Violet Sky

I’m sure this won’t be the first time we cross this milestone, but we hit $1,000,000 in invested assets accounts today!

Periodically on Reddit, someone will ask, “What did it feel like when you crossed a million dollars in invested assets?” Similarly, “What did it feel like when you crossed a million dollars in net worth?” Having lived through the latter but not the former, I always thought that it would feel similar – it was a little exciting when we became net worth millionaires, but it didn’t feel like that big of a deal because of how much was earmarked cash and illiquid real estate equity.

But I’m pleased to share that it did not feel similar at all – it was way more exciting!

When I was a kid, I never really thought about money, other than whether or not I had enough money to buy gas for my car and new CDs for driving around in it. My family was roughly upper middle class, so I never experienced anxiety about money until I threw myself out onto the street voluntarily at the age of 18. From that point until I was 30 years old, I rode various waves of financial anxiety, experiencing catastrophic job loss, involuntarily homelessness, car repossessions, borrowing $500 from family to make rent, our power getting shut off, so on, and so forth.

When I finally reached the point at 30, graduated with a computer science degree and almost $60k in student loans to support it, I channeled that financial anxiety into paying off our collections, then our car loans, then our student loans. I saved for retirement, but I didn’t start getting aggressive until I was 34 and changed jobs to the place I work now, which came with enough of a raise that I felt comfortable maxing out my 401k and my husband’s 457b. I didn’t open our brokerage account until I was 35 and got my first major stock vest, which was enough to pay off the remaining $40k in student loans, fund our IRAs, and still put some money into a taxable brokerage.

Throughout all of this, a million dollars felt very abstract. It’s more money than I ever imagined myself having, prior to switching careers and becoming a software engineer, so once I had made that switch, it still didn’t feel like a real thing that might happen to me.

But when I logged in today and saw that our flirtation with that second comma for weeks had finally crossed over the line … wow. I was smiling, I told my husband, my husband was smiling. It’s not enough to retire, and almost assuredly we’ll dip back under at some point, but it’s a huge milestone that feels like completing the groundwork for our retirement.

On to $1.5MM!