My Financial Journey

Well another nice little bump in my retirement nestegg this month and what has to be my best investment performance ever versus the SP 500. I outperformed the market by over 4% this month and my individual stocks outperformed by nearly 7%. This performance was driven largely by the performance of Netflix, Tesla Motors, and 3D systems all of whom were up significantly this month and are stocks that have grown to be major players in my stock portfolio.

As I look back on my individual stock performance it is pretty impressive – I have beaten the market pretty significantly 8 of the last 9 months and in general since I started tracking my nestegg and individual stock performance almost 8 years ago. At least for ME I feel that stocks deserve to be a portion of my investment vehicles and over time I think I have learned a thing or two, starting out though I definitely learned some costly mistakes that I hope not to repeat.

Anyway here is this month’s report.

Taxable Account – $2,653.58 (-1.29%)
Traditional Rollover IRA – $21,629.93 (+2.94%)
My Roth IRA – $84,198.14 (+2.94%)
Wife Roth IRA – $48,538.80 (+5.91%)
Traditional 401k – $151,369.53 (-1.48%)

Roth/Traditional % = 42.72% (tax free)

Total Retirement Nest Egg $308,389.98 (+1.89%)

Monthly Contributions $736.74 (401k)
SPY Performance -3.13%
My Monthly Investment Performance +0.89% (+4.02%)
My Monthly Individual Stocks Performance +3.75% (+6.88%)

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%)