AW and thank you re retirement.

[badgergrl]

I have told this story before but in 2008 my husband started a new job. At that point we were in our early thirties and had less than 20k saved for retirement. Everyone on this board talked about how important retirement was and I thought maybe we better start prioritizing savings I got our statements today, we have hit 1 million. We are still slightly behind for our ages and I know the market is artificially inflated right now but I still feel good about it and I am so glad that I found this board.

[farmvillelover]

That's awesome badgergrl. I can give a lot of credit to the original MM and to some extent this spinoff board as well. So many people encouraged just saving as much as possible back in 2009-2011, and even when my 1st kid was born, to frontload his 529 plan even though I was hesitant. Historically there was a lot of $ and finance talk on MM and I think a lot of the old timers benefited, I'm glad you were one of them.

Congrats!

[ohgillian]

Congrats badgergrl!

This board is what convinced me to move my investing from USAA to Vanguard and I can't say enough about how great of a move that was.

[badgergrl]

It also made me aware that we need to do better with our kids. I am pretty open with them about what things cost and what we pay in taxes and that a big chunk of our money goes each month to retirement and saving for them to go to college. When they get older I want to make sure they know more than we did.

[raangoli]

That’s awesome! Congratulations on meeting such a significant milestone.

[scm1011]

Jan 29, 2020 16:41:33 GMT -5 farmvillelover said:

That's awesome badgergrl . I can give a lot of credit to the original MM and to some extent this spinoff board as well. So many people encouraged just saving as much as possible back in 2009-2011, and even when my 1st kid was born, to frontload his 529 plan even though I was hesitant. Historically there was a lot of $ and finance talk on MM and I think a lot of the old timers benefited, I'm glad you were one of them.

Congrats!

So much this. The original MM really changed my mindset and helped set me up for success with regards to eliminating debt, saving for retirement, and investing. I benefited tremendously from the OG MM board (as have my children). 

Congrats on the amazing milestone, badgergrl!

[Mimi]

Congrats!

Jan 29, 2020 22:11:11 GMT -5 badgergrl said:

It also made me aware that we need to do better with our kids. I am pretty open with them about what things cost and what we pay in taxes and that a big chunk of our money goes each month to retirement and saving for them to go to college. When they get older I want to make sure they know more than we did.

Can you tell me more what you share with your kids?

[Susie]

I agree, the OG MM was a big part of helping me confront our full financial picture head on -- instead of just sending minimum payments on our giant SLs, putting enough into retirement to get the match, and hoping it would all work out ok.

I still worry about whether we're doing enough, but MM had so much to do with how much we've gotten done in the last decade as well.  Yay for milestone posts!

[sillygoosegirl]

MM is a lot of why we decided to save aggressively for retirement in our 20s. I'm not on this board much anymore, mainly because I feel like we've mostly all gotten it taken care of... and now have bigger balances than I'm comfortable sharing about.

[RockNVoll]

badgergrl, congratulations on your amazing accomplishment and thank you for sharing! In the spirit of old-school MM, are there any highlights you're willing to share about how you got here? For example, lifestyle changes, learning about investing, actually executing on an investment plan, things that were scary or exciting, any general thoughts or lessons learned? I think there are still plenty of people who would find it helpful to hear how someone went from $20k - $1M in just 11 or 12 years!

[fryjack2]

Congrats!! That is amazing!

[Mushe]

That’s awesome, congrats! I think we have pretty similar stories. I started my first big girl job as a lawyer in 2007, but I was paying so much initially for loans, and on a low government salary, I didn’t prioritize retirement savings beyond my pension. I started reading MM when I was engaged in 2009/2010, and the advice here was invaluable. I am trying to do a spending reset right now, so that I am more mindful on what we spend our other money on, but super glad and proud of what we’ve done on retirement and other auto savings goals.

[ellipses84]

That’s awesome! I was doing the minimum match prior to finding the OG MM Board in 2010. I definitely attribute my awesome retirement accounts to it (although I don’t have that much, haha).

[gt7301b]

Congrats, that is a huge accomplishment.

[imojoebunny]

Congrats! Feels good, doesn't it?

[liveintheville]

Wow! What an amazing accomplishment! Congratulations!

[badgergrl]

Jan 30, 2020 13:50:06 GMT -5 RockNVoll said:

badgergrl, congratulations on your amazing accomplishment and thank you for sharing! In the spirit of old-school MM, are there any highlights you're willing to share about how you got here? For example, lifestyle changes, learning about investing, actually executing on an investment plan, things that were scary or exciting, any general thoughts or lessons learned? I think there are still plenty of people who would find it helpful to hear how someone went from $20k - $1M in just 11 or 12 years!

We essentially decided to start saving by maxing everything. First our 401ks, then within a few years we started Backdoor roths.

I try not to mess with our investments too much. I don’t have any match or profit sharing on my money so I have just put that Into a vanguard target account and left it alone.

My husbands account has grown much faster because he has profit sharing which has generally been a 120% of what we put in. I manage that account myself and just try to keep it balanced
And resist my urge to be conservative with our investments. We are pretty risk adverse.

We have aggressively saved for retirement, but still
Have student loans. They are under 3% though so we haven’t
Prioritized paying them.

Both of our cars are paid off, and neither of us drive the type
Of cars our neighbors or coworkers do.

We have also just been lucky. We got into the market at the right time and have road a huge wave up. My husband has gotten substantial
Raises over the years and it’s not as hard to save as
It used to be because of it. Our story is certainly not an anyone could have done it type story.

[badgergrl]

Jan 30, 2020 9:38:52 GMT -5 Mimi said:

Congrats!

Jan 29, 2020 22:11:11 GMT -5 badgergrl said:

It also made me aware that we need to do better with our kids. I am pretty open with them about what things cost and what we pay in taxes and that a big chunk of our money goes each month to retirement and saving for them to go to college. When they get older I want to make sure they know more than we did.

Can you tell me more what you share with your kids?

So we talk with them a lot more than either of our parents did.

My husband used to talk about being middle class to himself and the kids. We are not. I had a long talk with him about that. I struggle with the right words to use but our kids know what we have more than the vast majority of people and that we are really lucky.

We talk a lot about giving and donating money.

We also talk a lot about choices. We could get a new car, but maybe that would mean less vacations. We constantly remind them
That most people don’t travel like we do. And many people
Have to choose between new shoes and food or other hard choices.

We also talk about how a huge portion of our money get saved for another time (both our retirement and their college)

As they get older I hope to continue to educate them by helping them start their own roths and managing their own money.

[isabel]

badgergrl, what do you mean by "backdoor" Roths? Is that different than a Roth IRA?

Your story is inspiring. Congrats!

We are early 30s and in a similar place to where you were. This year, we will be able to max Roth IRAs for each of us (and will continue doing so now that we'll have substantial savings from one kid moving from daycare to public Kinder). Our 401k contributions aren't maxed at all, but we are committed to putting our annual raises entirely to 401k, so I am hopeful that we'll be closer to maxing them in the next few years. Once DS2 is out of daycare, that money can go toward retirement as well, which will help a lot.

We're also anticipating about $100k from a trust from DH's grandma in 2021 and the vast majority of that will go toward retirement as well. I'm hopeful we'll see significant growth over this decade so we can start to feel more secure in our 40s.

[Covergirl82]

Congratulations, badgergrl!

This board has also inspired me to work on retirement savings. I'm starting a new job on Monday and will be contributing 8%. My new employer will contribute 6%, plus profit sharing if the company does well. (DH used to work for this company and some years he received around a 6% profit sharing contribution.) With just my 8% and the company's 6%, I should be on track to contribute 50% more to my 401k than I have been. Hopefully this will get us back on track for retirement savings in a few years.

We're working to pay off our house (hopefully in 5 years), otherwise, I'd contribute more to my 401k with this new job.

[badgergrl]

Feb 1, 2020 19:30:16 GMT -5 isabel said:

badgergrl, what do you mean by "backdoor" Roths? Is that different than a Roth IRA?

Your story is inspiring. Congrats!

We are early 30s and in a similar place to where you were. This year, we will be able to max Roth IRAs for each of us (and will continue doing so now that we'll have substantial savings from one kid moving from daycare to public Kinder). Our 401k contributions aren't maxed at all, but we are committed to putting our annual raises entirely to 401k, so I am hopeful that we'll be closer to maxing them in the next few years. Once DS2 is out of daycare, that money can go toward retirement as well, which will help a lot.

We're also anticipating about $100k from a trust from DH's grandma in 2021 and the vast majority of that will go toward retirement as well. I'm hopeful we'll see significant growth over this decade so we can start to feel more secure in our 40s.

We are above the income limit for a Roth. So we put the money in a traditional ira and then convert it.