QuestForAMillion.net

We are, I think, a fairly typical upper middle class American family. Dad goes to work and Mom stays home to raise two kids. I work for a large technology company where I make a nice salary, with bonuses and stock options. My wife has the hard job, raising our two kids. She also does some work from home that brings in a bit of money every month. We have a house, two cars, and a student loan. We’re in our mid-30s.

This website will chronicle our quest to reach financial independence as quickly as possible and hopefully help others in their quest to become financially independent.

Each month I’ll give an accounting of where we stand and how we’re doing towards our goals. I’ll try to post interesting and helpful blog entries at least weekly. Hopefully you’ll get more out of this site than I put into it.

Feel free to explore. The Resources section lists various books, websites, etc, that we’ve found helpful. If you’ve got a question or a comment, use the Contact page. I’ll do my best to respond to everyone personally.

Goals

Our primary goal is to become financially independent as quickly as possible. To do this, we have three monthly goals:

1) Increase net worth monthly - Given that we have investments, this isn’t always possible, but we work toward it by putting money into savings, retirement and college accounts every month.

2) Decrease debt - This generally happens without doing anything extra, just by the nature of amortized loans, but we try to put extra money to principal every month. Saving money until we have a big enough chunk to completely wipe out a debt counts toward this goal. This goal also helps to achieve goal #1.

3) Decrease committed expenses - These are the expenses we have to pay every month (groceries, shelter, pre-school, phone, etc). As debt gets paid off, committed expenses go down.