In today’s post on WTF is going on with my investments, I finally looked at all of the money I put into investing in 2008-2013. My math may be wrong (if you see anything weird here let me know) but I think my rate of return, not taking into account fees, is at about 4% each year (3% if you don’t count dividends.) Yuck.
Total Investment: $88573
Total Withdrawal: $29383
Cash After Withdrawal: $59190
Current Account Value: $77591
Growth 2008-2013: $18401
Total Dividends: $4051 ($810/year)
Annual Growth Avg w/out Dividends: $2870 (3%)
Annual Growth Avg w/ Dividends: $3860 (4%)
Is there something wrong with my math here?
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Did you dump all your investment money into the account in one go? I’m assuming not. That would cause your annual growth% to show as being lower than it is.
Good point. I would like to figure out how my annual growth stacks against the S&P 500. I’m not doing that right. 🙂
Great job Joy 🙂 4% annual return isn’t bad considering there was a financial crisis in that period. It’s hard to calculate what your annual growth rate is without some more information. But assuming your account value was at $59190 in 2008, and you didn’t put any new money in or take any out, and the account value is now at $77591 after 5 years then we can use the compound annual growth rate formula. (current portfolio value / initial value) ^ (1/ duration in years) So your portfolio’s growth rate would actually be 5.5% if that was the case. So you probably did better than you thought ^_-
Timing matters, but also whether or not you invested in the average stock market or in individual stocks themselves..
4% also just covers inflation but you said fees haven’t been taken out (nor taxes you have to pay on capital gains if you sold any stock like AAPL)…
I have been somewhat tracking all of my investing in the past year or so and have been doing ok in terms of returns (after fees) but only because in 2012 it was so stellar.
Honestly, I’m getting jaded with stock investments. I’m going back to sticking it all into index funds and funneling money into dividend stocks I like because I am getting too lazy to hunt down stocks for capital gains.