Life is great and not so great. With 42 around the corner, I feel pretty proud of where my family is financially at the moment, albeit that the success is mostly luck and it certainly isn’t financial freedom yet. I have three children, and kids aren’t cheap, and life in the Bay Area is ridiculously expensive. And I just got let go from my job. Yes, another one.
What happened? Heck if I know. I lasted a whopping six weeks. I get the sense they didn’t like my personality or performance, but I never got any specific feedback on either. How could I in 6 weeks, including the last one being a team offsite. It’s possible the company just decided to cut my role and it had little to do with me, but it’s hard to shake the feeling that had I just moved faster and proved my value I’d still have a job. I guess it kind of helps that I’m not sure if that’s true. It may have just been a budget cut. It may have been me. It may have been both. It was the first time I was completely blindsided by being let go, and it wasn’t fun. A zoom call with my boss turned into a zoom call with my boss and HR, and when I saw them on I think I might have mouthed the words “oh fuck” before possibly starting to shake. It wasn’t pretty. But I’m not sure I could have handled myself any better. And it doesn’t matter anyway.
So now I’m back… back to applying for roles I’m most likely never get. And that feels awful. Truly, deeply awful. I’m so grateful that my net worth is what it is because at the very least I don’t have to worry about losing my home overnight or anytime soon. Which is especially important at my husband, who has held a stable contract for nearly two decades, is likely about to lose his one source of income and also has no idea what’s next. We’re definitely not screwed, but we both are a bit lost right now and need to figure it all out. We have a good nest egg to support us through a transition, but it won’t last forever.
Current stats…
- $925k cash + taxable stocks
- $250k Roth
- $1.25M Pre Tax
- $400k 529
- $19k HSA
- $1M home equity
What’s clear is we are quite solid for retirement and prob over invested in pre tax, but we don’t have enough to get us through the next 20 years before we can take distributions from our retirement plan, our retirement account sound conservatively grow to about $4M-$5M and it could be even more. As long as we don’t touch that, I think we’re in really good shape for retirement. And that’s not even counting a likely large inheritance coming from a family member (normally I wouldn’t recommend counting on inheritance to anyone, but in this case my husband’s parents had one kid — him — and were never married — and they plan to give everything remaining to him, and also don’t like to spend money so after pension and SS they are still saving a chunk of money each year.)
Knowing that retirement is taken care of, right now I want to figure out how to earn enough between us to not spend the next 20 years feeling like we’re living paycheck to paycheck. These are the best years with our kids, the years to travel and have those experiences we just won’t be able to have in our retirement years. But I want to balance that with not burning through our savings too fast and then having to tap into our retirement too early. I mean, we’re somehow already 42/44-ish, so we’re getting up there. It’s just the next 10 years feel pretty make or break with the finances, and we’re in such a good place it would be difficult to totally break everything, but with our cost of living it’s also definitely not impossible.
So that’s where I am. Unemployed. Applying for jobs. Trying to feel positive because of where we’re at otherwise. That we have $4M in net worth as of this week is genuinely insane. I still go back to when I was blogging here and I hit my first $50k and $100k in savings. And now… I guess this is a testament that things can work out int he long run, even if they still aren’t really working out.
If anyone is still reading my blog feel free to leave a comment, it makes me smile. And hello!
Welcome back! We have about the same household net worth. I think I first found your blog around when I had around $100k in net worth. I’m employed, though I’ve been feeling increasingly listless about my career. I want to work for myself, but I don’t know what to do and don’t have the drive to make it profitable.