Below is a list of “annual reports” about our financial situation. They are formatted in the following way:
YEAR (Worth as of January 1 – Worth as of December 31)
Through them, we hope you will see the effect the 3MM plan has had on our lives.
We started out with basically zero financial know-how. What advice we were given has turned out to be bad advice indeed.
We’ve had to figure this all out on our own, and so it is our hope that by reading through these reports, you can avoid some of the mistakes we made, and learn the lessons we learned much sooner than we did.
Basically, we tried to create the kind of resource we wish we’d had from the start.
The Early Years
*Please note: the annual reports for the years 2010 – 2018 were written after the fact and contain our best estimates of financial figures. We recreated these reports by looking at past tax documents, consulting friends and family, and basically anything else that would let us give you the most accurate picture possible.
*Also please note: What matters here is not the actual numbers (we are only reporting figures that relate directly to the financial plan anyway), but the way the numbers change after we implemented new financial lessons into our lives. We will make note of these lessons where applicable.
- 2010 ($0 – $0) [How To Spend An Entire Year’s Savings And Not Regret It]
- 2011 ($0 – $6,000 [A Game of Inches and Penny Pinches]
- 2012 ($6,000 – $9,000) [How to Have Seven Jobs and still earn less than $40,000 per year (with a baby on the way)]
- 2013 ($9,000 – $0) [How to Lose Your Savings To A Lawyer And A Mechanic]
- 2014 ($0 – $2,000) [Baby’s First Year = Expensive Amnesia]
- 2015 ($2000 – $9,000) How To Try Every Side Hustle Scam On The Web (And Find One That Works).
- 2016 ($9,000 – $26,000) [The Year The 3MM Strategy Is Born]
- 2017 ($26,000 – $50,000) [How To Use Look-Through Earnings To Make Better Decisions]
- 2018 ($50,000 -$87,000) [Our New Goal: Grow Look-Through Earnings by 15% Per Year]
(From here on, we are no longer writing from memory. We can now provide accurate data on our investments, including monthly income reports beginning in May 2020).