Wife and I hit the 2 comma club last Friday, and yesterday hit the half-million mark for $ (no real estate). Yes, RE is nearly half of our NW - we bought a townhouse in the Bay Area a year ago, and both that and the condo in Seattle I own 50/50 with my parents (now renting out... weak cash flow but hot RE market and great tenants) have appreciated quite a bit in the past year to accelerate our unrealized on-paper gains. So the $1M NW mark should be taken with a big grain of salt, but it's nice to see that we hopefully made a good decision last year by buying a home in this ridiculous housing market.
How we got here is a bit different. We met during MBA, graduating in 2013 with $35-40k NW each. The makeup of our modest sums was very different. My parents had gotten me started saving for retirement super early (I made $300/mo Roth contributions from my HS jobs, and saved every penny of Xmas/Bday $ since I was 5), but graduated with $110k in student loans which cancelled out most of what I had. My now-wife, conversely, was criminally underpaid pre-MBA ($40k/yr in the Bay Area despite being in finance), but got a full ride to undergrad AND grad school, so she didn't have much saved but crucially, zero debt.
Our combined income was $125k before MBA, $260k when we graduated in 2013, and now ~$390k, although about 1/3 of that is variable in the form of bonuses and RSUs. We have been fortunate that our workplaces recognize our efforts and try to keep us happy
From 2013 to now, we have saved a lot and taken many steps to improve our cash flow. We finished paying off my student loans two months ago, paid off my car, refinanced the rental condo to eliminate PMI, and learned more about taxes. I've whittled down our cable/internet/phone bills and cut buying lunch at work to ~3x/month. Year by year, we've pared down our expenses while income has gone up, which has had a predictably profound effect on our ability to save. A prolonged bull market and robust housing market have certainly helped a lot. Hoping to have a kid next year, so that will eat into our savings rate, but I'm glad we were able to improve our cash flow before that all happens.
Anyway, that is how we got here. Hope it is the only time we breach the 7-figure mark, as a down market could easily plunge us back below that mark!
