Yesterday, I went all “Who wants to be a millionaire” on you guys and asked the audience a question. It was a simple question:
How has your financial situation changed over the last 12 months?
Of the 333 of you that responded, 240 said things have gotten better. Only 44 readers said things have gotten worse. I wasn’t surprised by the results, considering anyone who voluntarily reads personal finance blogs in their free time, probably tends to care about their finances more than the average joe.
I liked my question because it was intentionally vague. I left it up to the respondent to decide what an improvement in one’s financial situation meant. Maybe that meant getting a fat raise, maybe it meant your retirement funds have appreciated, maybe you moved out of your parent’s basement, or maybe you’ve finally started knocking out that consumer debt that’s been hanging over your head. It was awesome to see the additional insight some of you provided in the comments section, so thanks for that.
While not much has changed in the Ninja household over the last year (expenses and income are pretty much the same), we’ve seen a pretty incredible increase in our net worth.
In fact, I just ran the numbers and it looks like we’ve shot up $55,454 in the last 12 months. In-FREAKING-sane. I honestly had no idea we made that much progress. That works out to a $4,621 increase each month… for twelve straight months.
What’s more, we dropped $12,000 cash on a car upgrade and another $7,500 on MANteresting during this time.
How the heck did we swing this?
I really don’t know. I mean, obviously the markets are responsible for a big chunk, but it really just comes down to boring ol discipline. Investing in our future, saving aggressively for a down payment, not being consumer whores, blah, blah, blah.
Being intentional and proactive with our finances in our 20’s will hopefully set us up for continued success in our 30’s, 40’s, and beyond. I’m taking the words of Spock seriously and doing my best to…
I didn’t start being proactive with my finances until my 40s after my marriage blew apart and I gained control of things. I will need to live long so I can prosper.
Mighty prosperous indeed.
MANteresting payoffs perhaps?!
To me the “improvement” simply meant being more secure. And that means paying down our student loan debt more and becoming more consistent savers!
Gosh, I turned 27 too….or maybe I’m 28…dang. Starts to run together.
That is awesome! Great job. I think you hit the nail on the head, it simply comes down to being disciplined and executing month in and month out. You are on your way to great financial freedom.
I know what you mean. When you start saving, it does build up quite fast. There are times I am astonished that even after spending thousands of dollars, we still have some left over. I attribute that from not having any debt. It really does make a difference.
Well that is a nice increase. I waited until my late twenties to get on the ball. I took my early and mid twenties to pay off debt that I was incurring for stupid reasons. I hope to start increasing my wealth much quicker these days.
That’s awesome! Congrats!
Start early and you have started a great habit.
Wow, that is a HUGE increase over just 12 months. Congrats on your success. I was lucky because I started really paying attention to my finances young, which helped set me up for success in the future.
Discipline and careful planning will take you wherever you want.
That’s awesome! Hopefully, we will be like you and Girl Ninja when we get older 🙂 Great role models!
Market has been nutty the past 12 months also
A lot can happen in 12 months.
After I initially commented I seem to have clicked
on the -Notify me when new comments are added- checkbox and now each time
a comment is added I recieve four emails with the same comment.
Is there a means you can remove me from that service?
Appreciate it!
Do those emails not have a unsubscribe link in them?