[Music] Chevy says, Question for the money guy: does the rate of net worth appreciation change over time? What is a quote unquote good annual increase? You know, this is a great question, and I'll answer it simply to start with: yes, does the rate of change over time happen? It absolutely does. And here's what I think is so interesting: it's not uncommon when you are at the very beginning of your journey and you do your very first net worth. And by the way, if you don't have a template, we have a great one. You can go to learn.moneyguy.com and use our net worth tool. We love it. It's the exact same tool that Brian and I use to do our Network statements every year. Well, when you go out and you just do it for the very first time, and maybe you've not paid attention, you say, Holy, okay, I've got a $20,000 net worth. I take all the stuff that I own, and I put all the stuff that I owe, and I take the difference. I

have $20,000, and then you start taking your personal finances really, really seriously, and you flip your savings rate, and you start saving aggressively, and you get to the end of next year, and because you saved so much and because the market performed well, you look at your annual net worth statement, you're like, Holy cow, I went from $20,000 net worth to a $40,000 net worth. That's a 100% net worth increase, which is remarkable. And when you're early on in your journey, it's not incredibly difficult to see jumps like that, but as your journey matures and as your army of dollar bills gets bigger and bigger and bigger, while the absolute dollar value increases. So, let's now say that you have a $2 million net worth. A $2 million net worth, if it just goes up by 10%, that's going to be a $200,000 increase, way more than the $40,000 at the beginning of your career, but that's only

10% not 100%, so the bigger the pot gets, likely the larger the percentage will get, but the more impactful it will be to your overall financial situation. And I don't mind sharing, Chevy. I mean, it's going to vary. I mean, every, especially the bigger this thing gets, you'll get away from your behavioral and your actual savings, um, because it does have a huge impact in the beginning. You're, it's very deliberate. That's why you have to prime the pump, get the money in there early, often. That discipline will be rewarded, but this thing will reach launch velocity, and it'll start growing upon itself. But there's a catch to that critical mass too, is that when the market goes down like 20, 22, by greater than 20%, you're going to feel that. You're going to feel that in the net worth as well because you, as you have your portfolio invested, you're going to probably capture some of that economic struggle in your own net worth. The big

thing you have to focus on is not letting that derail you. That's why asset allocation comes into play. That's why there's all kinds of big decisions, and we talk about that. That's when you know kind of take the relationship to the next level is when the size of every decision you make starts having huge ripple effects that you need to pay attention to. But here's some things that I would tell Chevy just to think about as well. We did a show on this on key metrics. It is exciting when you realize that your net worth goes up more than you spend, whether it's a month, whether it's a quarter, whether it's a year, because those are all different thresholds that you'll start passing. That's super exciting. Doesn't necessarily mean you're at financial independence, though, because you can have an outsized performance year where the market makes 20%, and you're like, Holy cow, my net worth is just bumping, but then you usually get knocked back down when the market

underperforms, but then there's the next threshold is when your net worth goes up more than you make. I mean, that is something that I've had those years where you actually see your net worth go up more than you actually make an income, and you realize this is probably giving me indications that I've got so much critical mass going on that my portfolio can perform better and work harder for me than I can with my brain, my back, my hands. That's some pretty exciting stuff. I love it. He asked, What's a good annual increase, positive, moving in the positive direction, adding to it, growing it, even in the years when it goes down? If you can have the financial mutant mindset that, okay, market's going down, but you know I'm still saving, I'm still accumulating, I'm still adding to it, it gets really, really exciting really, really fast. I do agree, positive is important, but you also need to be a good field general of knowing what the metrics are that you are, you know, what

Are you looking at what's your executive dashboard to know the metrics that are positive? Because there's so many exciting things, and this is where the accountant in me comes out. Are you paying down your debts? How is that being impacted on your net worth? How much is it growing? And that's why I do love our net worth tool. As you said, learn.money.com actually gives you the metrics of what is on the dashboard to kind of look at your asset allocation, your tax location. It's not asset; it's tax location. It's your, you know, it's the growth rate. There's all kind of really cool, exciting things that are right there laid out for you. Great.

Does the Rate of Net Worth Appreciation Change Over Time?

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Does the Rate of Net Worth Appreciation Change Over Time?

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