41 Comments

    • I remember that post of yours, Matthew! And the best part about it being your investment accounts is that you really don’t have to contemplate as much of a backward slide as with savings. I feel like this money is always getting earmarked for something!

  1. Congrats on six figures! We worked really hard to pay off our car, student and credit card debt and remained debt free for 1.5 years… then we bought a house. I have not regrets on the house buy, but it was a little annoying to see the debt column occupied again….

    • Yup. There’s that boulder, right? And I feel like as homeowners, there’s always something. Like the reality that we will need new windows in the next 5, 10, or 15 years. GULP.

  2. Jover

    W00T!!! I know how happy/safe this must make you feel!
    I’m in the camp that hates to even see 5-figures in my e-fund. I worry that I’m missing out on the compound interest magic dance party in the markets with my money sitting on a savings account, although 1.1% interest is better than nothing. So for now, I’m stock-piling (see what I did there?) any extra cash into my brokerage account so that it becomes so big I can get rid of my e-fund altogether. That’s the plan anyway 🙂
    Different strokes for different folks!

    • Oh, we’re totally taking a beating with interest. I get that. I hope that in the next few months we can start to jockey the money around again.

      Part of the problem is that we only have Roths and a taxable. I need to find a solution to the high-fee 403bs that we are offered. That would help make our money work for us so much better than collecting pennies.

  3. I reached $25,000 across my two retirement accounts not that long ago. I thought of it as a milestone, and yet the second I saw it, I didn’t celebrate it. I just kept thinking about how it wasn’t enough. That’s no way to make it grow. I should celebrate it! I should show it some gratitude!

    But congrats on six figures! And for showing it some love!

    • Compound interest! And celebrate the fact that it’s not your savings account earning 1.1%. You’re kicking all sorts of money butt, Amanda!

  4. Karen

    Congrats, feels good, you know how to reach it, so when it dips it’s for a reason and that makes it easier to deal with. I have quarterly savings goals (college tuition and debt repayment and property tax bill) and was thrilled to reach that goal. Now I am paying out on those bills and watching my pile of $$ melt away? But hey, I too will push the boulder back on up starting in September when teacher salary starts up again.

    • UGH. Do I hear you on tutition. We have a separate savings account for that. I didn’t even bother to include it because it’s basically just draining itself down all the time. If we planned everything right, we both have one more year of big grad school payments and then we should be just about maxed out in terms of what we can take. Finally!

  5. I remember the first time we hit 100k, it was the BEST. We went out to dinner and I wanted to shout it from the roof tops. But that would have been weird, and too personal and felt a little braggy, so a quite dinner was ok. But I was 24 and after a lifetime of poverty it felt surreal to say the least.

    Certain benchmarks have changed over time, but I would say the whole picture has mostly moved forward. Even in giving up a bit of your cash for time with your sweet baby….well the cash number is going down…but your overall life happiness will feel like it skyrocketed. We got to count all the things that matter, not just the numbers (because those are easy to count.)

    • That’s so true, Ms. Montana! I actually feel my focus shifting in the best way. We may not be FI, but we have enough, and that’s letting me focus on my little family. It’s such a good feeling!

      And major kudos to you on all of your milestones, money-related and otherwise. I’m always so inspired by you!

  6. About a year ago I got to the point where I had enough savings that I could pay off all my student loans if I wanted (but chose not to, as there were big tax advantages to investing instead and because my LOC has a paltry 2.7% interest rate). My partner and I are now looking at buying a house, and I just hate the fact that my debt column will once again be larger than my savings column. But it will increase our overall life happiness (hopefully), so we will bite that bullet sometime.

    • It’s so easy to pick on homes in the PF world, but we seriously LOVE our house. I could do without all the barking dogs in my neighborhood, but I seriously wouldn’t trade homeownership for anything. It’s what is right for us.

      Waving goodbye to the money is hard, but there are some things that just don’t fit on a money scorecard anyway. Best of luck to you with the purchase!

    • kddomingue

      But if you’re renting….. isn’t that just debt of a different sort? The difference (in my mind) is that 25 years of mortgage payments will give you a place to live AND equity in property AND a tax write-off whereas 25 years of rent payments will just give you a place to live. Rent isn’t debt per se but it’s still a minus in the ledger every month. And, unlike a mortgage, you’ll never have a point in time where you’re NOT making a rent payment.
      Hmmmm, just thinking out loud. 🙂

      • I think that’s definitely a solid argument for homeownership in many cases! Lucky for us, we live in a place where owning a home is reasonable for couples who are starting out. But when I hear about housing markets in some areas, I completely understand why people rent.

    • You are so right about that, Mrs. Picky Pincher. It is easy to get so focused on the destination that you forget the journey is worth celebrating, too!

  7. YEAH!! Welcome back to the 6 Figure Club…we are very exclusive here.. 😉 I can relate to your feelings of Sisyphus Syndrome. When I bought all my properties I could have sworn that rock had almost crested the top of the hill…but it didn’t. The good news is when you face a major setback you find out what you’re made of. Thankfully buying a house wasn’t a set back so much as a bend in the road aimed at a new hill to climb…a mortgage!! In no time you will have beat the mortgage, funded the birth of a child (!), AND have 6 figures in the bank. You guys are killing it!!! Now, where is that kid???????!!!!!

    • I know, I KNOW! I have never been so antsy waiting for something. It’ll be great once Baby is here. Not only because a lot of the money question marks will be answered, but because it will also be the best reason to shift my focus from spreadsheets. Not that we’ll stop pursuing FI, of course. We’re just trying to enjoy the “enough” stage now.

  8. Congrats, that’s quite a savings account! and yeah, it will drain a bit as you welcome Half Penny into the world, but that’s got to be a big relief. Money is the tool that allows us to pursue the life we want, and unlike in so many other situations, a bigger tool is often a good thing. 🙂

    • Yes! I know it will drain for HP, and I’m hoping we’ll have plenty leftover to hit our mortgage goal for the year, too. Thanks for the congrats, Emily.

  9. I was wondering why on earth you would want 100K in your account if not saving for a house downpayment and then I remembered your work situation with childbirth. I totally do that. We’ve got 80K in ours now waiting for DH’s company to either get a 3 year contract or to go out of business (he’s been on unpaid leave for a month and a half)… if the contracts ever get signed we’ll have to figure out what to do with the excess, which is a good situation to be in. Since I don’t get paid over the summer that number is going to start dropping soon.

    • Yes! That’s exactly it. With no paycheck for three months, that’s over $9,000. Plus, my paychecks will be 67% of my usual earnings for the rest of this school year once I go back. I get that it looks foolish to some, but it sounds like you understand exactly how I’m feeling!

    • It’s pretty fantastic! But like I said, I know where it’s headed one way or the other! What I really can’t wait for is six figures in our retirement account. Thanks for celebrating with me, Jaymee!

    • $10,000 or so will go to taxes and insurance throughout the year on a rolling basis. And we’re sitting on a sizeable emergency fund because I’m like that. But mostly it’s because we’ve been stockpiling everything while I’m pregnant to cover the cost of the baby and to float my maternity leave. It’ll cut itself in half easily by the end of the year (hopefully due to a big mortgage payment and moving some of it into our taxable account). But we’re letting it pile up while we eagerly await Baby’s arrive in the next week or so.

  10. Congrats! I like the analogy of Sisyphus, and your attitude about it. It’s true that savings are there to spend in times of need, and those are bound to come along in one form or another. So while you wouldn’t spent it frivolously, it’s also good not to hold it too tightly when the time comes.

    Even when we’ve met goals that weren’t erased, that feeling of “high” that comes from the accomplishment doesn’t really last.

    • Thank you, Kalie! We know we’ll have to fork over a fair amount of this for bills and my leave. But my goal is to be able to give as much of my focus to my family as possible once Baby arrives. I don’t want to be agonizing over our account balances. That can wait 😉

  11. Congrats on hitting that milestone (again)! It must be a great comfort as you prepare to welcome HP that you have a very full e-fund and then some. It’s an important time to have that kind of security for your family.

    • The peace of mind is the absolute best. Knowing that I can do with whatever maternity leave red tape is thrown my way and just about anything else that crops us is really helpful. Thanks, Gary!

  12. Congrats! All your hard work is literally paying off.
    Yet at the same time it’s easy to realize it’s just a numbers game. At least using savings to pay down your mortgage will keep your net worth even, so that’s what we always tracked instead of savings to see overall progress.

    • That’s a great perspective that I hadn’t even considered! And I’m more than happy to invest whatever we need to make sure HP is healthy. I didn’t want to sweat anything financially if anything unexpected happens. I figure we will have enough on our minds.

  13. Holy shmokes! My emergency fund was $25k for a while and I thought that was way too much. I’m currently stock piling cash as we may buy a house, but then once we (if we) buy the house, I bet our emergency fund will be down to $25k range again. If it helps you sleep at night – the more power to you!

    • Our emergency fund is some goofy number around $26,000. There’s a lot of excess here, thanks in part to our high taxes. But it’s mostly because I’ve not been doing anything with our mortgage since February (besides the regular payments). I’m hoping to get the money moved around by December!

  14. *applause*

    Even if it is going to go away later (like ours), having had it to spend on the needed thing is pretty dang soothing.

    I didn’t know for sure we were saving for a down payment but I assumed that we were and I’m glad we had so much liquid to make it all happen this year.

    Heck, we didn’t even have enough liquid, come to that. Houses, so much money. And once we’re done spending, we’re going to start rolling our ball back up that hill again. Secretly I’ve already started a little bit.

  15. Congrats for crossing over to six figures! Hopefully those numbers will keep marching forward even though you have some upcoming bigger expenses. I crossed over to 200k in December, and my next goal is 250k. It feels like a slow crawl to get there. 🙁

  16. That’s great news, even if the number is only temporary! I remain super impressed by how well you’ve planned and prepared for having a baby. We were in debt and just added to it when we had Goofball seven years ago. Our own temporary milestones coincided with the debt consolidation loans – we would shift our debt and get lower interest rates, but then just rack up the credit cards again. I’m so glad we’ve changed our ways and have kept moving in the right direction.

    PS: I am so excited about Half Penny’s debut – hang in there!!!

  17. Congrats on hitting 6 figures – that’s a huge milestone! I hear you on the back and forth of progress though. The difference with Sisyphus is that the boulder keeps rolling down to the bottom – with us, it’s more of a two-steps-forward-one-step-back thing. We definitely have our ups and downs but over the long haul, we’re headed in the right direction and so are you!

  18. A 6 figure savings account?! Congratulations! We have a 6 month emergency fund that we were more than happy to be done saving for. We’ve been thinking about increasing it though. Luckily we’ve been able to cash flow any emergencies that have come about. However, one time we did borrow a nice chunk of money from it in order to get a bigger car and not have a car payment. Needless to say… We won’t be borrowing from it unnecessarily again. I don’t know what’s worse… Owing lenders money or owing ourselves money!

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