I’ve been swimming to shore financially for the past 2 and a half years since my last update!  The shore is the closest it’s ever been!

In fact, if I let my body submerge under the water straight down like a pencil, my feet touch bottom and the water line is only about a foot or so above my head.  I consider this great progress for me, especially after the last gut-tearing years!

Captiva Sunset

I’ve stuck to my simple, financial philosophy by being a big saver and practicing frugality all along my swim.  My trusty spreadsheet being my only real tool in addition to my continual struggle and determination.

So as I shorten the distance to the shore, I realize that I’m exhausted from a financially focus perspective.  I find myself continually played around with the idea of taking an overseas or Hawaiian vacation.  We can do it, but it would be a major slip towards my process financially. but it is always nagging the back of my brain…

Financial Independence is still my primary goal, but now I’m also focused on increasing my household net worth percentile.  this make the wealth accumulation process more measurable for me and enable me to track milestones.  That said, it also make each progressive milestone that much more difficult to obtain.

If I had used a mountain climb financial analogy, instead of my current swimming analogy, I would say “The air is getting thinner and it’s getting hard to breath!  Progress is now more of a slow crawling kind of process.  This makes sense because although my net worth is increasing at a decent clip amount-wise, It is much harder to move up to the next percentile level because of the huge steps to get to the next percentage point!  For example. to move one’s net worth percentile position from the 70% level to the 80% level, it takes about 200k for the 10% increase.  But from 80% to 90% it’s 400k for that 10% increase!  and if you go from 90% to 95%, it’s over 800k (more like 900k actually) for just a 5% increase…(depending on which survey of wealth percentile stats. that you use from the government).  Those upper percentile are starting to look intimidating!

Still, I swim on… The stock market has really helped me by coming back quickly as it has rebounded from the dip from the Great Recession.

With my financial pyramid, I’m still at the doorway of the upper middle class though, maybe I moved a few inches inwards, but not much overall.  So I still consider myself a kind of “lower upper middle class” guy.

To read my previous update on my progress, you’ll have to read my article back in 2012 called “Progress on Financial Independence – Still Swimming to Shore“.

Thanks for reading my financial progress article, I hope I have more good news with the next article!

Thanks,

Don