A Half-Millionaire?

When I posted our latest net worth early this week, I didn’t realize that we have kind of reached a milestone until I was reminded by FMF at Free Money Finance. For the first time ever, our net worth (excluding house and cars related items) has passed the $500,000 or half a million mark. Having half a million in our late 30s isn’t really that exciting as I believe many out there have accumulated much more at our age. What makes me feel happy about is the time it took us to get there: less than 7 years!

When we came to the States as students nearly 10 years ago, we had almost nothing but several pieces of luggage. Fortunately, we didn’t have to pay for the tuitions as both of us got assistantships from schools we attended and that made us debt-free when we graduated, though we didn’t have any assets either. We didn’t make any serious money until 2000/2001 when we started to work. Though we had gone through some tough times during the telecom crash when, at one point of time, we both lost our jobs, our investments, which began in 2001, never stopped even when the market took a dive in 2001 and 2002. We just kept buying every month according to our plan and added some extras when the time was right. The market fluctuations didn’t make us hesitate to commit new money since we knew time is on our side. In fact, when I looked at the $500,000 we have, nearly 30%, about $150,000, are from price appreciations and distributions. Without those shares purchased when many people turned their backs on the stock markets, we couldn’t get to where we are now. For our case, early and consistent investments really pay off.

Now that we have passed the $500,000 mark, when will we hit the next milestone? I don’t really know, but hopefully it won’t take us another 7 years since now we have a much stonger foundation than 10 years ago.

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