Thoughts on Life and Money at 30

I’m officially 29 years and 364 days old.

I don’t feel much different, but it’s weird to think I’m about to complete my third decade of life.

On the eve of my 30th birthday, I’m reflecting on the evolution of my finances and sharing a few lessons I’ve learned about life and money.

Early money

Ten years ago, I was a college student. It feels like it was just yesterday.

Up until that time, I spent almost every dollar I got my hands on. My family used to say money burned a hole in my pocket.

I wasn’t completely terrible, though. I set up the direct deposit at my work study job to send 20% of my check to savings, so that was something.

Still, I was a long way from where we are today.

About 10 years ago, I learned some basic personal finance skills and took the baby steps that ultimately led to where my husband and I are today with our money.

Related: Budgeting Tips for Beginners: A How-To Guide

I went from spending all my money like it was going out of style to learning to manage it to learning to use it as a tool to accomplish our goals.

That. Is. Wild.

We’re behind on our finances

By traditional measures, our financial numbers aren’t very impressive. Apparently, we’re behind where we should be.

According to Fidelity, we should have a year’s salary saved by 30. Fail.

According to Shnugi, the median net worth for a 30-year-old is $20,000. Fail again.

The state of our savings

We don’t have nearly a year’s salary saved. We don’t even have the amount of one of our salaries saved.

(Btw I wonder where they get these guidelines from and if the average person actually meets them.)

Before we started our debt-free journey, we had been maxing our retirement accounts at work.

We decided a few months after starting our journey to drastically reduce our retirement contributions to focus on paying off our debt.

Related: The One Simple Reason to Kill Debt Before Investing

We still contribute to retirement but only 3% or so to get Mr. TMG’s employer match.

Our net worth

Our net worth also isn’t anywhere near the median for 30-year-olds. In fact it’s pretty far in the opposite direction.

We recently broke -$100,000, but we’re still at high negative five figures.

We’re working to get to zero and beyond.

Related: How to Calculate Your Net Worth

We’re still making progress

Even though we don’t have a super impressive savings balance or net worth, I’m really proud of the progress we’ve made.

We’ve increased our net worth almost $270,000 since December 2016.

Most of that increase came from paying off a boatload of debt. The rest came from our contributions to our retirement accounts and college savings accounts and market increases.

We’re nowhere near where we’d like to be, but we’re making steady progress to get there.

If you’d have told me ten years ago that I’d be where I am now—both financially and in general life—I wouldn’t believe it.

Lessons on life and money

Below are a few lessons I’ve learned about life and money over my 30 years on Earth.

1. You don’t have to apologize for or downplay your success.

I used to do this all the time. I was a kindergarten pipeline kid. I was literally in school for 20 years straight.

I’m one of the youngest lawyers at my firm–younger even than many of the people junior to me.

I’m also the first lawyer in my family.

For a long time, I feared that people wouldn’t accept me if I were doing too well or making too much money or something like that. I would downplay my accomplishments or how much something I bought cost if I thought it was too expensive.

I’ve learned, though, that the people who truly care about you will be happy for your success, regardless of whether their circumstances are the same as yours.

2. This is a marathon, not a sprint.

Success is the result of lots of small decisions along the way. There’s no such thing as overnight success.

With respect to money, it takes time. Saving, investing, paying off debt, increasing your net worth all take time.

It’s going to be a long road for us to pay off all of our debt, but it’s going to be so amazing once we do it.

We may have setbacks along the way, and you may have setbacks as you strive to reach your goals, too. That’s okay.

Just try to make more right decisions than wrong ones over time, and you’ll eventually see results.

3. Anything worth having is worth fighting for.

This is true in money and in life.

I remember the strain on my relationship with my now husband when we were dating long distance for 3 years when we were in law and med school. But we were committed to our relationship, so we pushed through.

Paying off $670,000 of debt SUCKS, but having more control over our time is worth it to us, so we’re fighting through.

Most things that you want aren’t going to come easy.

Relationships, promotions at work, new levels in your business, a particular net worth or savings balance—if it’s important to you and you deem it worth having, you’d better fight to make it happen.

No one else is going to do it for you.

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In all of this, I’ve learned over the last 30 years that we have the power to create the life we want. The only question is whether we’ll actually take steps to do it.

What have you learned about life and money over the years? Are you taking steps to create the life that you want?