Noah and I sat down and transferred a bunch of money from the house sale. We now have a whole bunch more money in investments and a lot less in checking accounts.
Holy. Fucking. Shit.
I know I have never gone back and done the end of year report for 2018. I have the screen shots, I just didn’t write anything up. Whine.
I am feeling intense mental block around doing this. Even though our total wealth is going up like almost no one else for my generation I *still* feel intense overwhelming shame about how much money we spend. I feel fucking awful. I feel like what I am doing is grotesque.
I am not really missing my budget targets by that much? I am. Let’s be honest, here. But… I miss my budget targets in large part because I under budget on purpose and know we will make more money. Then when I go over… I’m still under what we make and we have invested really fucking well. Our net worth is a hair under $1.5 million.
That makes me want to choke.
When we buy a house in Scotland I may not pay it all in cash. I may get a mortgage because having a mortgage will cause me to hurry the fuck up and pay double and triple payments because I want to get rid of it in a way that I won’t save. Like, I will economize to get rid of the debt in a way I won’t if I just grab it out of investments.
I know the stupid games I play with myself.
Because I don’t want a mortgage. But I also want to leave those investments the fuck alone because those are for the future.
I don’t know how I will handle it for sure. Not yet.
But Noah would really like to hit $3 million so he can just stop working forever.
Will we make that target? Right now I feel like it is hubris to be too sure. But we went from ~$350,000 in investments and ~$350,000 in debt when we got married 13 years ago to almost $1.5 million and no debt.
Noah is 42. I’d really like him to be able to retire by 50. Because I am selfish in the extreme and I want his company. Because if he weren’t working for money he would teach people shit for free because people can’t really afford his time and he loves to teach. I would love to be able to give him that.
Why do I feel so god damn embarrassed about being a little bit over budget when we are having these kinds of results?
This hits me at work too:
Being under budget is only slightly better than being over budget. Being on budget is the best. I’ve had un-do my normal planning of trying to be under budget.
Oh, Elaine and I play mind tricks ALL THE TIME with our finances, retirement, rental shit. I don’t really know why it works, when I know I’m tricking myself though.