When I started this blog there were questions I had to answer for myself before I could start to write. Questions like why write a blog, what kind of information did I want to talk about technical or emotional, and how personal did I want to get. When it came to how personal did I want to get I chose to blog anonymously and to not share specific figures. But why? For starters blogging is sharing with everyone with access to the world wide web so naturally it triggered fear of the ‘bad’ people.
I think it’s fair that I talk a little about this fear of ‘bad’ people to understand my reasoning. I chose to blog anonymously because I wanted the freedom to share anything I wanted to, from mental health issues to retirement plans while I was still working. But one thing that I chose not to share was specific figures related to net worth and income. I have given this some thought and I have determined the primary reason for not sharing it is fear of being judged by random people of the world.
Over the last couple years, I have followed several other blogs like Jim-Route to Retire, Justin-Root of Good, and A Purple Life, that share their specific net worth figures and they have inspired me to share mine. I think to myself, ‘if they can do it then I can do it too’.
Another reason I want to share our specific figures is because when we started this journey, we set our target net worth at one million dollars but 12 years later one million doesn’t quite seem like enough. In 2010, a million dollars seemed unattainable and out of this world. Maybe because I was at the starting point with a negative net worth.
The final reason I have decided to share our net worth now is because one million in 2010 doesn’t have the same value in 2022. In fact, the present value of a million in 2010 is close to $1.4 million. Not many people in the FIRE (Financial Independence, Retire Early) community talk about this so I feel it’s important to at least mention it. So, if I needed one million in 2010, I now need at least $1.4 million to meet those same needs.
With all the stated reasons I have now asked myself, what am I doing differently? Honestly the answer is I am not sure. This year we have made a lot of changes and we are still giving ourselves time for the dust to settle before adding my change to that. I think we need time to process whether we want to work longer, or adjust our lifestyle, or try geoarbitrage to offset any short fall in our budget. Regardless of our next move, I have learned that I will be just fine now that we have options. That is what FIRE is all about, having options.
Finally, to the point of this blog post our net worth. As of 11/22/2022 our net worth was $1,290,000.00. The breakdown is roughly 60% investments and 40% real estate. Now that the cat is out of the bag so to speak, I will write more about FIRE and be more specific.
AHA FIRE 