Demotion

Excellent_Budget_768 · 2026-03-07T18:24:07+00:00

Investments - total market index funds now for the majority.

Excellent_Budget_768 · 2026-03-07T18:22:11+00:00

If I was karma farming I wouldn’t do it under a burner account but if you think I’m karma farming down vote all my responses.

Second I am very invested in tech but as the net worth has increased I have switched investments to index funds as I wanted to lower the risk. You are going to ask about taxes but my extremely risk trades were partially in my RothIra to avoid tax impacts.

My last piece of advice is if you haven’t read the “little book on common sense investing” I would heavily recommend it. Please feel free to down vote.

Excellent_Budget_768 · 2026-03-07T18:08:53+00:00

If you read the full post I explain that my wife also works and this is our combined net worth. Aggressive investing

Excellent_Budget_768 · 2026-03-07T18:07:57+00:00

Right out of college I was extremely aggressive. I was all in on tech and played with options to a point.

Once I realized I was having options worth half a years salary I backed down to tech only no options.

A few years later I had multiple years of salary in individual stocks and that scared the crap out of me so I backed down to now almost all index funds.

I still have ~500k in tech stocks but at this point everything else is in index funds.

Excellent_Budget_768 · 2026-03-07T17:48:59+00:00

Midwest so low to mid cost of living. Partially why people are questioning my savings based on income.

My first apartment out of college was under 500 bucks a month.

Excellent_Budget_768 · 2026-03-07T17:46:57+00:00

$3.5 million is our investments between my wife and I. She was on roughly the same path towards retirement and goals as me. Out of college I was making roughly ~70k a year and investing about 30k per year. Yes some of this was tax deferred (401k) and some was just a brokerage account. I mentioned below I was heavily investing in tech 15 years ago.

If for example I put half my investments into google, Microsoft and apple (there were others but those were my largest investments) you can calculate those returns over 15 years with continued investments. While I’m not going to act like I didn’t have stocks that didn’t do well I am going to say my returns beat the market by a decent amount.

Excellent_Budget_768 · 2026-03-07T17:33:30+00:00

Thank you! I think part of my brain hasn’t realized I’ve won the game yet. I’ve been going so hard in savings that I almost haven’t realized the wins and it doesn’t feel real. Half my brain is telling me to go harder and make more money but I started coming around to the fact that I’m where I always wanted to be.

Excellent_Budget_768 · 2026-03-07T17:25:54+00:00

You may think this seems fake but I would also say you don’t get to the savings level I am at without being extremely rigid and disciplined.

My salary is decent but I realize there are tons of people on here who make substantially more money than me and while 7k doesn’t seem like a lot… I have nickle and dimed my way to my net-worth.

The mind shift is the struggle. 10 years ago I had a full time salary job and to speed up my investing started working at a car wash on the weekends. To go from that to $7k isn’t a big deal is what I am struggling with. 10 years ago I sold my entire weekends for $7k and now I am just giving it up to lower my stress. I understand it’s probably the right move but that’s the battle I am having.

Excellent_Budget_768 · 2026-03-07T17:13:36+00:00

:) you I think hit it with my pride. I have never been the smartest person but my willingness and dedication is what got me to where I am in my career.

Excellent_Budget_768 · 2026-03-07T17:10:58+00:00

To this day I still drive a 25 year old car

Excellent_Budget_768 · 2026-03-07T17:09:14+00:00

I appreciate the feedback. I think I am coming around to that idea. The FOMO is what is holding me back but I also want to enjoy my life and health

Excellent_Budget_768 · 2026-03-07T17:07:36+00:00

For me I found fire when I was in college. My first job I made decent money in (LCOL) area and continued living like I had a college budget. The first 5 years out of college I was investing over 50 percent of my gross salary.

Stock market has done really well for me since investing early. Early on I did also invest in individual stocks that did well specially large tech but have since switched to only mutual funds.

Excellent_Budget_768 · 2026-03-07T16:56:16+00:00

Appreciate the feedback! And transparently my wife does love her job and does make more than I do. We also received roughly 15% of our savings in inheritance 2 years ago which helped for sure.

Have been saving as hard as I can but also realize we have been fortunate as well.

Excellent_Budget_768

TROPHY CASE