We're in the middle of a legal battle assisting one of our elderly relatives from an estranged relative trying to get court appointed conservatorship and do really evil things. Because of this we've had to use some of our emergency fund and are pausing new retirement contributions as this may cost $20K-40K to fight it out over the course of a year or more. It is what it is, but it is also the right thing to do to protect the elderly.
However, what this post is really about is finding contentment in where we are at. We were on schedule to cross $1M in net worth by the end of 2025. It didn't happen because of the start of legal and other elderly support issues this past year, and we're okay with that because of the greater good that our resources are going to support. I have a guaranteed pension with a very stable government employer, so at worst it delays retirement a year or two.
Ah, but I was able to find a milestone we have crossed and another we will cross soon. We've now paid off just over 50% of our mortgage this month. Second, within two months our mortgage will finally be down in into 5 digits. We would have been here years ago, but of course the math didn't make sense to prepay a 1.875% fixed APR, so we've only been doing the minimums. By March we'll be in the $99K range. Two things celebrate and milestones nonetheless.
I found this chart that we'd started back in 2019 when we really changed our money habits and got on a budget, started Ramsey's Baby Steps, then graduated to the MoneyGuy's FOO and became Bogleheads. I've updated it to where we are at now and we've just crossed 50%. We used to update this and other charts with goals when we were first learning to save for an emergency fund, max our IRAs and other retirement accounts; but we stopped updating the charts around 2023 once we put things into "autopilot" and all of that was now the "norm" and we didn't need the same psychological reinforcements as to why we needed to stick to our budget and financial goals. Behold the tower of Debtris (mortgage only, otherwise debt-free):
[Mortgage Debtris](https://preview.redd.it/syhjkvj3oydg1.png?width=849&format=png&auto=webp&s=1255ce286cb3e41b9dfe69ba921a39803f1310e4)
(crossposted to r/TheMoneyGuy )