My Financial Journey

Going through a bit of a dry spell with regards to my investments. The good news is I have started contributing money to my Roth IRAs again and hopefully taking advantage of what I am considering bargains on some of my individual stock investments. Assuming I am right with some of those assumptions I will hopefully see some large increases in my retirement nestegg in the next 5-10 years as those investments play out.

Traditional Rollover IRA – $15,477.26 (+0.71%)
My Roth IRA – $54,721.91(+1.44%)
Wife Roth IRA – $30,508.07 (+4.12%)
Traditional 401k – $118,526.75 (+1.70%)

Roth/Traditional % = 38.88% (tax free)

Total Retirement Nest Egg $219,233.99 (+1.43%)

Monthly Contributions $715.28 (401k) $2000 (Wife Roth IRA) $2500 (My Roth IRA)
SPY Performance -0.53%
My Monthly Investment Performance -0.53% (0.00%)
My Monthly Individual Stocks Performance -2.44% (-1.91%)

Well this month was a rough one and my investment performance trailed the SP500 and my individual stocks got crushed by the market this month. Many of my large holding had rough earnings seasons and this greatly affected my performance this month. The good news is this is just a one month event and does not change my long-term outlook on my investing philosophy or any of my investments. In fact quite a bit this year and even more so this last month I have been concentrating my individual stock investments into fewer and fewer stocks and putting more and more money into what I consider my best ideas. I still own 39 individual stocks and even my largest holdings account for less than 5% of my total retirement nestegg so I do not think I am taking on any additional risk I just feel like after being in the stock market for 5-6 years now and having gone through a pretty good recession I feel much more comfortable in my allocation decisions – I guess only time will tell.

Traditional Rollover IRA – $15,368.72 (-6.23%)
My Roth IRA – $53,946.83(-5.50%)
Wife Roth IRA – $29,301.05 (-3.47%)
Traditional 401k – $116,549.06 (+0.05%)

Roth/Traditional % = 39.69% (tax free)

Total Retirement Nest Egg $215,165.66 (-2.35%)

Monthly Contributions $715.28 (401k) $500 (Wife Roth IRA)
SPY Performance -1.91%
My Monthly Investment Performance -2.90% (-0.99%)
My Monthly Individual Stocks Performance -5.03% (-3.12%)

Another good month for my retirement nestegg – another all-time new high and another month of outperforming the SP500. I will soon start making contributions for my Roth IRA accounts for this year and hope to start amping up my retirement savings again. Still no luck on finding land but feel comfortable that $160k is an ample cash reserve for making a down payment. Should be expecting child #4 before next months retirement nestegg report and am back down to the normal 1 income going forward for the foreseeable future. The one year of having two incomes was pretty awesome and allowed us to top of our house savings – now back to business as usual and hope to start super charging our retirement savings again.

Traditional Rollover IRA – $16,396.32 (+5.71%)
My Roth IRA – $57,087.40(+3.15%)
Wife Roth IRA – $30,353.10 (+2.05%)
Traditional 401k – $116,495.37 (+2.73%)

Roth/Traditional % = 39.68% (tax free)

Total Retirement Nest Egg $220,332.19 (+2.96%)

Monthly Contributions $715.28 (401k)
SPY Performance +1.90%
My Monthly Investment Performance +2.63% (+0.73%)
My Monthly Individual Stocks Performance +3.22% (+1.32%)

Well I got back some of the performance losses from last month and my retirement nestegg hit a new all-time high. My whole financial situation is still sort on hold as we look to buy some land so I am hesitant to make my Roth IRA contributions or increase my 401k until we know exactly what is going on with regards to a land purchase so this means my retirement nestegg is growing at a much slower pace than it should be and has been for the last couple of years.

I guess the good news is I did a lot of the work before I turned 30 so this situation isn’t going to ruin me financially I don’t think in the long term, but this land purchase or waiting to purchase sure is putting a crimp in my financial mojo.

I have for quite a while now had more than enough money in my checking account to pay off the mortgage on our existing house and the arbitrage between my mortgage rate and my checking account interest rate is not in my favor and at last count was costing me about $300 a month in interest and has been like I said for probably over a year now.

On top of that I have been scaling back our retirement account contributions all so I can put a huge pile of cash in the bank at one of the lowest interest rate times in US history. Bottom line don’t do what I am doing 🙂

Traditional Rollover IRA – $15,510.02 (6.51%)
My Roth IRA – $55,341.82(+5.75%)
Wife Roth IRA – $29,744.15 (+2.66%)
Traditional 401k – $113,394.22 (+3.06%)

Roth/Traditional % = 39.76% (tax free)

Total Retirement Nest Egg $213,990.21 (+3.93%)

Monthly Contributions $1,072.92 (401k)
SPY Performance +2.56%
My Monthly Investment Performance +3.41% (+1.33%)
My Monthly Individual Stocks Performance +4.93% (+2.37%)

Well a pretty boring month overall for my nestegg, but what has to be one my worst months ever as far as investment performance vs the SP500. A number of my individual stocks got hit pretty hard this last earnings season and in general as I have grown to feel more comfortable I have been consolidating my stock investments more and more into a smaller set of companies so there is bound to be some more volatility with this approach, but I am hoping also better long term gains.

I still own a little under 50 individual stocks and no one stock makes up more than 5% of my portfolio so I am not exactly taking on unnecessary risk, but I am certainly less diversified than I was prior to this year.

I think it is a Buffet quote that goes something along the lines of “diversification is for people who don’t know what they are doing”. I guess we will find out 🙂 I feel more like I know what I am doing so I have become less diversified as a result and feel pretty good about some opportunities that are out there right now. I really wish we would make our land purchase sometime soon as I am hesitant to throw too much money in the market right now that we might potentially need for a house/land.

Traditional Rollover IRA – $14,562.63 (-9.46%)
My Roth IRA – $52,334.23 (-3.64%)
Wife Roth IRA – $28,973.19 (+0.64%)
Traditional 401k – $110,022.79 (+2.11%)

Roth/Traditional % = 40.16% (tax free)

Total Retirement Nest Egg $205,892.84 (-0.50%)

Monthly Contributions $715.28 (401k)
SPY Performance +0.97%
My Monthly Investment Performance -0.85% (-1.82%)
My Monthly Individual Stocks Performance -3.34% (-4.31%)

Traditional Rollover IRA – $16,083.72 (+0.90%)
My Roth IRA – $54,310.82 (+1.71%)
Wife Roth IRA – $28,788.40 (+3.09%)
Traditional 401k – $107,748.14 (+3.93%)

Roth/Traditional % = 40.16% (tax free)

Total Retirement Nest Egg $206,931.08 (+2.98%)

Monthly Contributions $715.28 (401k)
SPY Performance +3.64%
My Monthly Investment Performance +2.63% (-1.01%)
My Monthly Individual Stocks Performance +1.98% (-1.66%)

Well this was an exciting month and pretty good timing for me as with all of my recent contributions I have a good chunk of money to throw into individual stocks and went through most of the $10k I recently contributed this month.

I also made a pretty drastic strategy change with my 401k account. Doing these monthly reports have made me realize that my strategy of picking actively managed mutual funds trying to beat the SP500 just was not working over the longer term in my 401k and so I completely re-balanced my 401k where now the vast majority of my money is in a vanguard target retirement fund, another chunk is in a vanguard index fund, and I actually moved another chunk to a vanguard bond index fund since I thought we had been on a nice run up lately and wanted to have a more stable cash-like cushion should things turn south where I could then move it into the stock market if the opportunity presented itself. It’s not something I am contributing to on a regular basis and accounts for about 15% of my 401k right now.

Never invested in bonds before but should give me some stability in a downturn and allow me to do another re-balance to all stocks sometime in the future if we get another opportunity with a big downturn. Ironically this move allowed me to beat the SP500 this month in my 401k, but going forward it should track much closer to the SP500 in general. I will save my efforts for trying to beat the SP500 with my individual stock purchases in my IRA accounts where I have been much more successful over time.

Traditional Rollover IRA – $15,940.87 (-11.53%)
My Roth IRA – $53,396.64 (-7.77%)
Wife Roth IRA – $27,924.54 (-5.70%)
Traditional 401k – $103,675.68 (-4.95%)

Roth/Traditional % = 40.47% (tax free)

Total Retirement Nest Egg $200,937.73 (-5.95%)

Monthly Contributions $715.28 (401k)
SPY Performance -5.92%
My Monthly Investment Performance -6.28% (-0.36%)
My Monthly Individual Stocks Performance -6.99% (-1.07%)