How Growth Grows

Scanning Twitter not too long ago I saw #MillenialRetirementPlans trending and seeing as I’m writing a book on financial independence and early retirement, the hashtag caught my interest.

Variously funny, sad, and downright apocalyptic, the tweets got me thinking. This one in particular made me think about my own progress early in my working career.

Progress is slow at first but then, that foundation you built is ready and able to hold more and more weight. I hate to break it to Harleigh but two years is only a small part of the years it will take to build your foundation. The image below shows my progress in the first five years I was working, five, not two. There wasn’t much progress to speak of.

Then I got married and while it looks like things started to grow quickly, the next couple of years were still pretty flat. The only reason they jumped up at all is because my new wife and I combined our finances.

These two charts represent 8 years of working hard, taking as much overtime as I could, being out of balance in terms of work/life, and making decisions that, we hoped, would pay off in the future. Similar to planting a seed, at first all you’re watering is dirt…