I did a pretty good job with our goals this year. We spent a TON more money - which was ironically my Primary FIRE goal for the year. It's time to loosen the reigns and live a little! I had all of our numbers updated earlier this month (except for a final NW tally) so my wife and I held the SFF Annual Shareholders Meeting a few nights ago. It's a fun way to make my wife aware of all the financial results of the year. Despite our all-time high spending, this still comes in as our 4th highest savings year ever (in terms of absolute $$).
On the NW front, we saw that increase by $277,312.67 - that's an all-time high for us as well.
During 2021 we joined the 2 comma club (beating my goal of hitting that by age 40 by almost 3 full years). We also bought a new Honda Odyssey, bought a new house, and have a new baby due in a little over a week, and yesterday I put a deposit down on a new Honda Accord which we'll likely get in March or April.
The things I did in my early late 20s and early 30s are really paying off now!
I'm so impressed! DH and I are much older (51 & 56), but reading along this thread makes me wish a couple of things:
1. I'd started tracking everything earlier. (I have good records for the last 4 or so years)
2. That my kids will be more mindful of their overall financial picture than we were.
We're in very good shape. We work for the same company and have been career employees there. We make pretty good money and have a good pension plan.
In addition to the pension plan, what has helped us is just an overall frugal nature. We were poor when we got married and just tried to do things that we wanted / needed to be while spending the least possible amount of money.
At this point, since our salaries have grown, I have a hard time still not being completely frugal with myself. For example, I have a hard time not ordering the cheapest thing on the menu when eating out. It drives DH nuts, but I tell him that it's served us well over the years lol
We will probably retire at the same time (DH is kind to me in this regard lol) when I'm 55 or 56. I've started working through some of the retirement manifesto spreadsheets (at the recommendation of someone here) and it has made me feel very good about our position and am confident we will be ready when I'm old enough to officially retire from the company.
Anyway, just wanted to say Happy New Year to everyone and thanks for all the information that you've supplied in this thread!