Today we passed the $130,000 net worth milestone!

We passed our last milestone of $120K, in January. Based on my forecasts, we should hit the next net worth milestone of $140K around 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 $120,000 net worth milestone!

We passed our last milestone of $110K, in December. Based on my forecasts, we should hit the next net worth milestone of $130K around May.

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

We did pretty well knocking down our 2010 financial goals. Now it’s time to set the bar a little higher for our 2011 financial goals.

1) Increase net worth to $138,100
We have a good head start on our 2011 net worth goal because we passed our 2010 goal by $9,600.07. If we stick to our plan, this goal seems very doable.

2) Increase savings account balance to $20,000
We haven’t been able to hit $20,000 in savings as a goal the last two years. Let’s give it a try again in 2011. We are starting 2011 with $9,215.82 in savings, so we’re already ~1/2 way there. The challenge with this goal is that we will plan to start a family in 2011 and private adoption is very expensive.

3) $100,000 total balance in retirement accounts
We’re starting 2011 with $83,594.59 total balance in our retirement accounts. My forecast shows that we should end the year with less than $100,000 total balance in our retirement accounts. So, achieving this stretch goal will require extra effort and determination.

4) Decrease debt by $1,000
Our only remaining debt is $3,041.81 in student loan debt. We successfully reduced our debt by $1,000 in 2010, so we’ll try to knock it down another $1,000 in 2011. Cash flow may be tight in 2011, so this goal may be harder than it looks.

5) Start a family
We hope to start a family in 2011, whether naturally or through private adoption, or a combination of the two. While this isn’t a financial goal in the traditional sense, it does have big financial commitments. The private adoption is ~$30K, so we need to plan, save, and make it happen.

Okay, now we wait 12 months to see our results.

We set five goals for ourselves 12 months ago. Here’s how we did relative to each one:

1) Increase net worth to $105,700 SUCCESS
We blew right past this goal in November and didn’t look back. We finished 2010 at 109.08% of our goal with a net worth of $115,300.07, $9,600.07 over our net worth goal. This feels great after missing our net worth goals the past two years. We are 4 years in to our 21 year plan to retire early and so far, we’re on track.

2) Increase savings account balance to $20,000 FAIL
We would have probably achieved this goal, but in March we paid $12,000 cash for a vehicle. Even so, we were able to get our savings back up to a pretty respectable $9,215.82.

3) Contributing at least 15% of income to company 401(k) SUCCESS
I’m going to say we met this goal because we contributed 15% to both of our 401(k) accounts until my wife was laid off. We have continued to contribute 15% to my 401(k) account, but my wife’s new company does not have a 401(k) plan. To make up for this, we have contributed an additional $4,000 total (2K each) our Roth IRAs.

4) Decrease debt by $1,000 SUCCESS
We pulled this one off at the buzzer. We increased our student loan payments slightly at the end of the year so that the balance dropped to $3,127.35. That’s $1,021.11 less than what we owed last December.

5) Increase tithe $25/month SUCCESS
Thankfully, we were able to increase our tithe not just $25/month, but $35/month to $835/month. Taking this step in faith and giving back a portion of what we are blessed with has continued to reward us.

So, it looks like we reached 4 of our 5 goals. Not perfect, but not too shabby. I’ll be posting our 2011 goals shortly.

We just passed the $110,000 net worth milestone! Yippee! I will update our net worth meter (on the left side of the screen) at the end of the month.

We passed our last milestone of $100K, in October. Based on my forecasts, we should hit the next net worth milestone of $120K around April.

We just passed the net worth milestone of $90,000. We hit our last net worth milestone, $80,000, just one month ago.

God willing, it looks like we’ll hit a net worth milestone of $100,000 in July. That’s a big milestone and would mean we’re way ahead of schedule of making our 2010 net worth goal of $105,700 in December.

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

We just passed $80,000 net worth milestone! Thanks to our $4,111 tax refund and good performance in our retirement accounts, we currently at a net worth of $81,635.73. We passed the $70,000 net worth milestone in January, so it only took us 2 short months. God willing, we should hit our $90,000 net worth milestone in July.

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

Thanks to our retirement account contributions and market gains, we passed the net worth milestone of $70,000!

We hit our last net worth milestone of $60,000 in November and are on track to hit a net worth of $80,000 in April.