My Identity Revealed.... Grrrr.....

Over the weekend my NYC friend revealed my blog to another friend of mine (not one of his Einstein moments). I've found that generally, the more people know something, the bigger the chance that EVERYONE knows it.

So assuming a whole bunch of my friends know about my dreams to retire young, is that a bad thing?

I guess the one area of concern for me is having my friends know my net worth. Obviously one reason I do not want them knowing this is privacy. Privacy contains some utility all of its own. I would not like everyone to see nude pictures of me, even if I never met any of the people who had seen them.

But the bigger reason is jealousy. I have always been a big believer that human nature is both good and bad, and a big laugher at the people who think that they have somehow overcome the instinct to be bad, its usually those holier-than-thou fools who are the worst sort of humans.

Its human nature to resent people who you feel are comparatively better off, and exposing my numbers to all of my friends just leaves me wide open to that kind of feeling, even though I never sought my friends to know.

So, I probably won't talk about my net worth numbers anymore, except in general terms. Its not worth losing friends over.

Breaking Through The Ceiling

In examining my retirement goals, and running the numbers, one thing strikes me as really interesting.

The larger the amount of your money invested in the market, the easier it is to rapidly accumulate wealth through compounding and interest rates.

If you invested $6K a year into your 401K, and earned an average of 10% on it, it would take you 15.4 years to earn your first $200K, yet it would take you only another 6 years after that to earn your next $200K.

The lesson from this is striking: If you can find a way to break through the difficulty of accumulating that first $200K, you can set yourself up to the point where your ability to rapidly accumulate wealth benefits exponentially.

This is what I am trying to do: I am trying to find every possible way I can to accumulate "investing fodder" to break through that ceiling. From saving money to bouncing my money around internet savings accounts. Right now, my wife and I have $57K in the market (entirely in 401Ks), my goal is to try to increase that to $200K in the next couple of years.