In 2005, I had about $5k to my name. By 2010, I had increased that amount to $88k while living in high cost of living (HCOL) area and earning an average salary of $56k for those first years out of college. Five years later, my networth hit a respectable $342.4k. I kept working at startups with decent-but-not-great pay (stock options are worthless) and lived relatively frugally over the years.
By 2017, I achieved my first goal of $500k — a bit milestone, as I wanted to have $500k in the bank before having my first child–and I made it! Thanks to finally switching to work in a public company (and that company performing stronger than the market), I’ve been able to dramatically increase my networth in a short amount of time… doubling it in under 2 years. I haven’t really spent time to appreciate that I actually doubled my networth in two years.
Do I think anyone can do this? No. I got lucky. Some of this lucky has to do with my working at a lot of different startups and building up a reputation for being good at one thing that ultimately got me the job I have now. Will I continue to make such a high salary? No — probably not. My income is largely dependent on my RSUs and after I vest the remaining two years of stock, I’ll be back to a lower (but still good) salary. I’ll need to leave my company and find a new job for a chance at making close to the same income. Hopefully by then my experience at this company will get me the ticket in the door at another company that pays well and will offer me a good compensation package.
I know a lot of people look at my income now and think–well, I’ll never make that much. And that’s probably true if you work in a different industry that doesn’t offer RSUs as part of your compensation package and you aren’t a highly skilled employee. But you can see you can still save quite a bit on a lower salary in your 20s if you are single and don’t have kids. Now, I admit I did not have college loans to pay pack (thanks to mom & dad) so you can fairly say that my total networth should be about $200k less than is now, or even less than that since I would have lost out on compound interest repaying a loan. So comparably to others who have loans, my networth today is about $800k and by the end of this year will be $1M or more.
I still have a long way to go to achieve my goals. I want to get to $2M before having my third child (whether or not I have a third child is dependent on achieving this milestone by the time I’m 38 or 39) and I want to buy a $1.7M house. Below, you can see my income, networth, and YoY growth for the last 15 years. I plan to continue tracking this for the rest of my career — subscribe to my blog to get updates and learn more about my path towards wealth. If it inspires you to save a little more each month — awesome! Remember, I live in a 800 square foot apartment with my 22 month old and husband and drive a used car built in 2011.
| Year | Income | Networth | $ Growth | % Growth |
| 2005 | $15k | n/a | n/a | n/a |
| 2006 | $35k | n/a | n/a | n/a |
| 2007 | $50k | $24.9k | n/a | n/a |
| 2008 | $60k | $15.8k | -$9.1k | -37% |
| 2009 | $60k | $32.7k | $16.9k | 206% |
| 2010 | $120k | $88.6k | $55.9k | 270% |
| 2011 | $90k | $145k | $56.4k | 64% |
| 2012 | $100k | $200k | $55k | 38% |
| 2013 | $110k | $253k | $53k | 26% |
| 2014 | $125k | $299.5k | $46.5k | 18% |
| 2015 | $160k | $342.4k | $42.9k | 14% |
| 2016 | $190k | $416k | $73.6k | 22% |
| 2017 | $130k | $551.3k | $135.3k | 32% |
| 2018 | $300k | $625k | $73.7k | 13.3% |
| 2019 | $400k | $1.05M | $425k | 99.83% |
| 2020 | $500k | $1.3M Goal | $250k goal | 23% goal |
