Reply to How many 55yo that you know in DMV have $3M+ NW?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote]If you have 5-10M net worth and are in your 50’s. Can you describe how you got there? Just curious. And only if it’s self made. No parent money to start you off.[/quote]

That is us.  One of us started off with debt from undergrad and grad school (about $120k), so we prioritized paying that off quickly while also buying our first house ($350k) and having kids. We maxed out each of our 401ks as soon as we started working. Loans were paid off within 10 years. We both worked for 12-14 years, then DW stayed home with kids. DH's career started to really take off at about the same time.  We saved aggressively for college because we wanted to be sure it was funded if HHI changed; once those accounts were in good shape, we started investing in taxable accounts.  In hindsight, it would have made more financial sense to save less aggressively for college in those years and save more for retirement, but it all worked out because HHI took a big jump in our mid 40s so we caught up with retirement savings.  This is the biggest key, really - high HHI makes the rest of it much easier.

Kids were in public school until high school and all went to private colleges. We moved from our "starter" home to a bigger home after five years and have stayed in that house even after HHI increased.  We did buy a vacation home just before covid and were lucky that it has doubled in value.  We keep our cars until they start needing regular repairs (8-9 years usually). We are at the point where we could definitely save more now, but try to strike a balance with continuing to put away money and enjoy that we have enough to do the things we want to do while we are both healthy.[/quote]

This describes my family situation, too, EXCEPT our careers never took off, dh is underemployed (like a pp said, he was once gc and ceo candidates, but all it takes is a couple of misses and aging and you reverse faster than you’d think) - so we are an example of mid 50s with net worth around $4m and no extras lije you describe of second home, keep our cars longer, etc. We did prioritize our private hs and college for our kids and in hindsight I wish we’d sent them to publics and invested that money. [/quote]

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