I’ve been a longtime follower of Dave Ramsey, embracing his philosophy of “living below your means” and deferred gratification, allowing the magic of compound interest to work its wonders. While we've followed many of Ramsey's principles, we’ve also made a few strategic deviations from his Baby Steps to maximize our net worth (more on that later).

A bit about us: I’m a 42-year-old male, and my wife is 35. We’re both software engineers working for big tech companies, and the substantial paychecks certainly help. This year, our household income is approximately $1.3 million. It wasn’t always this high—our income has tripled in the past five years thanks to promotions, job changes, and RSU appreciation.

Reaching a $10 million net worth once felt like a distant dream, and it still feels surreal today. I want to share what we did right, the mistakes we made, and the lessons learned for anyone aspiring to achieve similar financial milestones.

Net Worth Breakdown

• Total assets: $12.8 million
• Liabilities: $2.8 million (10 mortgages: 1 primary residence, 9 single-family rental properties)
• Stock holdings: $5.4 million ($2.2 million in retirement accounts, the rest in brokerage accounts)
• Real estate assets: $7 million
• Primary residence: Valued at $3 million (not overly fancy, but we live in a high cost-of-living area)

What We Did Right

1. Saved Aggressively For years, we’ve saved more than 30% of our pre-tax income.
2. Worked as a Team My wife and I operate as a team, which has been the most critical factor in our success. She’s the voice of reason and more conservative when it comes to taking investment risks.
3. Leveraged Mega Backdoor Roth Contributions We’ve maximized this strategy whenever possible.
4. Balanced Investments (60% Stocks, 40% Real Estate) This mix provided diversification and helped hedge against stock market volatility.
5. Kept Low-Interest Mortgages Unlike Ramsey’s advice, we didn’t rush to pay off our low-interest mortgages (2–4% fixed rates). Paying them off would’ve cost us around 1.5 million in opportunity losses and taxes. While some find peace in being debt-free, we found peace in making mathematically optimal choices.
6. Used Tools to Track Finances We rely on Empower Personal Wealth to monitor our net worth and spending. It’s free and automatically imports transactions (though you’ll need to decline their financial advisory offers).
7. Maximized Credit Card Points for Travel Another deviation from Ramsey: We use credit cards for regular expenses, pay them off in full every month, and redeem points for business-class travel. This saves us about $10,000 annually. Dave often says that saving from credit card points won’t make you a millionaire. That’s true, but $10k a year helps and it compounds.

Mistakes We Made

1. Delayed Investing I didn’t start saving and investing until I was 29. While my years in school led to a high-income job, an earlier start would’ve made a difference.
2. Missed Early Roth Contributions We overlooked Roth IRA contributions when we were eligible.
3. Underfunded 401(k) Initially Early on, I only contributed to the employer match instead of maxing out my 401(k).
4. Tried Timing the Market Like many beginners, I thought I could beat the market. It was a humbling but invaluable lesson.
5. Ignored Investment Fees Early on, I didn’t pay attention to mutual fund fees (some had 2% fees), which hurt returns. Now, we stick to index funds and some employer stock.

These are the steps and lessons that helped us build a significant net worth. Hopefully, our journey can offer inspiration and guidance to others aiming for financial freedom!

[Proofread and Edited by ChatGPT]