My Financial Journey

Well another great month for my retirement nestegg. I broke through the $300k mark and my investment performance was stellar on top of the already great market return this month. Compound interest FTW

Taxable Account – $2,688.14 (+33.53%)
Traditional Rollover IRA – $21,012.14 (+6.35%)
My Roth IRA – $81,790.62 (+7.95%)
Wife Roth IRA – $45,830.05 (+6.36%)
Traditional 401k – 153,633.65 (+5.26%)

Roth/Traditional % = 41.84% (tax free)

Total Retirement Nest Egg $304,954.60 (+6.41%)

Monthly Contributions $736.74 (401k) $900.00(Taxable)
SPY Performance +4.95%
My Monthly Investment Performance +5.84% (+0.89%)
My Monthly Individual Stocks Performance +6.97% (+2.02%)

Well after last month’s huge increase gave a little bit back this month. Overall I trailed the market, but my individual stocks beat the market again this month. Not sure how my 401k did so bad as it is nearly entirely in index funds and actually has larger cash cushion so the market going down I expected some out performance, but it’s only one month and probably some sort of anomaly. I am still in a rough situation as I have an extremely large cash cushion for purchasing land and a house and the land search is going very badly, so I have historically low mortgage interest rates finally starting to go up, the market is at all-time highs, interest rates on cash are non-existent, and my retirement savings is in limbo because of all of these unknowns.

It’s tough for me because its easy for me when I know what I want to accomplish (such as saving $100k by age 30) or amassing a down payment fund for next house that is larger than what we paid for the house we are currently living in, but now I am in limbo. Afraid to ramp up retirement savings because don’t want to hurt house/land chances, yet I have nothing to do with this huge wad of cash and every month I watch money flowing out of my net worth as I let my existing mortgage continue to live and have nearly $200k in cash sitting on the sidelines that had I continue to invest over the last 3-4 years like normal would probably be worth over half a million dollars.

Taxable Account – $2,013.20 (0.00%)
Traditional Rollover IRA – $19,757.38 (-1.10%)
My Roth IRA – $75,764.97 (-0.64%)
Wife Roth IRA – $43,090.51 -1.99%)
Traditional 401k – $145,957.99 (-3.01%)

Roth/Traditional % = 41.47% (tax free)

Total Retirement Nest Egg $286,584.05 (-2.09%)

Monthly Contributions $736.74 (401k)
SPY Performance -1.50%
My Monthly Investment Performance -2.09% (-0.59%)
My Monthly Individual Stocks Performance -1.11% (+0.39%)

Well pretty sure this month set all time records for biggest increase dollars and percent and out-performance of the SP500. Set an all-time high for my retirement nestegg and am coming very close to breaking through the $300,000 mark. It’s crazy what a tare the stock market in general has been on and in my portfolio as well I have had some crazy high fliers such as Tesla Motors which nearly doubled in value last month alone!

A new item for this month is that I went ahead and added a taxable account to my nestegg report. I have actually had this account for a while and it has been my “play” account where I messed around with options a little bit, but the more I look at my retirement goals the more I think I have overlooked adding money to a taxable account for retirement. Since I plan to retire well before 59.5 I need a source of income I can tap into without any penalties so I am going to start building up a taxable account for just this purpose. So you will see that account now on my monthly reports.

Taxable Account – $2,013.20 (new)
Traditional Rollover IRA – $19,976.44 (+6.53%)
My Roth IRA – $76,255.44 (+6.78%)
Wife Roth IRA – $43,964.29 (+7.27%)
Traditional 401k – $150,489.63 (+3.35%)

Roth/Traditional % = 41.07% (tax free)

Total Retirement Nest Egg $292,699.00 (+5.76%)

Monthly Contributions $736.74 (401k) $2013.20 (Taxable)
SPY Performance +3.04%
My Monthly Investment Performance +4.77% (+1.73%)
My Monthly Individual Stocks Performance +6.90% (+3.86%)

Well another very good month for my retirement and a great month for my investments as they all soundly beat the market and my nestegg is getting closer to the $300k milestone. Was less than a year ago that I crossed $200k – compounding is fun to watch.

Traditional Rollover IRA – $18,752.86 (+3.32%)
My Roth IRA – $71,411.42 (+5.79%)
Wife Roth IRA – $40,983.62 (+6.11%)
Traditional 401k – $145,610.04 (+2.51%)

Roth/Traditional % = 40.61% (tax free)

Total Retirement Nest Egg $276,757.94 (+3.92%)

Monthly Contributions $1,114.08 (401k)
SPY Performance +1.81%
My Monthly Investment Performance +3.50% (+1.69%)
My Monthly Individual Stocks Performance +5.53% (+3.72%)

Well another new record for my nestegg. The stock market sure is on a roll lately and my nestegg reflects that. Unfortunately I lose to the SP500 this month, but I have beat it in three of the last four months and short term fluctuations like that don’t bother me. I also had quite a few contributions this month which may have skewed my performance metrics as I got a large chunk of matching 401k since my company paid out our annual bonuses this month and I finished maxxing out my wife’s Roth IRA for 2012. In other exciting news I will be putting an offer in on some land to build a house – we will see how it goes but its the first time we’ve gotten serious enough to put an offer in on land so my massive savings efforts the last few years might finally come to fruition. We hope to be able to pay cash for the land.

Traditional Rollover IRA – $18,149.84 (+4.34%)
My Roth IRA – $67,505.30(+3.05%)
Wife Roth IRA – $38,623.05 (+7.54%)
Traditional 401k – $142,040.59 (+5.59%)

Roth/Traditional % = 39.85% (tax free)

Total Retirement Nest Egg $266,318.78 (+5.13%)

Monthly Contributions $3,296.19 (401k) $2000 (Wife Roth IRA)
SPY Performance +3.60%
My Monthly Investment Performance +3.04% (-0.56%)
My Monthly Individual Stocks Performance +2.91% (-0.69%)

Well another month another all-time high and another milestone reached. My retirement nestegg is now worth over a quarter of a million dollars. It’s great to see the power of compound interest and the increased frequency of hitting new milestones. I remember starting out and seeing fellow financial bloggers having nesteggs well into the 6 figures and thinking man I can’t imagine how long it would take to save up that much money or build a nestegg that large and now I have reached that level and now those people are approaching or surpassing 7 figures. Once you get the snowball rolling it’s a powerful thing.

Of note this month I had a very large 401k contribution which is half of my company’s matching program that hits each year around this time. My company has an extremely generous 401k matching program and it has been very helpful in building my nestegg. I also maxed out my wife’s Roth IRA for 2012 and now will start working on our 2013 contributions as I have a surplus of cash heading our way with our company bonus that will be paid out in a week or so. All in all things are looking good and $300k doesn’t look too far off.

Traditional Rollover IRA – $17,394.75 (+4.93%)
My Roth IRA – $65,504.79(+1.44%)
Wife Roth IRA – $35,916.69 (+8.31%)
Traditional 401k – $134,516.17 (+5.69%)

Roth/Traditional % = 40.03% (tax free)

Total Retirement Nest Egg $253,332.40 (+4.86%)

Monthly Contributions $6,400.69 (401k) $2500 (Wife Roth IRA)
SPY Performance +1.11%
My Monthly Investment Performance +1.18% (+0.07%)
My Monthly Individual Stocks Performance +1.75% (+0.64%)