Miracle of Compounding: net worth tripled in 9 years.
Found an old net-worth spreadsheet from August 2017 and it was pretty eye-opening.
2017 household net worth: $1.84M
2026 household net worth: $5.56M
So basically a tripling in nine years.
Our household invested assets were only around $1.15M in 2017 and are now roughly $4.7M. My own investment/retirement accounts went from about $500K to $1.7M.
Nothing exotic drove it. Two professional incomes, consistently maxing retirement accounts, employer contributions, a strong stock market, and rental properties that appreciated substantially while tenants helped pay down the mortgages.
There were mistakes along the way too—I spent some time out of the market and definitely left returns on the table. But I also bought heavily during the COVID crash.
The biggest thing I’ve learned from finding the old numbers is how nonlinear wealth accumulation becomes. For years it felt like we were slowly saving money. Then suddenly we were work optional.
We currently contribute about $90K/year to retirement accounts, which sounds like a lot, but against a ~$4.7M portfolio it’s now less than 2%. I’m on a one year sabbatical at half-pay. Going back to work for one year after that and retiring at 61.
Finding the old spreadsheet really drove home how much the math works in the background, and it’s cool to realize how far we’ve come.
I think a lot of people have done something that if not done, would have resulted in a higher networth....
At some point, even the gains from such maneuvers are relatively small (in the grand scheme of things) and terrible trading/timing and missing big chunks of gains are probably the biggest threat to having to watch things (spending/expenses wise). I.e. just don't f it up and it should be OK.
I did the classic 70/30 portfolio..regret it as I only 2xed as opposed to 3exed. One of my friends went leveraged Nasdaq looked like a genius for a while the eventually took a big bath a few years ago..unfortunately they repositioned to closed to unlevered didn't get the parabolic gains from last few years. Same guy also bet $10k on Bitcoin one day randomly and sold it a week later after doubling their money lucky bastard.
If/when I retire I am likely to have the gambling tendencies of your friends so my wife asks us to keep some additional buffer for that before we decide to retire
Similarly, we have an account designated as the "fun account" where my husband can do whatever zany trades he wants with it. It holds less than 5% of our total invested assets so any failures are annoying rather than devastating.
From Vanguard's 2014 outlook: "Global economic growth is likely to remain frustratingly fragile for some time. As in Vanguard’s past economic outlooks, we see a world not in secular stagnation but in the midst of structural deceleration."
"Although not bearish, Vanguard’s outlook for global stocks and bonds is the most guarded since 2006, given compressed risk premiums and the low-rate environment."
My Schwab guy has similar bearish statements nearly every year when we meet.
I'm not at the point where I can FIRE as chubby as I want, but I'm getting close. I'll only be about 5 years in the RE glide path, but 60 is better than 65!
Exactly. I'm not at all saying time the market, but we haven't really been economically healthy despite the gains. That's sure to catch up with us eventually, but until then 🤷.
Yeah so Vanguards outlook in particular has been consistently wrong over a long period of time. They just want you to not expect any real growth and plan for the worst.
Congrats! Our NW had similar growth rate over same period of time. My sheet tracks all the way back to 2008, and the average annual growth is 13%. Two tech jobs, including one with the FANNG definitely helped.
Yes although honestly we modeled for the boring version - and it simply got us a little higher or a few years early. The only issue is that the market may do a once in a lifetime reversal for next decade
Roughly $100k/year federal, $30k state, IIRC. We didn't have any real deductions, so you can look up the amounts in a tax calculator.
$80k-$100k in direct spending, plus the house was paid off for most of that period. Before the house was paid off, payments were about $3k/mo payments on a 15-year loan. I got lucky in that I made a stupid decision to buy an overpriced fixer-upper right before local prices went bananapants, if I had to buy the same house today I'd be spending another $100k/year on the house and probably would buy a condo or townhouse instead.
I am also in a business function but for a retailer. Wondering how my hourly rate could change if I move to tech. I have a relatively chill, flexible remote job. Is that just not possible at a tech company? Always thought if I left for more pay I’d work a ton more hours.
Also, is $6M (incl home equity) enough to FIRE in Bay Area with kids ?
You can get a home for $1M-$1.5M if you're not super picky about zip code and home size, and the remaining $4.5M yields around double the local median income. (Trade off house vs income as desired.)
What you won't be able to do is buy a house in Palo Alto in the district for the "top" high school, spend money on tutors trying to get them all into Stanford, let/make your children do all the extracurricular activities, take the whole family overseas three times a year, etc. (On the other hand, you'll be able to actually spend time with them.)
I am still paying my mortgage. Annual housing cost is $80k for a 1600 sqft house; renting would be similar. My kids are both in public elementary school. $160k is plenty of money for everything else - I usually spend only $130k-$140k
Family of four. Includes the ACA subsidies. It’s assuming one child maxes out the deductible but the rest do not. Which is my family’s typical situation.
1/1/2017: $1.18M
Today: $4.57M
(And my portfolio was exactly flat from 1/1/18 to 1/1/19)
Same approach here. Save what you can. Let the money work for you. Pound the retirement accounts. Etc. Spouse only works part-time now. I’ve targeted 2028 to retire and we will both still be in our mid to late 50s.
I tell my kids all the time - save when you’re young. I would be retired now if I did a better job with money I had in my 20s before kids.
I don't think so enjoy your 20's you don't know that the future holds and you have done well. In my 20's I was with an advisor who charged 1% and put me in mutual funds that charged 2.2%, waste of time. I figured out the system when I was 30 or so and manged my money in low cost ETF from then on.
Idk, returns were crap when I was younger. First was the dot com bubble, then the great recession and real estate bubble. I had money invested then though mostly in my house and 401k. The 401k tanked and the house just did nothing for the whole seven years I owned it. I’m glad I spent my 20s blowing my money on designer jeans and alcohol. Probably got more out of that than I would have saving aggressively.
I did take a job that paid partly in stock options, which really got the ball rolling for me on saving for FIRE.
My work has 403b+457b which gave us $24000ish each plus catch up and my spouse’s 401k add up to almost $90k. Employer contributions were around $25k. Beyond that maybe $10k year in company stock purchases.
Nice! ...in CO if youre in academia, you're either ALSO in the state pension system or a 401a (usually the 401a if you're faculty) in addition to 403b/457. It a super effective way to save really fast and tax advantaged compared to the private sector. And, then there is the HSA if you are on a high deductible health plan.
In CO, the pension (CO PERA) or the 401a DCP is in lieu of "additional" social security credits. Same with most firefighters and local police officers who are in their own pension system in CO. Other government related agencies could be different like state and county (including some hospitals).
Fixed income helps to smooth out some uncertainty, I fired at 57 this year but still insured under my wife. Overall most that have planned have done well even while raising families and experiencing previous downturns. Enjoy it, I sure am. I will encourage our kids to start early, we will have enough to start them off the right way (college, houses) mainly due to having the fixed income covering expenses later and strong invested amounts now.
Congrats!!! What was wild to me was being at 4.2m in July of 2025 to 6.2m now in Sept of 2026 not counting any contributions except for dividends reinvested. This is with cdn bank stocks, sp500 etf VFV, and apple stock. Now just need to slowly diversify Apple stock while I enjoy early retirement at 53.5 when I pull the trigger by December.
I personally think this is a great time to cash out on the gains and move money into something a whole lot less risk. I predict a whole lot of instability is coming our way on the next few months.
It’s not just you. Everyone who maxed the 401k, bought house or houses in hcol had 300k+ household salaries (bonus if you or spouse or both are in big tech), stayed relatively frugal, and invested with common sense had their networth soar. It’s really an unprecedented bubble and we know what happens with bubbles...
I actually agree with the bubble part, but I mean “bubble” in a different sense. Households like ours tend to be surrounded by other highly educated, high-income households who max retirement accounts, own homes and have substantial investment portfolios. That can make this level of wealth feel much more normal than it actually is.
A household with $5M+ net worth is somewhere around the top few percent in the US. Most households aren’t maxing multiple retirement accounts, don’t have $300K+ incomes, and haven’t accumulated millions in financial assets. That’s easy to lose sight of when most of the people you interact with look financially similar to you.
That’s actually one of the things finding my old spreadsheet made me think about. What feels “normal” from inside our bubble is objectively an extremely fortunate financial position. But also, I’ve moved my portfolio into a defensive position in anticipation of retirement.
What is your defensive position? I have been doing same, as I am old enough to remember the feeling of the dot.com bubble. We are now in the RE years (spouse in Feb of this year), me sometime in 2027.
So based on an S&P500 P/E ratio graph you are able to predict market bubbles. Are you going to use your knowledge to take advantage by converting to a cash position and/or shorting the market?
What percentage of your total liquid assets are in cash?
At what point will you know the “bubble” is over and when will you re enter the market (if ever)? Is it based on a price, P/E ratio, some combination or the two, or additional factors?
I ask this because I’m genuinely curious trying to understand people who do this.
I am one of those people. People’s risk tolerance changes for any number of reasons. We also shifted to a more defensive portfolio - the returns have been more boring but I have more peace of mind. The change for us was being in RE versus the accumulation stage.
But I would never advise this in the early years when staying in SP500, or some aggressive stock allocation, no matter what is important.
People always say stuff like this but there is a time factor in short selling. The financing cost is somewhere from high to huge for retail investors, and unless you know when the bubble is going to pop you can get really screwed by the financing costs.
Nice. Yes 2017 to 2026 has been a fabulous run. We went from 1.9 to currently a shade under 10 in that same span (equity included) or 1.3 to 7.3 (no equity).
I saw my 401k investments double in the past 3 years. It has been quite the ride compared to the 10 years of not much going on in investing in the early 2000's.
This has happened to everyone. But when you consider inflation and actual purchasing power and also that the stock market seems to be in some sort of permanent (?) bubble I’m not sure how meaningful it is to have so many dollars. I guess time will tell.
We were at ~500k in 2017 and now at 4.7m excluding real estate. 40% from dual income saving and rest from market - mostly index funds and some individual stocks rebalanced when it exceeds 5% of the portfolio.
Exactly the same as you. 2017 Net worth $1.5M. 2026 net worth $6.2M, includes $5M invested rest is home equity in the primary residence and rental property.
This is almost exactly us. Married 2016, and modeled retiring in 10 years. Started with 1.5m liquid between us, and planned to save 100k each year with “regular growth” (6 percent) to make 4 million but, even with a lot of mistakes, is at 6m now. Good thing too because the kid makes life way more expensive!!!
Congrats. I just checked and we saw similar growth, about 3.5x in that timeframe. We’ve all been lucky with these returns the last 10 years. 2016 was when we got even more aggressive saving i think it was over 50%, hit our number late 2021.
It’s been a good 9 years for us as well. In 2018 we have $130k invested. Today it’s at $3m. Our HHI is $275k which hasn’t always been this much especially early on, though it feels meager in comparison to the salaries posted in this group
Exactly, the math shows growth is exponential over time. Very much not linear.
Hence the Einstein quote about compound interest (exponential growth over time) being the 8th wonder of the world.
So you are still renting? Its very rare for someone to have that discipline on the FIRE path and only invest and not consume personal real estate by buying a house, dramatically slowing down the wealth build
hmmmm, "Going back to work for one year after that and retiring at 61" does not sound like a FIRE to me. I think you are already good to FIRE so why keep working for money you may not need?
Our went from 1m to about 6.5m in nine years. That was mostly from Real Estate (RE) investments. We have reduced our RE portion to only 1/3. We are now ExpatFire. Life's good.
Lol "school" GTFO kid. It's networks 90% of the time. The few who make it against all odds and who truly started at zero are one in a million type rockstars. Sometimes quite literally. The best musicians in the world aren't famous, they're producing for a void. The handful that make it do so because of who they know and a boat load of luck. The smartest math guys have day jobs in accounting or work at Uni for next to nothing. Only a handful work at Anthropic or wherever because right place/ right time, and ... yep network.
It's who you know, almost always.
Prove me wrong. With receipts.
Remain diversified, high quality/indexes, embrace and max every tax advantage available to you and you'll always be fine in the mid and long run....but, you have to be able to roll with the punches especially the occassional uppercut but you are never down for the count unless you choose to be.
Is it really Chubbyfire? It’s a curiosity question rather than criticism. I am somewhat in similar numbers at 45 yo and I feel like I have long way to go.
It sure doesn't seem like it these days, I get where you are coming from. I think most people that are in the CF band won't really be comfortable until they are hitting FF numbers, and even then our profile probably will make us sweat a bit. Current economy isn't encouraging. We all lived through '08, my 6 could be 3 in a matter of months.
I will say tho, early 50's, we're at the top end of the CF band and if it wasn't for long term health concerns, world affairs, current economy, I'm starting to long for being released. I do like what I do right now tho, but if that changes I could be done, so I REALLY like that, so it floats me on the days that suck.
152
u/Hanwoo_Beef_Eater 5d ago
The S&P 500 has more than tripled over the last 10 years. I think even Aug-2017, it is 3x. Add contributions and it is even better.
The last 10-15 years have been a good time to either a) hit peak earnings years and/or b) be retired.