James & Miel celebrating their 7th wedding anniversary last year.
As we mark our 8th wedding anniversary, we also took the time this weekend to update our net worth.
What they say about the first million being the hardest to break seems to be true. In retrospect, the first $400k mark actually felt the hardest. It was back when the market was tanking and it felt like we’d never reach our goal.
Once we hit the million mark last fall, it seems that the principles of basics compounding math and good savings habits are working in our favor. As of now our net worth is $1.2 million.
On the one hand this feels like steady progress, in looking where we were at 11 months ago, we are up 25% since last July.
The nitty gritty of our increase in net worth since April comes down to a few basics things:
1. The overall market is up and we’ve continued to see growth in our retirement portfolios. James also just got a bump up in his salary this month and added it straight to his retirement contributions. It doesn’t impact our net worth today, but doing the same in the past certainly has.
2. We refinanced on two of our places and saw an increase in their appraised values.
* Our personal place is up by $55k from when we bought exactly three years ago.
* Our beach cabins, custom built in 2012, also saw huge gains. The larger of the two, was built for $250k and appraised for $320k.
* In addition to the increase to our net worth value, we’ll also spend less on a monthly basis for our mortgages. This means we’ll have extra money to use for our next financial goals.
Our reflections for this round of net worth updates is the significance of the long term affects of investing in both retirement savings and real estate.
What is your net worth looking like these days? Care to share?
Cheers,
Miel
Dual Income, No Kids launched in the spring of 2006 and is now part of District Media, LLC. With over 10 million visitors and syndication on Google News, District Media delivers high-quality personal finance news and advice. Our 58 blogs inform, empower, educate and entertain the public -- free of charge, with all operating expenses financed by advertising. 
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Happy anniversary! And awesome job on the net worth. It’s very inspiring. Good luck on the next million ;)
Thanks Alexa! Seems pretty incredible, particularly considering that I was paying off credit card debt ten years ago. Interesting ti think of where we’ll be ten years from now!
Congrats on the nice jump! You guys have now jumped up a slot in our Blogger Net Worth Tracker too ;)
http://rockstarfinance.com/blogger-net-worths/
Happy Anniversary! Always good to see progress.
I was scanning through some of your archives and had a question on your balance sheet. Your business assets seems to have swung significantly in valuation. How are you valuing these – is it a multiple of current earnings? Also just curious if it includes some of your rental property? I recall see at one point a while ago you had 4 or more investment properties, but you have sold some.
Also see your expecting – congratulations! Kids have definitely changed my perspective (for the better). I thought we were busy before kids, but find we are at a whole new level now with two little ones.
Curious why no credit card debt? Credit cards can bad of course but if you pay the statement balance off every month there are some nice rewards to be had without paying a cent in interest.
Found your site through J. Money’s list. Congrats on your success.
It takes patience to reach such a large nest egg, and I’m sure it will only continue to grow. I’m more risk averse with debt so it might take me longer to reach 1.2 million. In any event best of luck and keep us updated on the progress.
Congrats on the million! What’s the short answer for why you decided to invest in custom beach cabins?