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Retirement Nestegg Report January 2018 (+$89,900)

Retirement Nestegg Report January 2018 (+$89,900)

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Holy cow. What a month. I am not even sure how this makes sense. At one point this month my nestegg was up over $100,000 and ended the month up just under $90,000. The market was up 5.62% this month, but my nestegg grew by almost 10.5% and my stock investments returned 16.17% beating the insanely large market returns by over 10.5%. I honestly would be pretty happy to thrilled if this was my report at the end of 2018 and the fact that I am writing it after just one month sort of blows my mind.

All this being said percentage wise this wasn’t even my best month in history as I had an ever bigger month in September 2010 with my nestegg growing by over 12%. The difference is back then 12% netted me $16k and not $90k. Big numbers get bigger. Apart from a highly probable implosion in the market it looks like I am way ahead of schedule to hit my $1M by age 40 goal – in fact 15 months ahead of schedule. Even with rather minimal contributions this year I only need my investments to grow by about 2.4% to hit the double comma club with my nestegg. This would then complete my only active goal for this blog and force me to write and plan for the last and remaining step in my financial journey.

Taxable Account- $54,007.95 (+12.34%)
Private Stock $63,100 (+0.00%)
Traditional Rollover IRA – $29,377.70 (+3.29%)
My Roth IRA – $227,599.05 (+17.95%)
Wife Roth IRA – $141,101.32 (+17.90%)
Wife 401k – $3,994.06 (+0.00%)
Traditional 401k – $428,264.20 (+5.67%)

Roth/Traditional % = 39.08% (tax free)

Total Retirement Nest Egg $947,444.28 (+10.48%)
Retirement Salary (4%) $37,738

Monthly Contributions $1,873.92 (401k)
SP500 Performance +5.62%
My Monthly Investment Performance +9.80% (+4.18% vs SP500)
My Monthly Individual Stocks Performance +16.17% (+10.55% vs SP500)

Netflix My first 100 bagger

Netflix My first 100 bagger

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Well something else interesting happened today. The value of one of my Netflix purchases exceeded 100 times my original purchase price back in 2007. I purchased 28 shares of Netflix for $19.72 back on June 22nd of 2007. Today after a previous 7 to 1 split I have 196 shares at a cost basis of $2.81 per share and today the stock price is north of $286 per share netting me 100x my original money. In addition the value of all of my Netflix holdings (4 purchases amounting to $1800) has exceeded $100,000 with $98,200 of that coming in investment gains. Pretty sweet.

In the grand scheme of things it doesn’t mean too much, but I do seem to like to celebrate nice round number milestones around here and set nice round number goals for myself. Having a stock go up 100 times in value and having my first individual stock be worth $100,000 is a fun milestone to take note of, especially with it happening in the same day. It is cool because it shows the power of investing over time and the amazing power that time and compounding have. My initial invested amount over quadrupled just today. I know how damn hard it was to save $100,000 by the time I turned 30 and more importantly how damned important it was. Milestones like this kind of validate that the young MFJ had a clue of what he was doing and that true wealth is built very simply and relatively slowly over time.

Interim Retirement Nestegg Report – I broke $900,000

Interim Retirement Nestegg Report – I broke $900,000

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The run continues – another 100k milestone just 7 months after my last milestone and what’s even crazier to me is that my nestegg has increased in value more than $43,000 in just 8 trading days in 2018 with no contributions! The next milestone will be kind of a special one as I will officially reach the double comma club and at current trend/pace will potentially reach it quite a bit ahead of my original planned schedule of getting there before age 40.

Taxable Account- $52,395.00
Private Stock $63,100
Traditional Rollover IRA – $29,326.93
My Roth IRA – $208,716.50
Wife Roth IRA – $129,780.78
Traditional 401k – $416,691.54

Roth/Traditional % = 37.61% (tax free)

Total Retirement Nest Egg $900,010.75
Retirement Salary (4%) $36,000

$100,000 NestEgg Milestones

Date DOW Jones Value MFJ Nestegg
Oct 2008 10,000 $ 69,300
Oct 2009 10,000 (+0%) $100,000 (+44%)
Feb 2012 13,000 (+30%) $200,000 (+100%)
Jul 2013 15,423 (+19%) $300,000 (+50%)
Feb 2014 16,395.88 (+6.3%) $400,000 (+33%)
April 2015 18,084.48 (+10.30%) $500,000 (+25%)
August 2016 18,636.05 (+3.05%) $600,000 (+20%)
January 2017 20,068.51 (+7.69%) $700,000 (+17%)
June 2017 $21,182.53 (+5.56%) $800,000 (+14%)
January 2018 $25,484.72(+20.31%) $900,000 (+12.5%)
My All Time Investment Performance January 2018

My All Time Investment Performance January 2018

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MFJ Returns By Year

YearSP500MFJ NesteggMFJ Stocks
200615.79%14.37%14.20%
20075.49%5.50%7.25%
2008-37.00%-47.98%-37.00%
200924.46%32.75%35.78%
201015.06%24.60%36.94%
20112.11%-5.53%-2.29%
201216.00%18.12%10.25%
201332.39%50.20%68.58%
201413.69%8.91%7.91%
20151.38%7.3414.34
20169.54%3.32%-4.57%
201718.42% 23.31% 27.49%

MFJ Cumulative Returns By Year

YearSP500MFJ NesteggMFJ Stocks
200615.79%14.37%14.20%
200722.15%20.66%22.48%
200823.05%-37.23%-22.84%
2009-2.69%-16.68%4.77%
201011.97%3.82%43.47%
201114.33%-1.92%40.19%
201232.63%15.85%54.56%
201375.58%74.01%160.55%
201499.62%89.51%181.16%
2015102.37%103.42%221.48%
2016121.68%110.18%206.79%
2017162.52% 159.17% 291.12%

Annualized Returns since 2006

SP500 +8.38%
MFJ Nestegg +8.26%
MFJ Stocks +12.04%

My best and worst stocks in 2017

My best and worst stocks in 2017

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Well as with my portfolio in general I had some high flyers when it came to my individual stocks. I had 3 stocks more than double and 11 stocks outperform the market out of my 27 individual stocks. Overall it doesn’t take too many winners to wipe out a lot of losers and well I sure had a lot of big winners this year. Looking at this list I feel very good about their prospects long term even given the large run up in 2017. Panera was bought out so that is no longer part of my portfolio. It is also interesting that some of my biggest winners this year are pretty massive companies and have been winners for me for quite a few years (Amazon, Netflix, Apple, Tesla).

Arista Networks +142.71%
Shopify +135.87%
IPG Photonics Corp +116.77%
Proto Labs +95.08%
Intuitive Surgical +70.59%
Panera +56%
Amazon +55.17%
Netflix +50.57%
Apple +45.70%
Tesla +43.49%
Brookfield Infrastructure Partners +34.00%

Now to my losers. 3D systems did it again! Every year I have owned it, it has easily made my best/worst list. Thankfully it’s only worth 0.13% of my portfolio and is currently down 73% for me.

3D systems annual performance
2012 +90.40%
2013 +172.91%
2014 -63.79%
2015 -73.63%
2016 +52.93%
2017 -36.89%

The big kick in the gut with this list was Under Armour and Chipotle, both of who have been very good long term wealth accumulators for me and which had previously been a pretty good portion of my portfolio. They both have their current short term struggles and I am more than willing to give them a few years to work things out.

Under Armour -48.29%
3D Systems -36.89%
Zoes Kitchen -28.79%
Chipotle -22.88%

My Investment Holdings January 2018

My Investment Holdings January 2018

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In annual tradition I will list all of my current investments. These really do not change significantly from year to year as I don’t do a lot of buying and selling and well now as my portfolio has grown so big the amount of money I am putting in towards new investments tends to be sort of insignificant.

As I look at my holdings at year end one thing that sticks out to me is that my largest holdings have grown as an even larger percentage of my portfolio. I think I can interpret this two ways. One would be that I have my money in the right spot as my larger holdings did better than some of my other holdings. The other and probably just as likely scenario is that darned thing called compounding. Larger number get larger. I think I am seeing this in my portfolio as my largest holdings will continue to grow by a disproportionate size in my portfolio just by the fact that they were larger to start with. Compounding truly is incredibly powerful and I am starting to see it in more and more areas in the world and realize that simply by having a larger base you have incredible advantages over things that are smaller. Size matters big time.

I have no plans currently to modify my investments despite the continued growth of many of my large investments. My top 4 investments are diversified mutual funds in my 401k which are pretty much tracking the market. The fact that they have grown to be a larger portion of my overall nestegg kind of solidifies that previous statement about compounding as I have many other investments that outperformed them but fell in overall percentage due to the effects of larger numbers getting larger.

My largest individual stock holding at the end of the year was Tesla closely followed by Netflix. Each of these is less than 8% of my nestegg and I feel very very strongly about both of these investments going forward. The next holding is a private bank located in my hometown and then Amazon rounds out the top 4 of my individual stocks that account for almost 29% of my portfolio. I feel very good about my allocation right now. One thing that is kind of strange is I actually have 1.78% ($15k) in cash right now due to the fact that Buffalo Wild Wings was bought out. Panera was another stock that dropped off my list from last year due to acquisition.

Overall I don’t see this list changing in any significant fashion in 2018

Symbol% of Portfolio
VPMAX12.67%
VINIX11.83%
VIEIX11.59%
VILVX11.17%
TSLA7.95%
NFLX7.84%
WOLFRIVER7.36%
AMZN5.59%
AAPL2.54%
SBUX2.12%
SHOP2.07%
ANET1.84%
$$CASH1.78%
UA1.72%
MIDD1.65%
CMG1.52%
BOFI1.40%
BIP1.24%
BRK-B1.16%
AMBA0.99%
IPGP0.95%
TXRH0.73%
BJRI0.68%
PRLB0.42%
COST0.27%
PCLN0.20%
ZOES0.19%
ISRG0.17%
SAM0.13%
DDD0.13%
SSYS0.09%
Retirement Nestegg Report December 2017

Retirement Nestegg Report December 2017

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Well 2017 sure was a banner year for my nestegg. It grew by over $187,000 this year and $156,000 of that were investment gains. It is very likely my portfolio brought in more wealth than our day to day jobs this year despite our incomes being at an all-time high as well.

It was another banner year for the stock market and my investments outperformed the market which led to these outsized returns. This was nice given my relative underperformance in 2016.

On area that was disappointing was my retirement contributions were significantly lower than the previous 3 years despite having the highest income we’ve ever had by a significant margin. Basically we’ve been spending like drunken sailors on our new house and our savings our savings rate has plummeted. Looking at plans for 2018 this might be in for more of the same as there are a number of large projects on the docket. Basically we’ve put off financial independence to work for this monstrocity of a house of ours which kind of stinks.

That being said my portfolio is large enough to provide over $34,000 in additional income forever. Also if my wife continues to work I will actually look at pulling back from working 100% as soon as this year to ideally not work during the summer months. Basically while maybe not the smartest move – the need to save for retirement is not nearly as high as it used to be and in theory I can afford to live the drunken sailor life, reduce my income by not working 100%, and still be setup very well for financial independence in a few years.

One other random item of note is my wife is now working and has contributed and been matches a chunk of money in her retirement account so she probably has $3k or more in there, but I have no way to look up her retirement account and she has yet to get access to her pay stubs through work so that is something I have either figure out how to track or just forget about and have it be a small surprise some day.

Overall despite my attempts to shoot myself in the foot – 2017 was a pretty amazing year financially.

Taxable Account- $48,074.83 (+1.51%)
Private Stock $63,100 (+0.00%)
Traditional Rollover IRA – $28,443.45 (+2.14%)
My Roth IRA – $192,960.86 (+1.05%)
Wife Roth IRA – $119,683.98 (+1.11%)
Traditional 401k – $405,281.49 (+1.73%)

Roth/Traditional % = 36.46% (tax free)

Total Retirement Nest Egg $857,544.61 (+1.36%)
Retirement Salary (4%) $34,302

Monthly Contributions $2,754.29 (401k)
SP500 Performance +0.98%
My Monthly Investment Performance +1.04% (+0.06% vs SP500)
My Monthly Individual Stocks Performance +1.20% (+0.22% vs SP500)

My retirement contributions for 2017 $30,787.56
401k $18,000.00
401k matching $12,787.56
My Roth IRA $0
Wife Roth IRA $0
Taxable Account $0
Wife Retirement Account ??


SP500 Performance for 2017 +18.42%
Investment Performance for 2017 +23.31% (+4.89% vs SP500)
Individual Stock Performance for 2017 +27.49% (-14.11% vs SP500)
Total Investment Return 2017 +$156,291.84