Financial goals you've achieved this year (2016)?

[GXA]

Congratulations on everyone's achievements!!  This is a truly impressive thread.

This year we:

Probably achieve FI (still a little uncertain how much the kids will cost through high school and college)

Refinanced to a 15 year mortgage

Debt-free other than mortgage and investment properties

Established and made a significant contribution to a donor advised fund (just did this - thanks for the encouragement Physician on Fire)

Splurged a little on a corvette   

[Carlos]

this is a great post:

this year (3 years out of fellowship):

- We saved a little more than 20% of gross

- We bought our first rental property (we already payed 75% of it)

- We got Net worth  above "$ 0.00"

- We started our first taxable account

[paramount]

Still in Residency, Wife just graduated

-Paid off 12k private student loan,

-Saved 20k

-Survived First baby being born/first 6 months of life (harder than financial success)

-Purchased Disability Insurance for wife and Life insurance for both

-Shed non-essential monthly subscriptions (hulu gone,  hbo gone, etc)

 

[MochaDoc]

jfoxcpacfp wrote:

Good for you, drinks on the house! Sounds like your focus paid off.

Thanks. It really did.

We have something in common – I usually pay penalties every October, too (but my clients don’t!!!)

Good to know I'm not alone here. 

Only keep the above stocks if you would buy them again given what you know. Otherwise, that is what you are doing, in effect: remaining invested in what you have already said you wanted not to own instead of selling and making a better investment. Waiting to “see what happens” ties up your money from being used more productively.

The problem is these stocks weren't educated choices so making the decision to sell or hold follows the same uneducated logic. The majority are dividend stocks so despite decreased price share, I still receive some dividend income. This muddies the water for me a bit. I understand what you're suggesting though.  

Click to expand...

 

[jfoxcpacfp]

MochaDoc wrote:

jfoxcpacfp wrote:

Good for you, drinks on the house! Sounds like your focus paid off.

Thanks. It really did.

We have something in common – I usually pay penalties every October, too (but my clients don’t!!!)

Good to know I’m not alone here. 

Only keep the above stocks if you would buy them again given what you know. Otherwise, that is what you are doing, in effect: remaining invested in what you have already said you wanted not to own instead of selling and making a better investment. Waiting to “see what happens” ties up your money from being used more productively.

The problem is these stocks weren’t educated choices so making the decision to sell or hold follows the same uneducated logic. The majority are dividend stocks so despite decreased price share, I still receive some dividend income. This muddies the water for me a bit. I understand what you’re suggesting though.  

My advice wouldn't change one iota. It's the total package that matters. Would you hold on to a rental property that you overpaid for just because someone pays you rent? Why wouldn't you want to invest in another property that both pays rent and has the potential to increase in value?

[gasdoc]

Cool thread for sure...will be nice to come back and check it 5 years down the road.  Fun year for us as well.  Just turned 39:

 

Paid the house off this summer and we are now completely debt free (student loans paid off last year).  Feels strange not throwing thousands and thousands of extra income towards it anymore.  Can't wait to see what savings rate will be with no debt.

Reached investment asset value @ 2.3 mil

Changed jobs from community hospital practice to new ambulatory group that does not have call/weekends (probably the biggest achievement

[IDinOH]

Congrats to all! This is a fantastic post. There should be a collective sense of pride.

This year we:

Made twice what I ever thought I would

Had our second child

Refinanced our house to a 15 year fixed at 2.875

Made good, albeit a little late, on a promise to upgrade my wife's engagement ring after 10 years and two kids...frivolous I know, but totally worth it.

Am only a couple thousand away from the two comma club.

So much to be thankful for. When colleagues whine the "good old days" and spout discontent, I think lists like this remind me that I am incredibly fortunate to be paid well to do something that I love.

[Jenn]

- maxed possible Roth IRA contribution based on husband's beer money postretirement job (but wish I got a little earned income, and at <$11/hr husband's hobby job DON'T want him to earn $13K this year just so I can do spousal Roth)

- passed milestone of 23 yo paying back the few $K we loaned her for moving costs (a few months after starting her job as a rocket scientist)

- started investigation of whether to relocate to Gulf coast with a week long stay there

- realised we won't and don't want to live ONLY on husband's pension checks and budgeted for 2%/year from savings for play money, but only used about 1.5% total and that was to replace a vehicle.

- Transferred kid's CD money for college from poor paying Credit union to better paying bank and added some of our money towards this.

- reviewed GI bill/ yellow ribbon program and have hopes kid won't cost more, wherever she goes, than 23 yo did at State. (wondering if State U also if we should pay it ourself and save GI bill for grad school?)

[MochaDoc]

jfoxcpacfp wrote:

My advice wouldn’t change one iota. It’s the total package that matters.

Click to expand...

I hear what you're saying. I'll dump the under-performing stocks, as suggested.

[jhwkr542]

I really like reading these, congrats to everyone!  Mine:

1. Graduated fellowship and signed on with one of the last remaining private, physician-owned groups in town (very stable job as well)

2. Found WCI website and started the long process of educating myself financially

3. Made adjustments to my life as a result of #2

A.  Paid off car loan because it's stupid

B.  Started maxing retirement accounts (educated in time to understand the implications of my wife getting access to a 457b at her academic job on top of her 403b)

C.  Got disability insurance

D.  Transferred savings to ally account

[emp2b3]

I agree with everyone else that this is an inspiring thread and that it is great to hear from people at all stages of their career and even retirement.

- First full year of employment post-fellowship allowed us to eliminate our student loan debt (although we were both doing PSLF I had too many concerns about the longevity of the program and the interest rate is crazy)

- Achieved our goal of 35% gross savings rate of base salary for retirement (similar to Physician on Fire's live on half challenge)

- Got our legal affairs in order with the planned arrival of our first child soon

- Opened a donor advised fund via Fidelity; it is very easy to do and the automated grants have actually been a nice time saver as it used to be an ordeal to update various charities of our new address and billing information every time we moved

Best wishes to everyone in the coming year!

[Basicazz]

Rather than stocks & bonds, DW and I have primarily gone the real estate route.

We will close on our 19th rental SFH this month.

I looked a little closer at my disability policy after reading some blog posts on this website and learned that it wasn't own-occupation like I thought.  It was really expensive and seemed to really only give me 2 years of own-oc coverage, so I dropped my crappy disability policy last month.

Crunching the numbers, DW and I should be FI, so I went ahead and dropped my term life insurance policy as well (held by the same insurance company). It feels good knowing they won't get another dime from me and I'll have thousands more to invest next year.

[lucas]

Had our 3rd child and started his 529 (now paying more to our 529s than we get tax credit for.  Grrrrrr..... :evil: )

Sold our boat (too small for the 5 of us now).  I paid 5K for it 6 yrs ago on ebay and sold it for $4350 on craigs list......lovely  :P

Paid off our second car, a certified used (took out the 2.9% loan and paid it off in 9 months).

Paid large bulk back to buy-in and student loans (low rate @2.75%).  Only about 100K left....

Put away >20% adjusted gross toward retirement

Refinanced mortgage to 15y @ 2.875%

Surpassed 500K net worth a couple months ago

Goals for next year - get this child sleep trained, pay off remainder of student loans, adjust to a rate of 35% adjusted gross toward retirement once these loans paid, buy a bigger boat (used)

[bean25]

Second year of five year surgical subspecialty residency. Married with no kids

Finished paying off student loans ~30k remaining

Signed up for own-occupation disability insurance.

Fully funded roth IRAs for spouse and I.

Contributed to my and spouses 401ks up to the match.

Fully funded an HSA for the year.

Saved or invested ~50% of our gross combined income this past year

 

Goals for next year: sign up for term life insurance, save for a used car, increase roth 401k contributions, try to develop an entrepreneurial mindset (unlike some of the resident financial bloggers, I don't think I'm smart enough to make this work in residency but we'll see)

[RocDoc]

Taxable accounts reached 3.0 mil this year. The taxable accounts themselves are enough to fund our expenses with less than 3% withdrawal rate. My husband and I are 53 and 52 so we don't want to access our 401ks or Roth IRAs yet anyway.

I'm still enjoying my physician work. Seeing the patients and helping them and interacting with the other doctors and staff still gives me a big sense of satisfaction and happiness. My financial situation has allowed me to negotiate a good work schedule which helps to keep me enjoying the work. My husband is not enjoying his job quite as much as he used to but he knows he can leave and retire whenever he wants.

A section of our house flooded in April which was a terrible experience but our flood insurance was great and fully paid for losses and repairs. With strong encouragement from my Dad, I decided to try and do a lot of the home repairs myself. I probably read too much MMM. My husband and girlfriends initially thought I was crazy to take on these repairs. But my elderly father (my Mom and Dad live with us) seemed very happy and excited about the idea of me doing the repairs and he wanted to help. The whole repair process turned into a real social activity. My Dad mostly supervised but he loved that he and I were spending so much time together working on something he felt was important. He really helped a lot with advice and moral support. My Mom and Dad also loved that my curious girlfriends kept stopping by for coffee to watch the repairs and although most just visited and talked (often for hours to my parents delight) some even started helping and enjoying themselves (and bragging to their husbands about their new skills.)

Our flood insurance allowed us to retain the unspent money since we'd done so much of the work ourselves. At Thanksgiving Dinner, (in our beautiful repaired home) I gave my Mom and Dad a check for all the remaining insurance money. It was over $80,000. My Mom and Dad normally won't take money from me but in this case, my Dad agreed to take it because I told him I couldn't have done the repairs without his encouragement. My parents haven't figured out exactly what they'll do with the money yet but they are having so much fun thinking of things. That was a big financial milestone for me, to be in a position where I could do something like that for my parents (and think of something we could do together that I could get them to accept it.) I think I owe one to MMM for this as I have never done much home repairs until I read his blog. MMM would still face punch me because I don't bike much at all.