My Financial Journey

Ok it’s all my fault. From my June 2008 nestegg report

I’m really excited to hear of all of this bear market talk and really hope the bear market is hear to stay for a while as at this stage in my life I am plowing a considerable amount of money into the stock market and I’d much rather be buying stocks falling 20-30% than having to purchase stocks who are constantly going up. I’ve often mused that someone my age who is contributing money for their retirement should be rooting for the stock market to get slaughtered and while the market hasn’t exactly gone down too dramatically yet, I’ll be happy to see my nestegg head closer to $50,000 than $100,000 if it means I get to buy some cheaper investments now and make more in the long run.

Well I think I pretty much got exactly what I was asking for. Overall this month my portfolio fell over 18% and (more…)

Well September was certainly an exciting month to be in the stock market with the overall market falling about 10% in the month of September and people getting excited about all the money they are “losing” in their retirement accounts.
(more…)

I’m going to keep this short and sweet because I’ve actually got plans to write more posts than this stupid report each month. I’ve upgraded this blog and am going to try to find time to post at least once a week if not more here. See numbers below but my retirement nestegg grew a little under 4% this month.

Traditional Rollover IRA - $12,783.76 (+0.96%)
My Roth IRA - $32,901.67 (+8.08%)
Wife Roth IRA - $16,532.93 (+1.83%)
Current Traditional 401k - $28,595.75 (+1.73%)

Roth/Traditional % = 54.43% (tax free)

Total Retirement Nest Egg $90,814.11 (+3.85%)

I’m getting to the point where I’m probably not going to add a lot of commentary to each one of these monthly reports due to the fact that well not much really can change to your portfolio in one month. The main reason I do this each month still is so that I have a set of data points that I can plot over time so I can come back and look at a bad month like last month and see how insignificant short-term fluctuations in the market are in the overall growth of your portfolio.

Traditional Rollover IRA - $12,661.60 (+6.73%)
My Roth IRA - $30,439.54(+9.99%)
Wife Roth IRA - $16,236.36 (+1.02%)
Current Traditional 401k - $28,109.95 (+2.87%)

Roth/Traditional % = 53.38% (tax free)

Total Retirement Nest Egg $87,447.45 (+5.44%)

Well overall a pretty ugly month if you are concerned with short-term investment performance. On the flip side a pretty exciting month if you are a buyer such as myself. Overall my retirement nestegg dropped by over 8% in just one month, but at the same time the stock market dropped over 9% last month so my investments may have actually made a little ground on the overall market last month.
(more…)

I apologize for not posting more - I’ve got a ton of posts in my draft folder that are about 90% done and I just never finish them. Hate seeing my history of posts only including my monthly reports, but anyway here is my latest monthly report. Another good month for me and one thing I’ve noticed is that the power of compounding in my investments is really starting to show itself as just a 5% gain in my portfolio results in about a $5,000 increase in my retirement nestegg. A couple more good months and I should be passing the $100,000 mark which honestly just a few years ago seemed unimaginable.
(more…)

Turned out to be a great month for my retirement nestegg growth, the best part is this months gains were due almost entirely towards investment gains versus me contributing a bunch of money. It just goes to show you that if you were going to try to react to the stock market fluctuations you will only end up shooting yourself in the foot. The market in general had been about as gloomy as it has been since I’ve been investing and last month was no peach as far as the direction my investments were heading, but I’m pretty sure this month has been one of my best performances ever. Regardless short-term glances like this mean nothing in the long-term other than looking back I can track my progress over time and see how insignificant month to month fluctuations really are.
(more…)