OP here. I leave out housing altogether. I know it's generally considered as part of one's net worth, but to me the appraised value of your house may or may not be accurate. so I just don't count it. (we have about $300k in home equity, though.) |
| Five pages and it's hasn't turned political yet on who gets credit? |
someone posted "thanks trump!" earlier. |
Sure they can, if the horizon is long enough. And it is! Namaste. |
I certainly understand the concept of figuring your net worth on an after tax basis, but that is not the convention. Having said that, if anyone can point to materials on how to reduce the tax consequences of retirement fund withdrawals, I would be very interested. I have definitely been thinking about doing what the second PP is suggesting, which is to begin making largish withdrawals from my 401K and putting it into a Vanguard investment. |
Great, but the earlier poster claimed to have to have more than twice as much saved and also said that was not including home equity which is why people are questioning |
I started investing while I was in college in the late 80s after taking a personal finance class. My parents never went to college and had no idea about investing in the stock market. I worked a part-time job during the school year and full time in the summer, including funding IRAs at the time. I did not try to pay off student loans right away as I thought investing would be better in the long run - which it was. Worked a couple of years and then went to Law School and moved to DC. Those loans I did pay off as soon as possible as they were high interest rates, but saved everything else. I did not do the social scene, dinner party circuit, etc. so I saved a lot of money. Bought a town house almost immediately in the mid-90s and had roommates. Yes, this part was pure luck. I did work in Law for about 8 years which gave me a good savings and retirement foundation, but became a SAHM after first kid. So top salary back in early 00s was $150 - 170k (including bonus). DH coming off graduate degree when we married, so he did not have an income. He got a government job right after kid was born, so my salary was replaced by his salary at a lower level, but our housing costs were very little since the house cost very little when I purchased it - like $200k. Sold just a few years after that for $700k - very close in Arlington right as the housing bubble started to collapse. Left the area for a few years and then moved back, so we put most of the proceeds in the market after the collapse. Just really good timing. We used some of that money to buy new house here further out, but kept most in the market. So, between my retirement accounts (Rollover IRA and Roth (which we fund every year), I have about $600K even though I haven't worked in probably 14 years and Husband's retirement accounts have about $500K (He didn't start saving for retirement until we married). The other $875 K is investments and housing profits turned into investments. Not saying someone could do the same today as we've benefited from a great housing market and a huge bull market. As I also mentioned in my first post, I don't count this money because it could all be halved or worse tomorrow if the market crashes. I just made the comment that it's nice to see when you do hit these milestones. |
Well, she’s in big law so it’s actually pretty crap. I work for a non profit and earned less than $100k until this past year. I surpassed $1m a few years ago at about the same age as PP. Why hasn’t she saved more already if at big law? |
+1 Honestly, most of these numbers are sucky considering the fact that many posters are bringing in well over 200k. But I suspect that many high net worth people on here are horrible/ignorant investors and got lucky by having an undiversified portfolio, or got lucky buying a house in a particular neighborhood. |
| a true pissing contest. |
Lol at your garbage salary |
Op here. I started off in “small law” and jumped to biglaw 4 years ago, so haven’t been making biglaw $$ for long. In 2014, our net worth was $200k and no home equity. If that’s sucky, well I guess I suck. |
I’d assume that your salary is considerably lower given that you can’t string a coherent sentence together but thanks. Actually $100k is a pretty good salary for the non profit world. |
| Guys! This a thread that is intended to be encouraging and informative. Could we stop the back and forth insults? |
| Our 409k account is really going through the roof!! We are multi millionaires. |