A $200000 Net Worth Update: Oh, We’re on the Accelerated Path

And just like that, I’m now at a $200000 net worth. The last time I hit a $50k milestone it took ten months to do it; this time around it took a little less than six. In other words, my six-figure net worth f***ing doubled in less than two years. Really goes to show how your money can work for you if you know both what to do with it and what it means.

First things first: this $200,000 net worth puts me solidly in the upper middle class. In fact, I had been part of the upper middle class since about October, according to the chart below:

Upper Middle Class

Which begs the next question: what does being upper middle class mean? When I was growing up the class hierarchy was presented as rich, middle-class, and poor. “Upper middle” is mostly used as a term in academia to further categorize the diversity, I guess, of the middle class. Nina, the family friend I’ve talked about before, had another term for it she proudly called me: “upwardly mobile”.

From my non-academic point of view, that’s the definition that best fits. If you’re upper middle class, you are upwardly mobile. Upper middle-class people are the ones buying nice homes in amazing school districts for their kids. They’ve got really nice things and are always smartly dressed, even when they’re just lounging about at home. You are flirting with entrance to the upper class, with access to swanky events and networks that are now, at least, open to you. You might not be at the penthouse level, but you’re still so high up that the city is laid bare below. A million-dollar house is suddenly an easy endeavor – you’ve got enough cash for a 20% down payment, after all. Heck, you’re now 1/5 of a millionaire with that kind of dough; play your cards right and you’ll be a millionaire within the next decade, easy.

Financial Talk

I’m really not kidding about that all, by the way. 20% of a million is $200,000, meaning you too can start touring homes like these while house hunting:

Being upper middle class can get me some other awesome perks:

• $20,000 average growth per year when invested in index funds;
• Becoming a millionaire at 45 years old, assuming I never contribute another dime, or;
• Blowing it all on 61,000 chips and guac orders at Chipotle.

Guys. Including my annual bonus, and bank account churning, I’m slated to hit $95,000 in income this year. That’s a LOT of money to spend on whatever I want. And because I’ve got all this moolah now at my disposal, I don’t strictly have to save any of it. Obviously the responsible thing is to always save and invest; that’s a no-brainer. The difference here is I’m not going to shoot myself in the foot for failing to save up. Maybe being upper middle class is the formal designation for “finally seeing money as a friend, not as a tool for fear”.

Let’s talk for a second about losing that fear. With this milestone I know now that even a serious recession won’t really faze me. This is true even if we have a repeat of the 2008 recession, where millions saw their net worth drop by 50%. Well, guess what: I’d STILL be worth six figures even in that scenario, which remains an excellent position to be in.

The Dark Side to This

Make no mistake, I’m not some rugged individualist who yanked this $200000 net worth out of the ground. I had significant help to reach it, including substantial college scholarships and government bailouts. These are both valuable resources that are, more and more, being denied to big groups of people.

All of this was further exacerbated, too, with the COVID pandemic. Now that I’ve “officially” joined the upper middle class, I can officially point to how weird of a position it is to be in. A Purple Life already beat me in discussing the weirdness of having this label, which can make you uncomfortable after a lifetime identifying as something else:

Life is weird. Classifications are weird. Putting my partner and I in arbitrary brackets shouldn’t create this much upheaval in my mind…but it does. […] People are usually biased with how they see themselves and think of other people as the “lucky” and “rich” ones without taking a proper look at themselves – everything is placed on an “other.”

It’s an interesting dilemma.

It’s a real worry that you might lose touch with reality once it starts not affecting you so much. During the pandemic several upper middle-class people felt “guilty” they weren’t really affected by the state of the world. When you’re upper middle class, after all, you’re likely working in a white-collar role that’s easy to take remote. You can easily switch to grocery delivery and limit all physical, germy contact with the outside world. And if quarantine ever becomes too much for you, hey! Go take a spin in your nice car, or rent an even nicer one and drive wherever you please!

The upper middle echelons are not yet joining the 1%ers on cruises or private island getaways; they’re also not ignoring the plight of those suffering around them as the filthy rich tend to. Because of this they become very aware of how unfair the system is. Their eyes are opened to how favorably it’s treated them, whether that’s deserved or not. They’re also unsure of how to deal with this information – with luck such a big part of success, what qualifications do they have for helping others on this path? From what I’ve seen, that same guilt often leads to resentment against feeling guilt at all – and that leads to a two-faced dynamic of performative compassion.

Sometimes I feel like a wildlife biologist when I’m exploring my very upper middle class/upper class city (Newton, MA). The folks around me are proudly planting Black Lives Matter signs in their yards and petitioning City Hall to defund the police; this is coupled with heavy opposition to build affordable housing and hate-related incidents continuing to rise. It’s very much up to me to make sure I don’t start embracing this progressive/regressive dichotomy.

Real Talk

All of that guilt and resentment, however, will only bubble up if you get used to your $200000 net worth position. Right now I’m still in the stage of feeling overwhelmed over it. To the point that I almost can’t finish this blog post, I’m that shook.

Do you ever learn about a subject and study it so in depth you become one of the more informed people on the topic? And then you write about it for over a year, getting published on multiple sites and getting award/documentary nods? And then it’s not until almost half a decade rolls by that you’re suddenly overwhelmed with how much your choices around this topic have positively impacted your life trajectory?

Because this all hit home for me a few weeks back, when I realized I’d be hitting a $200k very soon. If you counted the value of everything I own (yes, including the stuff I got for free) I likely hit that $200000 net worth even earlier. Overall it’s a phenomenal position to be in; all I have to do is stay the course and my life will keep coming up aces.

Dang, how long do you think it’ll be until I hit the next milestone? Guess we’ll see what happens on this accelerated path to wealth.

Cover image credit: Alex Robert via Unsplash