markets, I got down to low 5 figures. With stocks doing better, I am bumping six figures net worth again. The large negative home equity figure is hard to overcome.

My retirement goals are 600k tax-deferred, 150k Roth, and a paid for house. I hadn't realized it before, but that is approximately 1 million net worth. I am a tenth of the way there at age 44. Wow, that is eye-opening. I have some serious ground to regain.

Just prior to divorce, my joint net worth with ex-h was right at 1 million. Our biggest asset was his generous pension, but I signed off on that.