Author Archives: Ms. Miel

About Ms. Miel

Miel spends her time split between Washington, DC and Africa. She works on international relief and development projects in DRCongo, Burundi, Zimbabwe, Liberia, & Sierra Leone. Check out Miel's photos!

Miel’s Million Dollar Net Worth

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This is the first time that I’ve really shared about my net worth directly on Sustainable Family Finances. I was actually one of the first finance bloggers to share their net worth publically (on my old site DINKs Finance). I’ve continuous posted about my net worth for ten years. I’ve also been featured on J Money’s Top Net Worths for Finance Bloggers on RockStar Finance, coming in at number 11 of the 180 finance bloggers who publically share their net worth.

This is also my first time posting my net worth as an individual; previously I had always posted a joint net worth, but that is no longer the case after my recent divorce. This started at $300k back in 2005 and was tracked over time to hit the Million dollar mark in 2013.

It is bold to be the first. It is also a bit scary. It also doesn’t matter how much money you have or don’t have. Yes, if you are wondering, I have been criticized for sharing. I guess it came off as bragging, even though I had considerable less than I do today. But I also feel a certain obligation to myself and know if I track my progress and create goals for myself, that I can take what I have and grow it into whatever I can dream it to be. I also hope that it is helpful for readers to see what is feasible over a decade.

My first official individual net worth comes in at $1,058,434. My ability to grow and create wealth so far has been pretty impressive. (Darcy is giving me a virtual high five…this is huge!). I’ve worked my ass off for sure. I’ve never really ever had just one job. I’ve always juggle a few different income generating activities. Being a landlord for 12 years should say enough. I started saving for retirement at $25 a month and grew that to over $300k.

As you can see, the more you have, the more you owe. Making money is not for sissies. Owing nearly a million dollars is not something to take lightly. Wealth comes with a great deal of responsibilities and its own set of challenges.

My net worth gives a pretty candid look at where I’m at financially. What it doesn’t show is what comes next. I’m at a space in my life where I’m looking at this question very closely. How best do I leverage what I have to create financial stability and long term wealth creation? Follow along to find out!

Cheers,

Miel

Why does divorce cost so much? Because it is worth it. (It might be a sign when your well paid marriage counselor shares this with you…)

If you are part of the one third of Americans who have experienced divorce, then you clearly have your own war stories to share.

It’s going to happen [sometimes], so let this story of mine be advice that is kind of like an insurance policy. I hope you’ll never have to use it, but you’ll be glad you had it if you do.

Laws differ in every state, and are complicated by kids, real property, debts, and businesses. Mine involved all four. But an hour with an attorney was all the legal counsel I needed, while my ex chose to keep a lawyer on retainer.

It surprisingly took us about an hour to hash out the details of how we would divide our assets. Just like that, it was settled. It still took about 5 months to go through the motions and have a finalized divorce (feet dragging was at play). All the important details were sorted in what felt like record time.

It helped that we had a prenup. Though we didn’t actually divide things even close to what we had originally agreed upon, the general tenants were stood by. Rewind to a decade prior, and thankfully we had the foresight to realize that our financial lives might look very different. I read a short but helpful book on prenups, “What to do, before ‘I do'”, that was more helpful than the lawyer I paid.

The main aspects of our agreement were:

Premarital assets would remain individual. (James had one rental property and I had no assets to speak of).
Retirement funds would be kept as individual. (James had about $70k in retirement, but by the time we divorced, I would have triple of his retirement).
Any inheritance would be kept separate. (I would have hoped not to receive any inheritance by now, but had heard a horror story of someone whose wife got the house that the husband had bought with the inheritance he had gotten when his mother died. This was just a year after her death and a few years into marriage.)
No alimony. (James had seen his dad pay alimony and didn’t like the taste of it. Though in reality if we had divorced a couple of years ago, I might have been the one paying him.)
Our primary residence would be split 70/30, in my favor. (This was due to expecting that I would pay for more of our household expenses as James was headed into a Ph.D. program just after we married. I would end up supporting the majority of our household expenses over a 5 year period).

When it came down to the dissolution of our marriage, our net worth would be more than a million dollars and include a variety of assets. It ended up working out that James would propose what he felt was fair, and I agreed with only a few tweaks. It looked like this:

James got our blogging business that spun off of the original DINKs Finance and $20k in cash that he would use to further build this business and build a revenue stream from.

In turn, I got all four properties (two rentals in DC, one beach cabin bought with inheritance money, and my sweet pad in NE Portland), plus all remaining joint funds that had come from the sale of our last place in DC.

We both got wanted we wanted, though in turn have the responsibility of managing complex asset portfolios. (Whoever thinks income generation is a passive sport has never had assets to manage). Despite the fact that managing them will be a source of some stress, I think I got the better deal. (As my college friend Eli put it, “In Monopoly, no one ever wins with the utilities.”)

Best advice about prenups: get one to protect yourself (even if you aren’t going to get a divorce and don’t have any assets). It may not feel romantic, but if you can’t talk frankly about finances, you probably aren’t ready for marriage. Here is my original post on prenups, at the time of writing one.

Best advice about divorce: Establish common ground and don’t sell yourself sort.

Best advice about lawyers: Use them sparingly. If we had both taken our lawyer’s advice, then things would have been much more complex, drawn out, and neither of us would have gotten what we wanted.

Best,

Miel

Game Changers

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The Financial Realities of Retirement

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When you begin your first job, retirement seems so far away. It is easy to think that there are more priorities for your money than starting to save for a time so far head. Your immediate priorities may be to begin to pay off your student loan or buy your first automobile. As time goes by there is real estate then perhaps the costs of raising a family? Sometimes you might wonder whether there will ever be a time when you have a surplus at the end of each month when all your bills are paid. There is a time, however when you should sit down and think about how you are preparing for future retirement.

Set out the Picture

When you do that, you need to write down details of all your assets. It is obvious that you will include positive balances in any bank or retirement account. You may no longer have the equity in your real estate that you thought you had when the recession came along. However you need to include that equity, but it is important to be realistic. If you have investments, gold or silver or even valuable paintings you need to include these as well.

It is crucial that you take account of your financial liabilities including any personal loans, mortgages, and insurance. If you have Private Mortgage Protection (PMI) you should ask yourself whether you really need it; you certainly shouldn’t if you have paid off the bulk of your mortgage. That money could be better spent going into your retirement provisions.

Anything Obvious?

Once you have written everything down there may be some obvious courses of action. If you are carrying significant credit card balances and therefore paying a large amount of interest every month, you should be able to make savings. Today’s online lenders will listen to reasonable applications for loans. They are likely to approve an application if the applicant appears capable of making the installment payments throughout the term of the loan.

Obviously, if you earn more money each month, you will be able to put more way for the future. There are other ways to create more money by reducing your spending. You may always have had a new auto every few years. It is worth thinking whether you really need one so regularly. Indeed, used cars that have a good service record may be the answer without compromising on quality.

Urgency

The closer you are to retirement the more urgent is the need to plan. Some people are quite rightly nervous about the prospect of not working and having enough money for a comfortable life. If they have lived in the same neighborhood for years then moving out of familiar surroundings is difficult. However, there are good reasons to reduce monthly bills once regular income has dropped. A smaller home is often the answer to the problem. Some people take the view that retiring in a nicer climate makes sense. It is not always wise to pick a regular holiday destination; living in such places full-time is different. However, it is certainly worth thinking about where to live in retirement and the financial implications involved.

Just Think Things Through

Everyone looks forward to a long and happy retirement. It does cost money to live in retirement. In some ways, it can be more expensive to live after finally finishing work and retirement. It’s not quite like being on permanent holiday, but it is possible to spend more during a day in retirement than when you were working full-time. As the years go by, life expectancy has increased. It is difficult to know how much money you will need to live in your later years because you will not know how many you have got.

That is all the more reason to think about doing as much as you can during your working life to provide for those later years. There is advice available, but ultimately it is down to the individual to decide the best way forward. What is certain is that it is far better to pay off any debt that is incurring high interest than to struggle on. If that means taking out a loan and dispensing with credit cards, then so be it.