About Me
I’m 29 years old, married with no kids. I recently lost my job and having grown accustomed to a double income, my spending habits were out of control. I realized I was almost 30 with not much to show for other than a desire to start a family, some fabulous clothes and photos from our memorable vacations. Not bad but it’s time to grow up and start thinking about the future.
I don’t have it in me to be completely frugal 100% of the time, but I am dedicated enough to be smart with my money. My goal is to accumulate $1 million in liquid assets. I am lucky enough to be married to a wonderful man who earns enough for us to fall into the “upper middle class” category and allow me to stay at home and manage our finances.
Although we did adopt a terrible spending habit over the past few years, there were a few things that we did right (and a few things we were very lucky to have).
1) We contributed to our 401ks.
2) This is something my dad did right. When I first started working at the age of 16 (as a ShopRite cashier!), my dad opened a Roth IRA account for me. I frowned every year on Christmas when he gave me an envelope with a note inside that said “Merry Christmas! I am contributing to your Roth IRA account” but now I am very grateful that he started me so young on this and taught me the importance of investing in retirement. When I first started working after college, I contributed to my Roth every year. Then after I got married, I stopped and let myself financially go. To this day I still have not contributed again but I vow to contribute something by April 2010.
3) When my husband graduated college, his dad gave him a big chunk of change to play around with in the stock market with. I think this was an excellent gift. As you can see, both our fathers equipped us with very good financial knowledge and resources.
4) My husband and I are lucky enough to not have any educational debt. He recently finished an insanely expensive MBA program but was lucky to get a partial scholarship. The rest we paid for which did set us back a bit but we believe it was a good investment.
Why do I want to accumulate wealth?
1) I want us to be able to retire one day and be able to support ourselves and not have to be a burden to our families.
2) I want kids. Kids are expensive. I want to provide them with life experiences and to be able to send them to college. I want to buy a house for them one day.
3) You never know what will happen. Medical problems, emergencies, etc. I want to be prepared.
Hopefully with this blog, I’ll be able to chronicle my journey towards financial success. Perhaps my story will also inspire others and allow people to see that it IS possible to be financially free!
Nice blog. Question for you, how do you get to your 120K net worth? I see you have 231K in stock, retirement accounts, and cash. Do you have a mortgage? Just curious.
Thanks! The 120K that I have is actually not my net worth – it is what I have in stocks, mutual funds and cash. This is actually the result of 8 years of both of us working + some money we received from our parents when we got married. Coincidentally, we were both lucky enough to each receive some money so it definitely helped a lot. We took that money and invested it immediately and it has grown since then. We do have a mortgage as well but I am not including it in our calculations because our house depreciated so much that it is worth exactly what we owe on the mortgage so it is basically not adding anything to our net worth.