My Financial Journey

Well 2008 sure was an exciting year and I certainly learned a lot in the process. As for my retirement nestegg I actually lost just over 5% for the year. That is not the whole story though because I also contributed about $15-$20k this year that is not currently showing up on paper.

I guess if I had just checked my balance at Jan 1, 2008 and and Jan 1,2009 it probably would have been a pretty boring year and to be honest this is probably what most people should do so they don’t’ get caught up in all of the nonesense and excitement that is the stock market that the mainstream media portrays to the average investor.

Me on the other hand the only real reason I check is to keep this blog updated and well I’ve got a pretty strong stomach and actually found some of the massive drops to be quite entertaining this year. I also think this year of being fully invested will make me a much better investor going forward. It will certainly be a while before I start sweating a 3% drop in one day. Heck if its not double digits I’m not sure why the media wastes their time reporting it 🙂

I’ve also learned to keep my cool, not act irrationally, and believe the mantra that “if its too good to be true” it always is. Ever since I started this blog I’ve harped on and on about how I wanted a major recession when I was young and would actually prefer to lose money on my investments and see my nestegg shrink than grow. I’ve got time on my side and I don’t need any of this money right now. I need it in 2038 so if the stock market wants to tank from 2004-2024 I am ok with that as long as I have a job. I’d much rather be an investor now than in the 1990s when stocks did nothing but go up.

Anyway here is my December report and a graph of my nestegg growth or lack thereof for the exciting year that was 2008.

Traditional Rollover IRA – $8,250.71 (+7.89%)
My Roth IRA – $23,843.67 (+4.00%)
Wife Roth IRA – $12,943.64 (+18.40%)
Current Traditional 401k – $23,538.41 (+8.80%)

Roth/Traditional % = 53.64% (tax free)

Total Retirement Nest Egg $68,576.43 (+8.54%)

My Contributions for 2008 $30,510.38
SPY Performance for 2008 -38.42%
Investment Performance for 2008 -47.98% (-9.56%)
Individual Stock Performance for 2008 -37.00% (+1.42%)
Total Investment Return -$35,108.72

Well the carnage continues and it does not look to be slowing down. In fact in the first day of December my portfolio already lost a bigger percentage than it lost in the entire month of November. Regardless I am actually feeling very good about my prospects right now and even today’s monster drop does not make me the least bit nervous. So I’m either blissfully stupid or I have my emotions in proper check.
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Ok it’s all my fault. From my June 2008 nestegg report

I am 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 …

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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.
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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%)