I have been a bit adrift money-wise.
Most of it is just due to procrastination and then work stress which made me really NEED to destress by actively not thinking about work or anything related to it (includes investing reviews..) … and a lot of that destressing came in the form of retail therapy.
But as I mentioned before, the time has come.
It is not like I’m in a bad financial situation by any means.
C’mon.. I know I have it good, but I feel like I haven’t set actual plans in place to think about what I want.
I don’t seem to have a strategy.
I suspect I have been putting it off because I just haven’t had a clear vision of what I want my money to do for me.
Retire early? Not sure I want to.
Make it to a million bucks in a net worth?
All signs point to this happening next year already.
To put it another way… clearing $60,000 of student debt was easy.
I had statements, I saw the interest I was being charged PER DAY and knocking it out in the 18 months I did it in was an “easy” goal in many ways because when I budgeted and tracked my money, I saw concrete results.
I saw a debt balance dropping, I saw the end goal clearly which was to have a $0 net worth rather than a 5-figure negative one.
Now however, I am safely out of the woods but it is harder to set concrete milestones. The sky is kind of the limit in terms of savings.
It just depends on how much you can save, how much you want to save and then executing.
So that is why I have been thinking a lot about setting an arbitrary retirement age (55…) and then seeing how much I will need in said retirement to be comfortable by my standards ($50K a year..) and then taking stock of what I actually have in liquid savings: $279K … and committed projection of $379K by the end of my contract, with potential for more…
I do know that it looks like I need about a million in actual investments, to about 2 million to retire and not compromise my lifestyle.
I’m actually on track for one goal I had which was to have at least a balance of my fixed assets be equal or lesser than my actual liquid assets.
That is to say that I have $300K in my house and $279K in liquid assets, and I’m only $21K off from it being 50/50 ….
In my net worth updates I will make a subtle change to the format to report the general net worth but then split out the actual investments I have.
I find that scarcity makes me work harder and exercise my willpower more.
Case in point: In just these past 2 weeks I have consciously put back / deleted listings and stopped myself from checking out online on various things like costs (a vice because I don’t need any more) and boots (have many; once they whittle down over years due to age then I’ll consider a purchase).
I’m not seeing how great of a deal it is to get $1100 USD boots for only $200 USD but seeing that the concrete amount of $200 USD could buy me X number of shares.
My other mini goal is to use all the money off this blog towards investing in super risky stocks. Something like a Cowgirl Fund, you know? I’m dabbling with the idea. We will see.
Anyway, I’m pretty excited to close out 2018, even with all of the shopping I’ve done, I’ve still managed to boost my net worth and save a lot amidst all the temptation.
1-Year plan: $1 million net worth including assets
So not just liquid assets, but my $300K in my home, etc.
3-Year plan: $500,000 in liquid assets
5-Year plan: $750,000 in liquid assets
Those should be good, rough plans to hit as goals.
