January 2008 Net Worth Snapshot
A brutal start to 2008. We eked out a positive gain of $224.24 only because the market had a couple of positive days at the end of the month. In order to reach our 2008 net worth goal, we’ll now need to average a gain of $3,000/month for the rest of the year. A tall order considering we only averaged a gain of $2,171/month in 2007.
In the long run, the drop in stock prices should be a good thing for us, and we’re trying to take advantage by buying while prices are low. We deposited the final $650 to max the wife’s Roth IRA for 2007 and now we’ll start adding the additional amounts to max it for 2008.
This is going to be a challenge…
Written by Clint · February 3, 2008 · Filed Under Net Worth
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You’ve got yourself debt free - that’s better than 99% of American’s. Congrats!
Now, you have to keep saving, but also accelerate your income … you can’t just save your way to $1Mill. in a few years BUT, by accelerating, you CAN get to $7mill. in 7 years (I know I did). Here are some ways to accelerate:
- MONETIZE your existing business (the blog?) better … a book, speaking tours, a course? Find something … the quicker, the better!
- Add more businesses (doesn’t have to be related to what you are doing now)
- Take on SOME risk: actively trade stocks/options (not my bag); invest in income-producing real-estate that you can add value to (a good option and now may be the time).
Once you get to $1Mill. or $7Mill. or whatever works for you, I’ll post again (to tell you how to HANG ON to your newfound wealth … it’s MUCH harder than making it in the first place … really!).
Personally, I think this is the danger of setting net worth targets, rather than targets you can control. If you look at a chart of any stock market, as you know it’s all over the place in the short term. You can’t control your net worth, in other words, so you’re setting a challenge that’s in the hands of the gods.
However you can control how much you save. If you set a challenge to save $2,500 a month, say (which seems achievable for you and your wife) then you could cheer falling stock markets, which as you say will make you richer in the long term and so are really a good thing.
Just my two cents, you’ve obviously given this some thought so don’t mean to be patronizing. Might be worth thinking about?