[jonbarker]

I draw a big rectangle with a line down the middle. On the left is Assets. On the top right is Liabilities (aka debt, the remaining lease payments for housing, etc). On the bottom right is Equity. This is the number that must compound at an acceptable rate no matter what happens to the market, my income, etc (I'll leave it up to you to decide what rate you want to commit to in the near term). I have found that drawing and redrawing this on paper beats most software approaches. If someone asks, "what if my equity number is negative?" I say take steps to get it to positive. If you get it to 1 dollar, great, your first year ROE is going to be 1000% if you happen to save 10 bucks that year. https://awwapp.com/b/uybcpyttt/