36F/40M in Canada with 2 kids - finally crossed $1.85MM net worth
36F and 40M married with two young kids. We recently crossed a $1.85MM net worth milestone and honestly it still feels a bit surreal.
For income, I make around $120k and my husband makes around $100k from his full-time job. He also has a small business on the side that brings in roughly another $100k-$140k in revenue depending on the year, though we generally try not to touch that money and mostly leave it invested or within the business.
We also own two rental properties in addition to our primary residence. One is a condo, which honestly hasn’t really helped much with equity growth, but the other detached house has done quite well. It has probably appreciated around $200k since we purchased it, plus we’ve been steadily paying down the mortgage over the years, so there’s now a decent amount of equity built up in it.
We’re by no means ultra-frugal and definitely still spend on things that matter to us. We plan to send both our sons to private school, which will be around $10k/year per child. Not an elite or ultra-expensive school by any means, but we value the smaller class sizes and feel it will be a better fit for them.
We also prioritize travel and family experiences. Typically we do one international trip a year,
one trip within Canada/US/Mexico, plus a few smaller road trips throughout the year.
We eat out occasionally, spend on our kids, and try to enjoy life while still being intentional with money. This definitely wasn’t achieved through extreme FIRE-style deprivation. More just consistent earning, investing, and avoiding major lifestyle inflation as income increased.
At this point, we’re still trying to figure out how aggressive to stay with investing, whether to continue building real estate exposure vs index funds,
and what “enough” actually looks like with young kids.
Curious for others a bit further ahead…. Did your 40s become the decade where wealth accumulation really accelerated?
Also, as a woman, I honestly don’t have many people in real life to talk to about personal finance/investing. Most of my friends just aren’t really into this stuff, so it’s nice being able to discuss it somewhere.