Anonymous wrote:Are you including retirement funds in net worth?

I am the 1.5M nw poster (I actually just checked my accounts and it’s closer to 2M but on this board that’s neither here nor there) and retirement is included in that but not our pensions. I wouldn’t even know how to accurately calculate that.

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Anonymous wrote:Are you including retirement funds in net worth?

Yes for 401k/TSP but pension is a bit tricky - no easy way to calculate $ value of pension. I think some people do and some don't include in NW estimate.

I don't take into account the $51k that my spouse and I will receive in social security in calculating net worth, but I certainly take it into account in retirement planning.

We are very high net worth but on so many things I am incredibly frugal. It's part of my MC DNA. But when it comes to homes and travel I'm very different.

Anonymous wrote:Are you including retirement funds in net worth?

Yes for 401k/TSP but pension is a bit tricky - no easy way to calculate $ value of pension. I think some people do and some don't include in NW estimate.

Anonymous wrote:Are you including retirement funds in net worth?

Duh. Who doesn't?

DH always made good money but we had a big family. We carefully avoided debt other than a mortgage and always made sure we maxed out completely on every retirement vehicle possible, which for many years pretty much had us living paycheck to paycheck although we knew we were good. We finally reached the point where we had money left over and nothing else to do with it but open a taxable investment account with Vanguard. That's when I started to think we had money.

Are you including retirement funds in net worth?

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Anonymous wrote:I think for me it happened when we crossed above 5 mil in net worth. I remember eating a meal for 200 dollars for the four of us and not caring. That was a clear "before/after" event. I understand that there are many experience-focused people for whom a $50/person meal is perfectly normal even with far less net worth. This was just an example, I am sure everyone has their own examples.

Everyone is different OP. We are over 5mil and still don't feel like this PP.

We are way under that an feel like that, PP. Our net worth is about 1.5mil and I’d have no problem dropping $500 on dinner. But we don’t usually spend much and don’t have expensive tastes. Once I paid off my school loans I felt like I had plenty.

Maybe one explains the other.

Could be. But I don’t need millions of dollars. We both will have pensions when we retire, our kids college expenses are covered with 529’s, we are maxing out retirement. What more do we need?

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think for me it happened when we crossed above 5 mil in net worth. I remember eating a meal for 200 dollars for the four of us and not caring. That was a clear "before/after" event. I understand that there are many experience-focused people for whom a $50/person meal is perfectly normal even with far less net worth. This was just an example, I am sure everyone has their own examples.

Everyone is different OP. We are over 5mil and still don't feel like this PP.

We are way under that an feel like that, PP. Our net worth is about 1.5mil and I’d have no problem dropping $500 on dinner. But we don’t usually spend much and don’t have expensive tastes. Once I paid off my school loans I felt like I had plenty.

Maybe one explains the other.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think for me it happened when we crossed above 5 mil in net worth. I remember eating a meal for 200 dollars for the four of us and not caring. That was a clear "before/after" event. I understand that there are many experience-focused people for whom a $50/person meal is perfectly normal even with far less net worth. This was just an example, I am sure everyone has their own examples.

Everyone is different OP. We are over 5mil and still don't feel like this PP.

We are way under that an feel like that, PP. Our net worth is about 1.5mil and I’d have no problem dropping $500 on dinner. But we don’t usually spend much and don’t have expensive tastes. Once I paid off my school loans I felt like I had plenty.

honestly? not until after like 2.5 million

This is a bit off topic but I had lunch this week with a wonderful woman 70-ish who told me that she and her husband had enjoyed a very lavish lifestyle but now only had less than $1 million left. That plus she said her husband is always mean to her. She is scared and stuck and I felt so sorry for her. She once had money but they wasted it.

I think I realized that we really had money when one year we had three in college and med school and we didn't have any difficulty writing the checks. We had always been big savers and investors so I knew we had money but writing the checks really hit home how fortunate we were. They all graduated debt free and they know what a gift that was given the debt their spouses have.

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Anonymous wrote:We have 150k in our checking accounts for the first time. Its a nice sense of relief but we still do not think of ourselves as "having money".

What would "having money" mean like for you?

You’d have a lot more money if you weren’t just letting 150k rot in a checking account. What a terrible financial decision.

What do you recommend?

Anything else. Pay down the mortgage. Invest in an index fund. Anything. Right now you’re just letting the bank make money off of your money.

Maybe it's OP's emergency fund reserve. If so, I see nothing wrong with that.

If that were the case, OP wouldn’t be on here bragging about having 150k.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We have 150k in our checking accounts for the first time. Its a nice sense of relief but we still do not think of ourselves as "having money".

What would "having money" mean like for you?

You’d have a lot more money if you weren’t just letting 150k rot in a checking account. What a terrible financial decision.

What do you recommend?

Anything else. Pay down the mortgage. Invest in an index fund. Anything. Right now you’re just letting the bank make money off of your money.

Maybe it's OP's emergency fund reserve. If so, I see nothing wrong with that.