Well it took a little longer than last time, but compound interest is still working its magic with my retirement nestegg. Today I officially broke through the $500,000 mark for the first time. This milestone came 14 months after the $400k milestone which was actually slower than it took to go from $300k to $400k, but this market is not exactly the magical market that existed in 2013.

The more I update those tables below the more I question why I used a stupid metric like the DOW as an indicator, I think the only reason I chose it was because of the nice symmetry for when I first broke through $100k and the DOW also being at exactly 10,000 - anyway you get the idea that my nestegg is growing faster than the ridiculously dumb and outdated DOW index :-)

I also broke through another milestone this month - my wife and I had our 5th kid! While this certainly won’t help me financially I think it carries some weight to the fact that you can’t use kids as an excuse as to why you are not achieving your financial goals/dreams. 5 kids and 1 income have worked out just fine for me to reach $500k in retirement assets at age 35 - and I am hardly hardcore when it comes to being frugal - though I’m also not a moron generally when it comes to spending money either. So it’s been a nice balance I’ve been able to work out.

Taxable Account - $17,678.94
Traditional Rollover IRA – $37,561.08
My Roth IRA – $133,790.44
Wife Roth IRA – $77,432.67
Traditional 401k – $236,145.41

Total Retirement Nestegg - $502,617.54

$100,000 NestEgg Milestones

DateDOW Jones ValueMFJ Nestegg
Oct 200810,000$ 69,300
Oct 200910,000 (+0%)$100,000 (+44%)
Feb 201213,000 (+30%)$200,000 (+100%)
Jul 201315,423 (+19%)$300,000 (+50%)
Feb 201416,395.88 (+6.3%)$400,000 (+33%)
April 201518,084.48 (+10.30%)$500,000 (+25%)