Net Worth

[lavenderblue]

I have negative equity right now and it's about to get a bit worse before it gets better. I just got divorced and had to give exH half of my retirement and I have to buy him out of the house come Spring. I'm 48 and it's terrifying, but without him around spending $2k+ per month on his credit card, hopefully I'll be able to finally turn things around. I currently make $100K and get a bonus of usually around 5% per year.

[EvieEthelGarland]

We're at about 2.2 ($600k of that is home equity-based on zillow and redfin. They're accurate for my area)at ages 47/49. We make about 175 combined. Like Susie experienced, the momentum has been really good the past few years. Because we bought our house 11 years ago and refied in 2020 our mortgage payment is less than rent on a studio apartment. @@ DS is 15 and there have been no daycare expenses in years. We never had student loans. I feel pretty confident about retirement and paying for college.

My big concern is my health. I've had T1D since childhood and am doing really well, but things can turn in an instant. I make half the money and carry all the benefits so if suddenly I can't work things could get dicey. I do have LT disability insurance but diabetes meds and supplies are very costly.

[tcu2003]

We just crossed over $3M in December. About $2M is retirement accounts, $550k is our house, $110k is 529 accounts, and the rest is cash and taxable accounts. We’re 42/47 with 2 kids in the Midwest. I’ve been tracking monthly since about a year after we married, or for 12.5 years. When I started tracking we had about $390k NW, mostly due to DH being frugal and his house increasing in value. We crossed $1M in 02/15 and $2M in 11/20. Not sure what our salaries were then, but our current HHI is generally between $250k-275k, depending on bonuses.

We’re both engineers. DH graduated debt free thanks to living with grandparents and commuting, and working a ton. I got a ton of grants and scholarships, and graduated with about $30k in loans between my undergrad and masters degrees.

[heygrey]

Maybe tracking net worth should become a financial goal in 2024. I have a ballpark idea (+$300,000), but not concrete numbers.

The generational wealth poll was interesting. H and I both grew up in lower income families with almost no help from our parents. We both graduated college with student loan debt. I had to immigrate to Canada which meant 2 years of not working. There were a lot of really tight years in our early marriage, but we never went into consumer debt, we managed to eek out a small emergency savings, and we paid off H's loans early. By the time we turned 30 we were in a slightly better financial position.

Our biggest break was buying a house in the early months of covid before prices exploded. We've owned it for 3.5 years and already have $210k+ in equity.

We have another $80-90k in investments/savings.

We have pensions through our employers, but I don't know the current value on those.

Overall, I feel comfortable - far more comfortable than I ever imagined we'd be - but we have a lot of ground to make up in our 40s and 50s to truly feel secure later in life.

ETA: We are 36/37 and our HHI is ~$110,000. Unless we change careers, we won't have any signifiant pay increases. 

[bdubs419]

mrsmayhem

Your post is fascinating to me because we are very similar when it comes to net worth, income (although it’s dual income for us) and maybe average age (DH is a bit older and I am a bit younger).
You mentioned being fully financially dependent by 50. Do you mind sharing what your goal is? (If you’re comfortable) and maybe a bit more of your makeup of net worth? (Like how much is invested assets vs home equity). DH and I have a tough time with future planning and disagree a bit on how much longer we both likely need to work.

[ssmjlm]

I would say we're around $1.5M between home equity and retirement. Our retirement accounts are at least a million combined.

I'm really bad at checking my investments outside of when we get the tax statement. And right now we haven't calculated our pensions.

DH hopes to retire at 60, in 9 years. I can go at 57, so 15 years to go.

[sadlebred]

I won't post exact numbers but will commiserate with those that are recently divorced. Being married and divorced left me in a huge hole I'll never catch up from. I missed 10 years of contributing to retirement vehicles other than a very small ROTH I took with me. Major dental bills in the first year after the divorce (think multiple implants that had to be done), and other things I had to pay for. Long story that I won't post publicly. DM me if interested. I'm in the black, mainly thanks to no SLs and a house that I kept that is worth twice what we paid for it in 2006--right before the real estate market crash. I also have no other debt, although I'll need a new car in the next 2-3 years. Saving towards it and should have a decent DP.

Income: Single & "Low" by MM standards but still ok for metro ATL.

[mrsmayhem]

Jan 28, 2024 22:53:14 GMT -5 sadlebred said:

I won't post exact numbers but will commiserate with those that are recently divorced. Being married and divorced left me in a huge hole I'll never catch up from. I missed 10 years of contributing to retirement vehicles other than a very small ROTH I took with me. Major dental bills in the first year after the divorce (think multiple implants that had to be done), and other things I had to pay for. Long story that I won't post publicly. DM me if interested. I'm in the black, mainly thanks to no SLs and a house that I kept that is worth twice what we paid for it in 2006--right before the real estate market crash. I also have no other debt, although I'll need a new car in the next 2-3 years. Saving towards it and should have a decent DP.

Income: Single & "Low" by MM standards but still ok for metro ATL.

Low by MM standards is still probably pretty good by general American standards. Kudos to you for staying in the black in spite of the divorce and other financial challenges. 

[bdubs419]

mrsmayhem

Thank you! This is super helpful. A lot of your even more specific numbers mirror ours pretty closely (i.e invested asset/home equity split) so it’s great to hear your thought process on things. We need to start doing more calculations for sure.

Just nice to be able to talk about things you don’t really talk about with others in real life.

[wildrice]

Reading all these high numbers is stressing me out. I know we are behind and that this board is not typical for Americans.

Our stats look like this:

- HHI - about 180k in the coming year. It's been a bit higher and a LOT lower (as recently as 2018 it was more like 80k and then jumped a couple of times since then).
- House equity - probably around 100k, largely due to values skyrocketing since we bought and a low interest rate. We only put like 15k down when we bought in 2020! This is technically my 2nd home but I rented for 7 years in between so we didn't have any equity to roll into this one.
- Retirement - I have about 200k. I am not sure about my H, who is actually working on getting accounts combined this week so it's easier to track. He started very late due to getting a PhD in his 30s, so I'd guess he's somewhere between 30-40k.
- Our only other assets are a savings account with around 20k or so in it. We do have a 2015 Civic that's paid off, but I doubt that's worth much as an asset!

My H also has almost 90k in student loans left, but with his new job we are hoping he will qualify for PSLF in about 8 years so I'm trying not to worry about that too much. We have no other debt aside from mortgage.

[holly116]

I'm 41/DH 44. 2023 income = $360k
Net worth crossed $1 million last year
$750k in retirement
$250k home equity
$100k in brokerage/HYSA/cash/529s


We got married in 2009, had our first baby in 2010 and then I was a SAHM for 7 years, returning to the workforce in 2017. We had zero time as DINKs and both owned properties from before marriage that we had each bought in 2007 and eventually lost $$ on.

DH had no student loans -- public state school undergrad paid for by grandparents, graduate school on scholarship. I had undergraduate SLs, a total of around $60k. I consolidated in 2004 though and rates on my federal were super low. Paid the last of them off in 2017 but they were never really a hardship, total monthly payments were around $350 a month before we aggressively paid them off in chunks when I went back to work.

While I was at home, we were treading water, saved enough for the 401k match, tried hard not to carry cc balances but sometimes did, and paid on a 30-year mortgage.

Our income has grown substantially in the last few years (mine has jumped nearly 70% in the last 2 years and will continue to go up, DH's went up around 30% when he changed jobs 2.5 yrs ago) and we're trying to hurry up and save as much as we can so we don't allow lifestyle creep to take over too much. We moved into our forever home with 20% down and enough to do some renovations after the sale of our last home and a fixed rate 3% mortgage right before our income jumped and before home prices skyrocketed. Our timing was very lucky.

We both maxed out our 401k for the first time starting in 2022 and started aggressively saving in 529s for all three kids, our oldest is in 8th grade.

We plan to provide enough for each (3 kids total) to pay for four years of undergrad at a state school. I've been pouring $$ into my ESPP the last few years and we consolidated ALL our IRAs/Roths that were scattered from previous jobs in 2022 with a financial advisor that we trust. The next step is to start allocating more $$ into our brokerage account. DH has dreams of retiring early, we'll see.

[mae0111]

DH and I are both 48 (he will be 49 in a few weeks).

Just about half is in retirement - mostly our savings, plus a really small pension that will grow at at least 5% per year guaranteed - but no more contributions beyond that. We can save beyond the federal min in our 401Ks due to the structures and profit sharing plans (I'm self-employed, DH owns his company and offers profit sharing to all).

30% of net worth is in real estate. We own one home outright (a rental for MIL). Our primary home has about doubled in worth since we bought it 11 years ago. Our mortgage is at 2.75% so we're not paying it down. We also purchased a beach house recently, and that had a very quick appreciation because the market is tight. We've got about 50% equity in it because we put a lot down.

Just under 20% is investments and cash not tied to retirement. We can access at any time. We aren't adding much to that right now because of tuition expenses for private school that we're able to cashflow. That money is mostly earmarked for education, but we will cash flow what we can.

The little bit that's left is equity in our cars (that I pretty much don't count) and a small donor advised fund that we're working to build up. Technically our assets, but not ours to spend outside of donations.

[agnes]

I think almost $500k right now. I’m pretty darn proud of it. We’ve come a long way since the Great Recession

[ellipses84]

I can’t answer polls and was honestly hesitant to answer this poll, because I feel like it has really stagnated the past few years. We have about $240k net worth. We don’t own a home. Inflation and less hours at DHs job really hurt us last year. I feel like we were on good track to reach $1 million at one point but it’s just not grown like expected. The generational wealth post made me feel better because I have to remind myself that a lot of our peers who are doing better with net worth had a lot more help.

[mirabelle]

We are probably just at the $500k mark. Aged 35/37 I have been in and out of the workforce since having kids 10 years ago. When covid hit I had to leave my job because I couldn't figure out how to juggle having the kids at home and part time at school with limited access to reliable childcare. I don't know if we will ever financially recover from that, but things are moving in the right direction. Things that have been in our favor: we bought a house right before prices shot up so we have a low interest rate and will probably live here forever. I love this house. I'm back in school and we are able to pay for that in cash, for now. We have a fully funded emergency account and most of our money sits in retirement. My husband is not a super high earner, but he gets paid really well for his industry.

[ohgillian]

Jan 29, 2024 18:00:00 GMT -5 ellipses84 said:

The generational wealth post made me feel better because I have to remind myself that a lot of our peers who are doing better with net worth had a lot more help.

This is exactly why I started that other thread. After I posted in and read a lot of replies in this thread, I just started thinking, we’re missing a really big piece of the puzzle.

[vmars]

We use a financial planner who manages our assets/retirement, etc. We are on track to retire around 64/65 but that could change depending on other factors. We have 2 kids whose college accounts are well funded and no debt besides our mortgage. We bought at the right time so our interest rate is only 2.5%. We have a few retirement accounts plus our pensions, we also have an investment account that has done well for us, savings bonds, regular money market account and interest checking. Things are tight with paying for daycare but our youngest will be done for the most part in 1.5 years which will free up more money for us.

[sicilygirl]

Our net worth is right around $1.8M. I’m 39 and H is 38. HHI is around $300k, including bonuses. We both work, but I’ve been on a part-time schedule for the past 2 years. We both made less than six figures in 2018 when we moved from TX to CA, and our salaries went up significantly at that time.

A general breakdown is:
$900k retirement
$1.7M house
($800k mortgage)

So half retirement, half equity.

We bought our house in 2020, one week before the pandemic officially started for $1.1M. We were extremely lucky to buy at that time because we wouldn’t be able to comfortable afford to purchase our house now.

We don’t have kids (and won’t in the future), and we plan to retire outside the US.

[arehopsveggies]

I’m very low compared to everyone on here.
We have about $100k in home equity
No debt besides $100k mortgage.
$20k in retirement accounts plus $60k ish towards pensions.
$15k in savings but i need some of that for tuition and insurance deductibles.

We had a hhi of $30k for several years while i dealt with our child’s medical needs- we needed me to SAH and we needed income low enough for Medicaid. We will hit $100k HHI in two years when I’m done with grad school and get an (automatic) raise at work.