Yesterday, I went all “Who wants to be a millionaire” on you guys and asked the audience a question. It was a simple question:
How has your financial situation changed over the last 12 months?
Of the 333 of you that responded, 240 said things have gotten better. Only 44 readers said things have gotten worse. I wasn’t surprised by the results, considering anyone who voluntarily reads personal finance blogs in their free time, probably tends to care about their finances more than the average joe.
I liked my question because it was intentionally vague. I left it up to the respondent to decide what an improvement in one’s financial situation meant. Maybe that meant getting a fat raise, maybe it meant your retirement funds have appreciated, maybe you moved out of your parent’s basement, or maybe you’ve finally started knocking out that consumer debt that’s been hanging over your head. It was awesome to see the additional insight some of you provided in the comments section, so thanks for that.
While not much has changed in the Ninja household over the last year (expenses and income are pretty much the same), we’ve seen a pretty incredible increase in our net worth.
In fact, I just ran the numbers and it looks like we’ve shot up $55,454 in the last 12 months. In-FREAKING-sane. I honestly had no idea we made that much progress. That works out to a $4,621 increase each month… for twelve straight months.
What’s more, we dropped $12,000 cash on a car upgrade and another $7,500 on MANteresting during this time.
How the heck did we swing this?
I really don’t know. I mean, obviously the markets are responsible for a big chunk, but it really just comes down to boring ol discipline. Investing in our future, saving aggressively for a down payment, not being consumer whores, blah, blah, blah.
Being intentional and proactive with our finances in our 20’s will hopefully set us up for continued success in our 30’s, 40’s, and beyond. I’m taking the words of Spock seriously and doing my best to…
