Money Moves to Make Once You Hit a $250K Net Worth

Your needs change as you build wealth and mature financially. Just like you don’t live in a dorm room anymore, what got you by when you were a scrappy upstart won’t necessarily cut it when you start playing in the bigger leagues. 

Start with these money moves when your net worth hits $250,000. When it hits $500,000, you’ll need to make different money moves, and then again at $1 million, and so on as you scale the ladder. 

1. Form an Independence Plan

If you don’t have a destination in mind, it’s hard to make progress toward it. 

What would it take to reach financial independence? How much passive income from investments do you need to cover the lifestyle expenses you want? 

There’s no right or wrong answer. Some “leanFIRE” folks live perfectly content lives on $40,000 a year. Others want a six-figure income even after ditching their day job. 

What does “enough” look like for you? Take some time to write out what your ideal life looks like, including where you live and what you spend on living expenses. You can revise it later, of course, but it helps to have goalposts to move toward. 

2. Form a “Work Forever” Plan

Now that you’ve wrapped your head around an independence plan, we’re going to throw it out the window. 

I’m half kidding—but we are going to approach the puzzle from the opposite direction. 

As nice as it looks on vision boards, sitting on a beach and sipping piña coladas for the rest of your life is a terrible goal. A better goal: doing fulfilling work that lights your soul on fire. 

Start thinking about what you would want to work on if money were no object. What does your ideal work look like? How would you change the world for the better? What work would make you excited to leap out of bed in the morning? 

It probably won’t pay as well as your current high-stress day job. That’s OK. The point is that you’ll still earn money, so you can move your goalposts a lot closer than what you’d need for full financial independence. 

You don’t need to cover your entire living expenses with passive income to reach your ideal life. You just need enough to supplement your dream work’s income. 

3. House Hack

Housing makes up the largest expense for most people. So? Get rid of your housing payment. 

Buy a multifamily property with a conventional mortgage and a tiny down payment, and rent out the other units. Or rent out rooms to housemates. Or add an ADU, or rent out some or all of your home on Airbnb sometimes, or use any number of other ways to house hack. 

My cofounder hosted a foreign exchange student to house hack. The stipend paid for most of her mortgage payment. 

My wife and I house hack through her employer, who provides us furnished housing. 

Get creative and knock out your housing payment. Without having to pay that, you can funnel far more money into investments that generate passive income. 

4. Diversify Your Real Estate Investments

At a $250,000 net worth, perhaps you’ve started adding real estate to your portfolio beyond your primary residence. That could mean owning shares in REITs, or real estate crowdfunding investments, perhaps a rental property or a real estate syndication. 

It took me decades to learn how to invest passively with small amounts. Eventually, some other investors and I decided to take matters into our own hands and start a co-investing club through SparkRental. 

You can form your own, or you can join ours. Every month, we meet on Zoom to vet a new passive real estate investment. Any of us can invest with $5,000 or more if we like that month’s deal. 

Find a way to ramp up your real estate portfolio—without concentrating too much money in any one investment. 

5. Revisit Your Emergency Fund

Up to this point, you may have measured your emergency savings in dollars. It’s time to start measuring it in “months of living expenses.” 

For a W2 employee with plenty of job security and stable expenses, you might get away with one to three months’ living expenses. Someone with less job security or unstable income or expenses might need six to 12 months. 

That said, you don’t need to put every dollar of savings toward your emergency fund. After the first $1,000 in your emergency fund, try setting aside 20%-40% of your savings toward it and putting the rest in investments. When you get to one month’s living expenses, maybe scale that back to 10%-20% of your savings. 

You’ll keep growing your emergency fund until you reach your target, but it takes a back seat to your other financial goals. 

6. Pay Off High-Interest Debts

The higher the interest rate on a debt, the higher the priority in knocking it out early. 

For example, if you have a fixed 4% mortgage, you can leave that in place indefinitely. If you have a credit card balance charging you 15% interest, you should knock that out immediately. 

Where should you draw the line? It depends on the kinds of returns you think you can earn on your money. If you’re confident you can earn 10% returns, you can potentially keep that 6%-7% debt in place and invest your savings instead of putting it toward early debt payoff. 

Or, if you want to earn a risk-free return, pay off the debt. 

7. Create or Update Your Estate Plan

Everyone needs an estate plan. To die without one is to leave your surviving family members with a terrible mess to clean up. 

The larger your portfolio of assets, the larger the mess. At a quarter-million-dollar net worth, you have real assets, and you need a detailed last will document outlining your instructions for probate. 

That goes doubly for any parents with minor children. If you want your favorite sister to raise your kids rather than your evil Aunt Sue if you kick the bucket, make sure you include that in your estate plan. 

You don’t necessarily need to hire a fancy attorney. Start with a DIY platform like LegalZoom or LawDepot, which does a pretty good job and makes it easy to update your will. Later, when your net worth reaches seven figures, you can look into possibly hiring an attorney to look it over and tweak it. 

You’re not a kid anymore. You’ve grown up some, and your money mindset and behaviors also need to mature. And as your net worth keeps growing, so too will your financial sophistication.

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