Today I begin my (public) journey towards financial independence, by recording the details and month-to-month changes to my net worth. Why share these kinds of personal details with complete strangers? Because I’ve been very inspired by dozens of other bloggers who have done the same., and have been so impressed with what ordinary people (like you and I) have been able to accomplish. I strongly believe that the very act of recording my progress will keep me motivated and allow me to achieve my goal of being financially independent and being able to retire by age 60.
I still need to decide upon the best way to present the data, but in the interest of getting started quickly, I’ll just include the summary from Mint.com:
So there it is. I feel we’re in pretty good shape for our ages (I’m 45, wife is 39), but I don’t feel overly comfortable just yet. As someone who’s invested through both the dot.com collapse and the great financial meltdown of 2008-2009, I know that bad things can and do happen. Some notes on the above:
- Our only debt ($29,861.90) is the remaining balance of the mortgage on our (according to Zillow) $477,000 home. We have a 15 year mortgage, but we’ve been over-paying and so we’ll own the house free-and-clear in October of 2015. Hooray! For the vast majority of my working life, this mortgage payment has eaten up a significant portion of each months paycheck, and I can hardly even imagine just how great it will be to no longer have to worry about this burden.
- The 923k in investment lived in my wife and my Fidelity accounts, and I invest primarily through following trading strategies created by the TrendTimer software that I wrote. It’s crazy and pretty stupid, but between my wife and myself, we actually have 13 separate accounts! Here’s how they look
I wish there was a better way to consolidate these, but at least Mint can provide a summary of all of these. In addition to Mint.com, I also use, and highly recommend SigFig which is somewhat like Mint, but is more geared toward tracking financial accounts. When the markets are open, it provides a minute-by-minute update of all our holdings. Some people are addicted to crack cocaine. I’m addicted to checking my portfolio on SigFig 
Hey! Very cool – thanks for sharing this with us
Just added you up to our master list of blogger net worths!
http://rockstarfinance.com/blogger-net-worths/
You’re currently in the #2 slot – woohoo!
Hi Steve, it’s interesting that you’re journey toward FI is stated more as a ‘retire at 60′ vs. the typical ‘I want to spend x, so I need 25 times x (in investments) then I’ll retire. For instance, I want to be able to spend $100/day after tax, so I need about 40k, which corresponds to a million dollar portfolio (which I hit this year, so I’m blogging about making the decision to ER). Do you have an FI goal, or is it to grow the ‘stache as much as possible by 60? Look forward to more posts!
Hi Steve, thanks for your comments. In case it wasn’t obvious, this blog is quite new and pretty rough around the edges. I’d be curious about what you think of the fourpercentrule.com retirement calculator that I wrote. Regarding your question, at least to start, I really just wanted a simple goal that I though was achievable. Since I’m 45, I won’t be able to retire as early as some of the other bloggers, but I’m ok with that. Like you said, I mainly just want to increase my portfolio as much as I can over the next 15 years and then will live as well as I can on what we have saved. We’ll have our house paid for in October 2015, so I’m definitely looking forward to that! Beyond that I do have 2 kids (ages 9 and 13) who will heading to college in a few years, so once the house is paid for, we’ll apply what we would have to pay the mortgage to their college fund (which as of yet do not exist). I’ll definitely check out your blog!
You can actually get a more detailed look at my plan here:
http://www.fourpercentrule.com/myplan/adminsteve_myplan
Part of the appeal the http://www.fourpercentrule.com retirement calculator is that it allows users to save an share their plans. No one is really using it so far, but I’m hoping some folks will take notice and start using it!
Thanks. You are very humble to say the calculator is ‘rough around the edges’, I was really impressed! The only comment I have is that the ‘yearly income’ didn’t seem to change the graph. I think it’s power is in the real-time graphical feedback (such as how inflation is ‘really powerful’ vs other inputs!) Hopefully this gets picked up by Rockstar Finance, You need to throw them your link when you are comfortable with your script, or else I will!
Steve: One item that has caught my attention of late is the plethora of annuity sales guys on radio trying to peddle “safe money” investments, ie, in annuities that can lose no principal, only gain in good markets and be flat in down markets. They omit “purchasing power” discussions. If we have high inflation in many of the upcoming years, as a consequence of all the govt spending, and Fed Balance sheet rising to over 4Trillion $, we have no idea how much of the dollar’s purchasing power will be taken. Negative compounding of our debt and our unfunded liabilities could wreck many a retirement plan……your thoughts?
Check out Personal Capital. They give a similar overview of all your finances as Mint but their account connections don’t break as often as Mint’s. Mint truly sucks.
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Hi,
We like your breakdown its awesome. Your investment and assets are nice, but how do you operate on such minimum cash? Have a great day!
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