I just noticed there is a new “millionaire in the making” that I hadn’t seen. Jeanette Courts is a divorced 38 year old mom who works for the Pentagon making 94,000 per year. Here is a summary of her net worth:
Government Thrift Savings Plan: $107,000
Roth IRA: $6,000
Savings Bonds: $2,000
Online savings account: $10,000
Brokerage account: $1,000
Other savings: $4,000
Home equity: $190,000
Jeanette is looking good. I’d say she is doing an outstanding job of living below her means and is on track to be a millionaire by the time she retires. I found a lot of similiarities with her habits and our family’s habits. Buy the products you use a lot in bulk (think Costco), take our lunches to work and buy clothes in the offseason whenever we can. We don’t use our flexible spending account, mostly due to the exceptional benefits I get from my employer already.
After reading a story like this I can’t help but compare it to our situation. We are about 3 years younger than Jeanette and are significantly farther along than she is. I’m sure that her divorce set her back a ways, but I think she seems to have bounced back from that really well. While this certainly isn’t a contest, I think it’s human nature to think about how we all shape up. I mean, be honest. It’s really not all that different from comparing yourself to the Jones’, but I would argue it’s a much healthier exercise because you are comparing yourself to someone that is doing the right things.
So anyway, after seeing Jeanette featured in a “millionaire in the making” story and then seeing where we are at, I have to walk away feeling pretty darned good. We are still enjoying life, but are also experiencing the peace of mind and security that comes with having money put away for the future and having more and more money working for us, instead of us working for it.
On a side note, I notice that CNNMoney seems to be changing their format a bit. You’ll notice that the URL to the story has the word “blog” in it. I wonder if that might indicate they’ll have more featured people for this millionaires series. It seems to me that they would be smart to crank one of these millionaires stories out at least once a week. They seem to be very popular.
It’s healthy to see how you’re doing as long as you take it in context I think. Some people may see that she’s making $94,000 and balk on that, but to understand where she came from and what she had to do, you just have to appreciate her path in life.