How We Became 3/4 Millionaires

My wife and I recently hit another financial milestone by passing the $750,000 net worth mark. While we still have a ways to go to get to our goal of $2 million, I am getting more confident that the hardest part is behind us. While our current net worth may sound impressive to some, I don't credit this to anything unusual. It has taken us 10 years combined with some fairly simple but powerful ideas to allow us to grow our net worth at a regular and sustainable pace.

Here are what I believe are the biggest contributors to our net worth growth:

We set a simple financial goal (hint: It's the title of this blog)
I measure our progress with monthly net worth reports
I started my career in a higher-starting salary field - Engineering
I lived like a college student for as long as possible after college.
My car is a means of transportation -- I still drive the used car I bought in college that has 200k miles on it, but runs well. This has allowed us to save significantly more instead of purchasing a replacement car, paying for more insurance, and paying property taxes.
I focused on career growth, accepted growth opportunities at work, and looked for opportunities like my international assignment.
I took advantage of 0% Balance Transfer arbitrage and other opportunities to earn extra bits of money.
I have maxed out my retirement contributions every year that I have been working.
I married someone who spends within her means
We only use insurance to cover catastophic events, and self insure as much as possible to keep our insurance costs low.
I've converted two previous homes to rental properties, each with positive cash flow.
We have minimized our subscriptions and other expenses so we could save a greater portion of our income.

I think going from 3/4 millionaires to our $2 million net worth goal is actually going to require much more focus on investing and returns on investment. If we can just edge up our overall rate of return on our net worth by just 1% that is an extra $7,500 or more per year. To me that type of payback means perhaps more of my time should be spent trying to maximize our overall return than clipping coupons, etc. We will see.

Related in Financial Goals:

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Comments (10)

Congratulations on your milestone!

Posted by Flexo | January 19, 2011 11:35 AM

Good work. My wife and I should hit $350k by the end of the month. Not bad for 2 27 year olds.

Posted by Ken | January 19, 2011 12:01 PM

Congrats on your milestone. I really enjoy your insight on things. I also believe you are a kindred spirit. We just started our tracking a year ago, but I feel like we have similar financial goals. We just hit 150k. I hope to see you at 2million and us following close behind :)

Posted by W. Luis | January 19, 2011 12:42 PM

Have you taken a second look at life insurance since the birth of your child? If not, it would probably be a good idea. I have a 20 year, $1MM policy and my wife a 20 year $500K policy...we are both 35 with one child (and one on the way). Total cost = ~$70 / month...the peace of mind is well worth the cost.

Posted by BillyBob | January 20, 2011 1:21 PM

I agree with the life insurance, its cheap and theres no reason not to.

Posted by Ryan DeLeon | January 23, 2011 12:24 PM

We are sitting at about $1.2 million and have the 2 million mark as a main goal as well. We would love to add rentals to the portfolio, but dealing with tenant issues is not our cup of tea. We are now looking at a few business investments. Good luck on hitting the $2 million mark.

Posted by JimL | January 23, 2011 1:26 PM

Been following your blog for a while and got some amazing similarities as well as differences

1.same industry = hi-tech
2. same # of breadwinner = 1
3. same # of kid = 1
4. same #s of work ex = 10yrs
5. same networth
6. No House
7. same Net cash flow since the kid = 0
8. Now The most surprising fact : Our portfolios have been tracking each other (+/- $10K) for the past 2 years even though our portfolios have very little in common (at least the funds - the underlying stocks/bonds may be similar) !!! Goes on to show that in todays's high-freqency trading world : all investments are heavily co-related.

+1 - believe portfolio returns will dictate our futures more than W2's going forward - but am fairly clueless on how exactly to squeeze out alpha. Look forward to your thoughts on this one ....

Thank you for opening up you wallet and portfolio. Your discipline is a true inspiration.

Posted by Zubina | January 23, 2011 1:30 PM

Thats a good reminder regarding life insurance. I have not reviewed our needs in quite some time (since before the birth our our daughter). However Im not really thinking there is much affordable for me given I am a type 1 diabetic. Here is our current life insurance coverage.

Posted by 2million | January 23, 2011 5:43 PM

Congrats for hitting the milestone. It's very essential to do the financial planning to achieve your financial goals.It become very important for individuals to follow the guidelines as mentioned in your financial plan.

Posted by PersonalFN | January 24, 2011 4:24 AM

congrats on hitting the milestone. we are pretty close to crossing that mark our my family as well, and we've similarly been turning my attention to see what we can do to increase returns as our net worth grows. one thing that i am considering right now is paying off one of our rental properties, which shouldn't effect our net worth (obviously), but would increase our cash on cash return.

Posted by aggressive saver | January 29, 2011 9:15 AM