I'm 46, debt free, and have over a million dollars invested

And, other than my wife and grownish daughters, no one to really celebrate this with, so I thought I would share with this supportive community.

I honestly think my story is a great lesson in doing what you can when you can will eventually pay off. My wife quit work when our first daughter was born in 2005 and hasn't really worked since. I was making 29k at the time. I didn't put a cent in any sort of savings or investing until I was over 30 because having a mortgage, car payment, and daughters was expensive. However, at around 30, I got interested in finances and retiring and starting putting back just 6% into a 401k. 16 years later, I have over a million invested due to great gains and tremendous salary (and saving) increases (now make over 200k). We paid our house off in 2018 and haven't had a car payment since 2015.

Looking to leverage my great income to FIREing sometime before I'm 50, so here's hoping for that.

So much of my success I can attribute to living beneath our means. My parents had a tremendous income and were always in debt. They simply could not contain their spending. I watched them struggle to make house and car payments making over 150k a year and that was a tremendous wake up call for me. You can't out exercise what you can eat and you can't out earn what you can spend.

Thanks for listening and allowing a place to celebrate!