My Story

I can’t really believe it, but this past weekend, I turned 30 years old. It’s sad to say, but my 20s are now officially over. I think I have to become a responsible adult now or something.

I’ve been casually tracking my net worth over the past couple of months, and back in October, I published my first quarterly net worth report. You can take a look at that post here. My plan is to continue these reports so that folks can see where I’ve been and where I’m going. It’s also not bad for me to have these numbers documented for my own records so that I can get a picture of where I’m going.

Here’s the current picture of my net worth:

Every year is a big year when you think about it, but I really did feel like 2016 was one of the bigger years in my life. The only thing is, as you get older, the years all sort of blend together. I have a vague idea of what I did in the past few years, but since I never wrote it down, I don’t exactly remember any specifics.

The great thing about blogging though is that it forces you to buckle down and think about what you did, and then write it all down in a synthesized fashion. When I start telling my crazy stories one day, hopefully, someone can look back on what I wrote and fact check me.

And hopefully, you can learn something from this recap too. I know I learn a ton just reading about what others did over the year. So come learn and be inspired! Or just come and be entertained! It’s all good to me.

Today’s post is the first in what I hope will be a series of quarterly net worth reports. I love seeing actual numbers from everyone in the personal finance community, so I thought I’d join the party and share my own numbers as well! It’s my hope that you find this report helpful as you continue on your own financial journey…

Ms. FP and I have a sort of general plan as to how we plan to use our money over the next decade or so. The plan isn’t rock solid though. There are a lot of balls in the air and we’re at a point in our life where we aren’t quite sure what the world might throw at us. We’re getting married in the spring, Ms. FP is still completing her residency, we have her student loans to pay off, and of course, kids and other major life events will pop up. Needless to say, its important that we’re okay with rolling with the punches.

Luckily, both of us aren’t particularly big spenders. The skills we’ve learned from living on less and saving money should hopefully continue throughout our life, even if our best laid plans don’t come to pass.

One of the assumptions a lot of people make when thinking about their income is that it will always go up. There’s this general belief that the amount you are earning today will just naturally increase. Each year, you’ll do better at your job, you’ll get a raise, and you’ll just make more money.

The thing is, this isn’t always true. Your income doesn’t stick to a single trajectory. It can go up or down. And heck, over the long term, there’s no guarantee that your income will rise…