A $600,000 Net Worth Update

A few short months ago, there was a lot of fear and worry around tariffs impacting investments. I advised to stay the course; I didn’t know when the stock market would bounce back, but I knew it would. And it did. That bounce-back was the main reason I reached my latest net worth milestone. Ladies, gents, and the rest without titles: I now have a $600k net worth, reaching this goal mere days before my 31^st birthday.

This net worth milestone article will be a bit more tempered than the previous ones. This is for both personal reasons and not-so-personal reasons, which I’ll get into later in this write-up. Before that, let’s look at the good stuff.

When we started 2025, I was pretty confident I wouldn’t see much net worth growth. I touch on why in my 2024 review. Yet once again, the stock market takes actions I wouldn’t have dared to predict.

$600k Net Worth Possibilities

Hoo boy, does having a $600k net worth feel more monumental than $500k did. I’m now higher than the mid-six-figure point. I can also become a millionaire now with surprising ease.

Potential investment performance scenarios	Time to reach millionaire status
7% YoY growth and ZERO further contributions	9 years
Historical average growth (10%), no contributions	7 years
Historical average growth + current contributions	3.9 years

Um. Wow. At this point, I don’t even need to add more money to my investments to become a millionaire in my 30s. The only thing I need to do, now, is to stop myself from taking money out of my investment accounts.

But let’s say I choose to wrap it up here, declare myself RETIRED, and go travel overseas and away from the United States.

Potential spending scenarios	My spending budget
According to the 4% rule	$2,000 a month, $24,000 a year
At a more conservative, 3.8% rate	$1,900 a month, $22,800 a year
At a very conservative, 3.6% rate	$1,800 a month, $21,600 a year

I’m not about to lie to you: this is tempting. $1,800 a month grants me several cities already through Asia and South America. At $2,000 a month, I can add several European mega-cities to that list as well. This is clutch, as that also means I can invoke my EU citizenship for subsidized health care.

I’ve been telling friends that, if things don’t work out for me, “I’ll go cry about it on a beach in Portugal”. Or Greece/Sicily/whatever other beachy place strikes my fancy. Whichever path I take, I know I’ll be set.

$600k Net Worth in Real Estate

Most folks make homeownership a top life goal. Let’s see what I can afford in the places familiar to me.

In the city of Los Angeles, a $600k net worth gets me a two-bedroom condo or townhouse in several nice neighborhoods.

In the broader Los Angeles County, I can nab a multi-bedroom home with a $600k net worth. Granted, LA County is massive; it includes land that’s fifty miles outside of my rental in Hollywood. But given that there is a huge amount of people living here, I remain surprised at what I can (theoretically) afford before closing costs and miscellaneous fees.

I grew up in rural Illinois. For fun, I looked at houses in an area close to Chicago. With a $600k net worth, you’re hitting four-bedroom and five-bedroom homes. Any higher and you’re entering McMansion territory.

And if I wanted to go buy in rural New England? Not only could I pick many multi-bedroom homes, I could also pick up buildings with multiple units and become a landlord.

Keep in mind, this is all assuming I buy my home with all cash or a tiny mortgage. Should I get an average mortgage amount, I can afford a lot more when I’m already spoiled for choice. Right now, I’m not interested in purchasing real estate. But should that change in the future, I’m really happy to know my options.

$600k Net Worth Additional Spending

As a fun exercise, here’s how much I can spend with my new milestone number:

• If I spend $40,000 a year, I can cover the next 15 years without earning a dime in income or investment growth
• A 20% downpayment on a $3 million house, or – as noted above – anything from a condo to a mansion throughout the urban and rural United States
• 300 vacations costing $2k each.  I’ve toured Europe a month for less than $3k, twice, so I can make this REALLY nice.
• A 2025 Ferrari SF90 Spider, which has 1000 horsepower as a hybrid and goes 0-60 in 2.5
• $60,000 in growth every year, based on historical average rate of return with index funds
• 600,000 trees planted with the National Forest Foundation or #teamtrees
• All the college fees for 15 students for one year
• All the adoption fees for 230 foster children
• My closest Chipotle offers chips and guac for $5.10, which is more than last year. $600,000 nets me over 117,000 orders, which means I can eat this during every meal for the next 107 years or once a day for the next three centuries.

Reaching a $600k Net Worth in 2025

Each new net worth milestone never ceases to amaze me. I’m absolutely grateful I’ve gotten so far when I’m only thirty years old. I’ve been leanFI for a couple of years now, which grants me enough to survive on my investment withdrawals. With the cost of living being much better on average overseas, I could even consider myself as fully financially independent with geographic arbitrage. This was something I noted when I reviewed my timeline to retirement, when I laid out my specific life goals.

Those are still my goals almost a year later. I am not abandoning them.

With that said, I may delay them.

Now we get to the section where my cryptic “This is for both personal reasons and non-personal reasons” at the start will make sense. I am expecting a big expense of about $20,000 for a project in August. I’ll talk more about that in a future article, but I promise that it’s something really good that I’m excited to complete!

As for the non-personal reasons… I almost don’t know what to say, other than that I am spooked. America is bowing to fascism and has gotten to the point of masked agents kidnapping “undesirables” in broad daylight. Before I’d run out of steam, I could go on about dozens of the other awful, absurd, and downright horrifying concessions the US government is making to fascism. But the only news I really needed to know things are undeniably bad is one reality:

As aforementioned, masked agents kidnapping “undesirables” to disappear to who knows where. In the so-called Information Age, there is next to no data on how many people have been taken or what the conditions of their imprisonment are like. Most damningly, due process is not observed in these cases as written in the Constitution. Question now is: how long is it until you, yourself, are not safe?

I am not the most vulnerable, nor am I the most safe.

I’ve got a lot going for me, the high net worth and dual citizenship being the main ones. That financial shield will only be enough if I have the freedom to exercise it. I have to prepare for the possibility my right to this wealth can be rolled back to pre-20^th century norms. As a woman, that alone is plenty cause for concern.

And that’s just over money, which I can earn back in my lifetime. If the current government can limit birthright citizenship, limit judicial process, and purge words like “climate science,” “disability,” and “women” from government documents, I consider absolutely nothing as off the table. My voting rights, freedom of movement, and the cultural norm to work in a white-collar role are not things I can take for granted at this stage.

Funny how I didn’t include “refusing to work in a fascist state” as a retirement factor in 2024. That just might be the case for me before 2026.

An Impending Move Abroad?

For years now, I have prepped an escape hatch from a fascist America under my foolproof mantra of “just in case”. I do a lot of things “just in case,” and that practice has saved my butt more times than I can count. For something as big as a move overseas, that “just in case” measure will serve me threefold:

1. I will, legally, no longer pay an income tax to help fund the fascist government.
2. I will ensure my access to rights already limited in America; after the overturn of Roe v. Wade, Irish women have more rights than American women do.
3. I’ll be able to help friends and other loved ones come join me.

I don’t want my tax dollars going towards the increased ICE budget or to further bloat military spend. I am also part of a tiny group of Americans who are both financially, and legally, able to move abroad on short notice. Heck, I can even start working abroad on short notice! Since America’s Foreign Earned Income Exclusion means I wouldn’t (likely) have to pay income tax, that’s one way I can uniquely fight back.

I understand the government losing my income tax is a tiny drop in the ocean of tax revenue, statistically speaking.

But every little bit of resistance adds up.

Another way to fight back is by opening my home overseas to friends and loved ones. A high number of my friends happen to be queer, and I rest a lot easier knowing I can offer sanctuary should they need it. Just last week, I sent Irish real estate listings to a friend of mine for a good idea of my choices. A $600k net worth cushion will go far for Irish real estate, especially for homes that have been on the market for several months.

These plans have been brewing in my brain for so long because I’ve seen this play out before in the historical record. I’m such a big fan of history lessons that I’ve made it its own category on this site. History becomes a fail-proof guide a stunningly high number of times; it’s these lessons, among other reasons, that prompted me to pursue becoming an Irish citizen in the first place. A $600,000 net worth isn’t quite enough to retire anywhere in Ireland or the EU, but it is enough money for enough areas. That is what matters the most to me right now as the news out of Washington gets unbelievably worse by the day.

In light of that, the biggest emotion I feel about achieving a $600k net worth is relief more than joy. Yes, I’m fine and will continue to be fine. I have the legal right to immigrate elsewhere and ample financial means to do so. All I can do now is hope everyone else can find ways to endure or escape as well.

Stay safe out there, friends. I hope nothing but the best for you to come.

Cover image credit: Iker Urteaga via Unsplash