The time has come! After my most recent paycheck I finally hit $300k net worth. 🥳 There’s no telling if this number will stay as the market continues its roller coaster ride, but I’ll take it!

The default view on Empower (previous Personal Capital) where I track my net worth is a 90-day lookback. I rarely switch from this view, but yesterday I decided to go as far back in time as possible. And boy was it fun to see!

Unfortunately, I didn’t start tracking my net worth until mid-2018 and have some doubts that I was diligent enough at that time to input all my accounts to keep a complete record.

Nevertheless, it’s still a pretty nice graph that captured me crossing into positive net worth territory and all through each $100k landmarks.

Right off the bat, my first impression was confusion. I’m seeing a linear graph when I was expecting more of an exponential graph due to the power of compound interest. But I guess it makes sense that due to the relatively short time, the power of compound interest hasn’t been able to quite show itself yet.

I went down memory lane reading my post from over 2 years ago, The Road to $100K Net Worth where I truly went in depth about the happenings from 2017-2020. 

I don’t know why I didn’t do a $200k net worth post. I’m thinking it overlapped with my 2020 end of year review so I clumped it together. Plus, for some reason I’m just more excited about hitting $300k than I remember hitting $200k.

So what has happened since I left off in October 2020 with $100k net worth?

December 2020

I ended the year with $127k net worth so not only did I reach $100k in 2020, I actually increased my net worth by $100k this year. I made the following remarks to reflect my net worth growth:

1. It took me almost 2.5 years to go from negative net worth to finally being in the positive net worth territory.

2. It took me only 1 year to go from $0 net worth to $100k net worth.

March 2021

I was intent on buying a home this year so unfortunately I was spending much of the year just hoarding money in my savings account. I say unfortunate because the market would go up by over 20% in 2021 which I wasn’t able to truly take advantage of. 

June 2021

I had a disappointing net worth update with a measly $10k gain in the last quarter as I rebalanced my tracker to capture the most accurate data. Overall the first half of 2021 was a very stressful year navigating the new territory of buying a new construction home.

December 2021

I found myself in a shocking position with $200k net worth at the end of 2021. It certainly helped that 2021 was one of the most bullish years in market history. It also helped that in 2021, my parents allowed me to live rent free as I saved up money for my down payment. In total, I spent less than $16k this year!

March 2022

This marked the last net worth update I was able to do before becoming a homeowner. I wanted to front-load my retirement accounts before I started having to deal with home expenses (in hindsight, was a bad idea as the market would go on to tank this year). I ended the first quarter of 2022 with $238k net worth.

September 2022

I was so close to hitting $250k net worth by this time except the market continued on a downturn and did not look back. By the end of September, I had lost $30k in the span of two weeks and ended the third quarter for 2022 with $230k, less than I had earlier this year.

December 2022

I officially ended 2022 with $250k net worth (just barely!) with a year to year change of +$48,668. It marked the lowest year to year net worth increase ever for me since the start of my financial journey. But I’m happy to say I survived the bear market of 2022!

April 2023

I received a pay raise and bonus in the 1st quarter of 2023 which officially brought me over to the $300k territory! 

Reflections

1. I realized that market volatility plays a bigger role in my net worth now that I have more investments in the stock market. This leads me to consider rebalancing my portfolio with bonds to be more conservative.
   
   
2. I did not find the saying, “the first 100k is the hardest” to be true. While it took me 1 year each to go from 0 to $100k and from $100k to $200k, It took 1 year and 4 months to go from $200k to $300k.
   
   
3. If I consider the very start of my journey to be 2017, back when I was right at the cusp of entering the workforce and was the shameful owner of $200k student debt, I have increased my net worth by $500k in 6 years! That’s roughly an $83k increase in net worth per year. Not too shabby if I may say so myself.
   
   
4. If I can keep up with this trajectory, I am hoping to get to my lean FIRE/absolute minimum goal of $500k net worth by the end of 2025.