Current position: $341,792 net worth at 40+. Target: $1,000,000.

I've been keeping this ledger private for years. Numbers, calculations, half-formed strategies — all tucked away where no one could see the gap between where I was and where I wanted to be.

Today, I'm opening it.

Not as an end goal, but as a crossing point. The moment when building wealth stops being something you're trying to do and becomes something you are.

This newsletter follows that journey with complete transparency. You'll get monthly net worth updates, the psychology behind wealth-building decisions, career strategies for building influence after 40, and the daily rituals of quiet luxury that reshape how wealth feels before it arrives. Plus frameworks for the crossing from executor to boardroom presence, and the artifacts that signal wealth without shouting it.

This won't be a race. It's architecture.

I write this not as arrived wisdom, but as real-time documentation. Too many wealth journeys begin in secrecy and conclude in silence. We glimpse the champagne toast but never witness the thousand small decisions that preceded it.

This will be different.

Month by month, you will observe this ledger evolve — the growth, the setbacks, the acceleration, the stumbles. You will see which rituals endure and which philosophies survive contact with reality. You will witness both triumph and miscalculation, recorded with uncompromising honesty.

More than numbers, you'll see the identity shift. How someone becomes the kind of person who naturally attracts wealth, opportunity, and status. Not through tactics, but through transformation.

Wealth demands radical transparency. If you choose to walk this path with me, you deserve nothing less than truth.

The Numbers:

That's the baseline. The machine is running and it was beautifully started with a sale of another asset.

The Strategy: $1,500/month recurring into Investment Fund, Emergency Fund locked in place, and the foundation pillars — 401k, HSA, Fundrise, Wefunder — all positioned for compound acceleration. End-of-year targets: Net Worth $348k+, Liquid $45k+, Passive $40–45/month.

August wasn't about chasing wins. It was about building the launchpad.

Here I stand, possessing one-third of seven figures, yet commanding only $39,000 in true liquidity. The mathematics are both comforting and unsettling.

Three figures matter in this dance. Total net worth — the number we rehearse for dinner parties. Liquid capital — what appears available on paper. And accessible wealth — what actually responds when opportunity whispers.

The last number tells the truest story.

On paper, I appear substantial. In reality, I remain vulnerable. One medical crisis, one professional disruption, and much of that wealth retreats behind retirement account walls and illiquidity moats.

Now, the immediate focus: elimination. Ten thousand dollars of debt must disappear. Not merely for the interest savings, but for the psychological liberation. Debt is not just financial drag; it is spiritual poison, coloring every decision with its subtle weight.

Remove it, and compound interest finally has room to breathe.

The pattern is well-documented among those who have made this crossing:

The first half-million feels Sisyphean. Progress crawls. Every dollar saved vanishes into a seemingly infinite void.

The second half-million accelerates exponentially. Compound interest awakens. Time matters more than contribution. Patience becomes the primary engine.

This is where I stand: at the base of the mountain, understanding the climb ahead while preparing for the eventual acceleration.

At $341,792, I'm positioned at the precise inflection point where psychology matters more than mathematics. The next $200,000 will test every assumption I hold about money, status, and worth.

I don't spend my summers in the Hamptons. My closet doesn't hold bespoke suits (yet). But every day, I still practice wealth.

Not with champagne or rare whiskey — just with water. Poured into Marquis Markham iced beverage glass. My meals, even delivered, are plated on porcelain or stoneware, never paper or plastic.

These aren't affectations. They're rehearsals.

Wealth isn't only about what you own. It's about how you inhabit the ordinary. A proper glass transforms hydration into ritual. Quality paper makes thoughts feel more permanent. Metal cutlery carries weight that plastic cannot.

Quiet luxury starts small. You practice it in deliberate ways until one day, you're not practicing anymore — you're simply living it.

Parallel to this financial ledger runs a second currency: professional influence.

After forty, the game shifts entirely. Technical competence becomes table stakes. The true currency becomes influence — the ability to shape decisions in rooms where capital flows and directions change.

My trajectory points toward board-level authority. Not for vanity, but for sovereignty. Money provides security; influence provides power. Without the latter, wealth remains perpetually fragile, subject to boardrooms where you hold no seat.

This ledger tracks both currencies. Each update will reveal not only account balances but strategic positioning — how I'm reconstructing my professional architecture to carry greater weight in the chambers where wealth and power intersect.

One million dollars is not the destination. It is the entrance.

Behind it wait influence, identity, freedom and questions I cannot yet formulate. But this much I know with certainty: the path deserves documentation that matches its significance. Not as spreadsheets hidden in folders, but as a living artifact — elegant, transparent, real.

This is wealth psychology in practice. The intersection of money and identity, played out in real time with radical transparency.

Welcome to Becoming Wealth.

— M.A.V.

Next issue: Compounding is Wealth’s Magic Trick.