Today we passed the $210,000 net worth milestone! Our net worth is currently $210,065.

We passed our last milestone of $200K in November. Based on my forecasts, we should hit the next net worth milestone of $220K by June.

I will update our net worth meter (on the left side of the screen) at the end of the month.

Today we passed the $200,000 net worth milestone! Our net worth is currently $200,435.

We passed our last milestone of $190K in October. Based on my forecasts, we should hit the next net worth milestone of $210K by January.

I will update our net worth meter (on the left side of the screen) at the end of the month.

Today we passed the $190,000 net worth milestone! Our net worth is currently $190,625.95.

We passed our last milestone of $180K in August. Based on my forecasts, we should hit the next net worth milestone of $200K by December.

I will update our net worth meter (on the left side of the screen) at the end of the month.

Today we passed the $180,000 net worth milestone! Our net worth is currently $182,496.62.
We passed our last milestone of $170K last month (July) so reaching $180,000 in such a short period of time is a major blessing.  My wife’s larger than normal quarterly bonus, $13,750 gross ($9,839.22 net), put us over the $180K mark.  Based on my forecast, we should hit the next net worth milestone of $190K by November.

I will update our net worth meter (on the left side of the screen) at the end of the month.

We were very happy with how we did on our 2011 financial goals. While it’s unlikely the economy is going to dramatically improve anytime soon, that’s no reason not to shoot for the stars:) Here are our 2012 financial goals.

1) Increase net worth to $ 173,200
We are beginning 2012 with a great head start on our net worth goal, having passed our 2011 goal by $26,721.70. Based on my calculations, we should be able to reach our 2012 goal by September 2012.

2) Furnish our new home
We are moving from a 2 bed / 2 bath condo to a 5 bed / 3 bath house. As you can imagine, we are a bit short on furniture. Our wish list of items totals $25,000. Thanks to the $14,995 sale of our recreational 4×4, we can afford a good chuck of that wish list, however, there is another $10,000 worth of furnishings that we would like to get. I’m not sure we’ll be able to buy it all the first year, but we’ll give it a try.

3) Rebuild savings account balance to $15,000
We plan to use most of our $107,722.13 in savings ($52,696.37 + $51,000 pulled from retirement accounts) in savings for our down payment and to furnish our new home. So, we have set a goal of rebuilding our savings account balance to $15,000 by the end of the year. This will include emergency fund money and private adoption money.

4) Contribute $24,000 to retirement accounts
After cutting our retirement account balance in half for our home down payment, we intend to work hard to rebuild our retirement savings. We have averaged ~$15,000/year in contributions over the past 5 years. For 2012, our goal will be to contribute $24,000 to our retirement accounts. $18,569 of the $24,000 will be automatically deposited into our 401(k) accounts. The remaining $5,431 will be deposited into our Roth IRAs as we have the extra cash.

5) Increase son’s 529 Plan to $6,000
We opened our baby boy’s 529 Plan with $3,000 in October 2011 and ended the year with $3,158.24 in the account. We hope to increase the balance, through contributions and market performance, to $6,000 by the end of 2012.

Below are the 5 goals that we set for ourselves 12 months ago and the results of our efforts to achieve them. Reaching 4 of our 5 goals in this economy feels great. The game changer for us in 2011 was my wife’s new job. She already had a good paying job, but was recruited away in April and given a $20,000 higher annual salary and an opportunity to make larger bonuses each quarter. I am so proud of the success she has enjoyed in her career and feel that her new position was pivotal in reaching our goals this year. I’ll be posting our 2012 goals shortly.

1) Increase net worth to $138,100 SUCCESS
Thanks to a good head start on our 2011 net worth goal (we passed our 2010 goal by $9,600.07), this was relatively easy. In fact, we passed our 2011 net worth goal in April and by July our net worth was over $150,000. Shortly after, however, the stock market began to fluctuate wildly and our net worth took a dive, but we still finished the year with a net worth of $164,821.70, $26,721.70 over our goal of $138,100.

2) Increase savings account balance to $20,000 SUCCESS
We started 2011 with $9,215.82 in savings, but we pulled $3,000 out to pay off our student loan and another $3,000 out to open a 529 Plan for my son. That being said, we still CRUSHED this goal, ending the year with $107,722.13 in savings ($52,696.37 + $51,000 pulled from retirement accounts). The biggest boost to our savings came from selling our recreational 4×4 for $14,995. While it was nice to hit this goal, we will be depleting most of our savings account in the next 30 days to fund our 20% home down payment and to purchase furniture.

3) $100,000 total balance in retirement accounts FAIL
In July 2011, we had over $95,000 in our retirement accounts and it looked like we would surely reach this goal by the end of the year. However, with the market correction, our balance dropped to ~$92,000 by the early December 2011. It was at this time that we raided our retirement accounts ($21,000 loan from 401k and $30,000 withdrawal from Roth IRAs) to help fund our 20% ($97,800) home down payment. So, we ended 2011 with retirement account balances totaling $41,944.70. We contributed $14,280.72 total to our retirement accounts in 2011.

4) Decrease debt by $1,000 SUCCESS
We started 2011 with only $3,041.81 in student loan debt. I’m happy to report that we ended the year with no debt ($0.00)! It is such a great feeling to finally be completely DEBT FREE.

5) Start a family SUCCESS
Accomplishing this goal was the biggest blessing of all. After dealing with some fertility issues, my wife and I were shocked to find out that she was pregnant. In September, after a challenging labor, our healthy baby boy was born and we couldn’t be more happy.

Today we passed the $160,000 net worth milestone! Our net worth is currently $163,973.37.

With the market ups and downs, it took us longer than expected to reach this milestone. We passed our last milestone of $140K in July and thought that we would hit $160K in October. That being said, we’re still way ahead of our $138,100 net worth goal for 2011. Based on my forecasts, we should hit the next net worth milestone of $170K by March or April.

I will update our net worth meter (on the left side of the screen) at the end of the month.

Today we passed the $150,000 net worth milestone!

We passed our last milestone of $140K, in May. As you probably have noticed, our networth milestones are in $10,000 increments. Since January, we have passed a networth milestone 4 out of 7 months. Way ahead of our expectations. Based on my forecasts, we should hit the next net worth milestone of $160K by October.

I will update our net worth meter (on the left side of the screen) at the end of the month.