We ended last year with our highest NW and the greatest increase, ~$300k, in NW in one year. Nice!

Since we started tracking and documenting our journey towards FIRE from beginning of 2017, we’re amazed how far we’ve come. In January 2017, our net worth stood at $458k. In 7 full years, we are over $1.6m. Incredible!

We made the following contributions to our investment accounts last year:

• 401(k) – $19,221 (only for W) – $440 less than in 2022
• IRAs – $13k (combined for both) – hit goal of max limit; as we did in 2022
• Brokerage – $2,700 – waaay below the $14.4k from 2022
• 529 – $2,200 – $200 more from 2022
• HSA – $6,750 – $1k paid by employer, so we put in the max allowed

In all, we contributed $43,871 to our investments in 2023.

We took an international trip in 2023 – a 10 day long, utterly fabulous journey through one of the Scandinavian countries, bang in the middle of their glorious summer.

That trip, obviously, burned through cash. As did the little thing we did at the end of the year – bought a home! We have spent over $10k since we moved and a slew of known expenses lined up this year. That is the reason we are hoarding cash, more than we usually do. Liquid reserves of $102k at the end of the year has about $25k earmarked for travel (an international trip) and projects around the house, all before we hit the middle of the year. All this on top of a monthly mortgage payment that doubled from $1,200 to $2,400! But no complaints – we went into this knowing very well what the numbers were going to look like. We had been looking to move for almost 4 years and had given ourselves the end of 2023 to make it happen.

Goal for 2024:

• IRA: Hit max limit of $7k individually; $14k for both
• HSA: Hit max limit of $8,300 for families. W’s employer chips in with $1k, so out of pocket for us would be $7.3k
• 401(k): Hit $15k. It is likely we will go beyond this.
• 529: Minimum of $2,400. $3k would be a stretch goal.
• ……anything else would be just gravy

After our international trip in spring, we’re not sure how much we’ll travel this year. Maybe one more vacation during summer. A couple of road trips here and there. Setting up the new home will be the forefront this year.

For the first time since we started this blog in 2017, we finished a calendar year with a lower Net Worth than we started. Ouch.

But these types of years are expected. They are part and parcel of normal economic and market cycles. The years of 2017 to 2021 gave us uninterrupted, and unprecedented, gains. Some pullback is only good.

Since we started tracking and documenting our financial journey from beginning of 2017, we’re amazed how far we’ve come. In January 2017, our net worth stood at $458k. In 6 full years, we are close to $1.3m. That’s lower than what we ended 2021 but still incredible!

We made the following contributions to our investment accounts:

• 401(k) – $19,664 (only for W) – more than the $15k from 2021
• IRAs – $12k (combined for both) – made goal
• Brokerage – $14,400 – handily cleared the 2021 contribution of $8.6k
• 529 – $2,000 – less than the $2.7k from 2021
• HSA – $6,300 – lower than the max of 7,300 but $100 higher than 2021
• Bonds – $8,000 – I-Bonds
• Crypto – $350 – an ongoing, but possibly failed, experiment. It’s ok though, this is earmarked for failure 😀

In all, we contributed $62,714 to our investments in 2022.

The one big-ish trip we took in 2022 was to a National Park. We flew in and then rented a car to drive around for 4 days. We made a few road trips to visit family over weekends and holidays. A slow year in terms of travel for us. We are hoping to take at least one big – possibly international – trip in 2023 and a slew of road trips.

Again, setting no goals for 2023 but will possibly try to hit 2022 numbers. And more trips.

A solid year for us. Our net worth increased by $289k. Our FI funds crossed over $1.2m.

Scratch that first sentence: it was a SPECTACULAR year! And this was our second full year with us going down to effectively a single-income family.

Is this the real threshold to becoming millionaires?! 😀

Since we started tracking and documenting our financial journey from beginning of 2017, we’re amazed how far we’ve come. In January 2017, our net worth stood at $458k. In 5 full years, we are at over $1.4m. That’s incredible!

We made contributions to the following accounts:

• 401(k) – $14,157 (only for W) – a little lower than the 15k we thought we’d do
• IRAs – $12k (combined for both) – made goal
• Brokerage – $8,675 – handily cleared the goal of 3k
• 529 – $2,700 – aided by Child Tax Credit advance payments, we were able to clear the goal of $2k
• HSA – $6,200
• Bonds – $3,000 – I-Bonds
• Crypto – $1,066

We did manage to take a few road trips last year. One was a 3,000 mile trip to visit friends and family during the summer. Days in spring, summer, and fall were brimming with sporting activities.

We’re not going to set any goals – financial or otherwise – for 2022. Maybe we’ll be guided by the contributions of last year. One thing this pandemic has taught us is to be prepared for the unknown. For the most part of the last two years, we’ve done just that. We’ll take what this year has in store.

A pretty good year for us, at least financially! After various ups and downs over the course of the year, Net Worth increased (net) by over $179k for the year, and in July for the first time ever, we *officially* became millionaires 😀

This increase is lower than the increase of $231k in 2019 but a lot was different.

Like a godforsaken pandemic different.

We effectively going to a single income family different.

Since we started tracking and documenting our financial journey from beginning of 2017, we’re amazed how far we’ve come. In January 2017, our net worth stood at $458k. In 4 full years, we are at $1.135m. Incredible!

We made contributions to the following accounts:

• 401(k) – $19.5k (only for W)
• IRAs – $6.5k
• Brokerage: $2.6k
• 529: $2.15k

Liabilities rose due to us purchasing a car, financed at 0%, after selling off one of our old vehicles.

This year we also refinanced our old 30-year 3.875% fixed mortgage (which we were in year 5), to a 15-year 2.625% fixed. In the process, we decoupled the escrow for property tax, and our monthly mortgage payments now go only towards principal and interest, with the payment amount remaining almost same as before the refinance. To give you an idea of how much interest we were paying on the 30-year note: only 52% of the monthly PI payment was going towards principal, whereas now 68% of the monthly payment go towards principal.

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Goals for 2021 will be soft. After the year that was 2020 we need a *normal* year – plain, old fashioned, boring – to calm things down.

We obviously have no control over how the markets behave. What we do have control over is how we invest our money and how disciplined we stay. To that end, these are the numbers we hope to hit (contributions to different accounts):

• 401(k) – About $15k
• IRA’s – $12k (this might be the stretch goal)
• Taxable brokerage – $3k
• 529: $2k

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Non-financially, here are the few things we’d like to do this year.

• Meet up with friends and family!
• Go on at least one long road trip of 7 to 10 days
  • Have couple of more shorter ones
• Enjoy the summer
  • Hopefully have a number of cookouts at our place and few more at friends’ places
  • Kayaking
• Maybe one trip involving air travel
  • International perhaps ..

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Here’s hoping to an amazing 2021 everyone! May your life, and journey towards FIRE, be a glorious one.

We had a phenomenal 2019. Our net worth increased by over $231k. Assets rose not only because we maxed out contributing to our respective 401(k) and in taxable brokerage but primarily due to the extraordinary run of the stock market which raised the valuation of all our investment accounts. Debt has gone down by aggressively paying down our mortgage.

Since we started tracking and documenting our financial journey from beginning of 2017, we’re amazed how far we’ve come. In January 2017, our net worth stood at $458k. In 3 full years, it has more than doubled to $943k.

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Now to keep us honest on our goals from the last year-end post.

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Looking forward to 2020.

So, a big change happened in the first week of 2020. M left the full time job and became a stay-at-home-parent, with part time work. We outlined the plan in this post. This is one of the reason that we slowed down aggressively paying down the mortgage. We still pay $106 extra to principal on the monthly mortgage payment.

Since this will be the first year riding out this big change, I’m not going to set goals for 2020. We’ll report the contributions to 401(k), Roth IRAs, taxable brokerage, and 529 account at the end of the year.

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Here’s hoping to an amazing 2020 everyone! Maybe your life, and journey towards FIRE, be a glorious one.

Even with all the carnage going on in the markets in the last few months of 2018, and especially December, we still ended the year in a net gain of ~$79k! It just boils down to three things really.

a) Keep automatically investing every month in retirement and taxable accounts

b) Keep reducing debt every month

c) Take advantage of market downturns and sock aside more in taxable accounts. Since you’ll be on track to maximize your retirement accounts no matter what, the excess investment has to go in taxable accounts which do not have any contribution limits.

Since we started tracking our progress from January 2017, our net worth has gone from $458k to $686k. In two full years, we’ve manged to increase our net worth by almost $230k. That’s incredible to me.

Here’s a graphical representation of how our Assets, Liabilities and Net Worth have changed over the course of 2 years.

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For 2019 we have some plain vanilla and some ambitious goals. None of these are “new year resolutions” – I hate that crap!

First, we’ll be maximizing our 401(k) at our respective employers. With an increase to $19k in 2019, that’s $38k tax-free shaved right at the top.

Then, we’ll be contributing to the max in in either Roth or T-IRA. With new limits of $6k this year, that’s another $12k for both of us.

Next, we plan to invest at least $9k in our taxable accounts for the full year. This will almost certainly bump up to $10k by the end of the year. As a comparison, for 2018 we invested $6,850 in taxable accounts.

With automated pulls we’ll be putting $2.4k in our child’s 529 account for the year. I want to top it off to $3k.

Our mortgage balance stands at $206k right now. Aim is to bring this down to $160k, mixed between regular payments and additional payments applied towards principal. This will be the stretch goal!

Other than that, nothing special really. We’ll take a couple of vacations, one probably internationally. We will go on a number of road trips. And work our asses off in our respective jobs.