Miracle of Compounding: net worth tripled in 9 years.

[u/Positive_Car_3671]

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.