Blog Posts
Some people believe that all millionaires are crooks and only have their millions because they inherited their wealth. According to Thomas Stanley, author of "The Millionaire Next Door," 80% to 86% of the millionaires in America are self-made millionaires. Self-made millionaires are first generation millionaires, which means that they were the first in their family to reach a million dollars. That means that they did it on their own. That means that you can do it on your own also.
My life is completely shaped by the fact that I grew up in a small town of less than 2,000 people and I went to a school that had one building for K-12 grade (my class was the last class to attend all years of their schooling in the same building). My life experience is different than somebody who grew up in the city and attended five different schools for K-12. I propose we change the question a little bit. What would the conversation sound like if we asked a slightly different question? This is not a question you have with a brand new acquaintance, but a discussion you have with a significant other or an accountability partner.
As we enter into the homestretch of 2017, its time to update everyone on our spending percentages from the last three months. Despite our monthly updates on "buying nothing new," I am still posting our spending rate, because the spending rate articles focus on reaching a savings goal.
Early last week, I stumbled onto a post from Adventure Rich about the FIRE Prowess Gauge and their results. Their article was the seventh in a chain of 19 articles (the last I checked) from financial bloggers. This gauge has swept across the blogging community and I immediately calculated our FIRE Prowess Gauge.
Two summers ago, my wife and I were jumping into home ownership for the first time. We hit the ground running and started to tackle our mortgage. We have always had a goal of paying off the mortgage early and used this mindset to make extra payments on our mortgage.
Last year, we were on fire and paid off a lot of our mortgage. I am going to recap where we stood last August, then we will move into the year 2 mortgage update. By August of 2016, we had made 12 mortgage payments, plus multiple extra principal payments.
