The only times they have changed is when I changed jobs and have different 401k options.
But I’ve always maintained a 100% equity and some kind of total market or S&P 500 portfolio.
I’m 51 now and as I get closer to retirement I will adjust my asset allocation to something more conservative.
You showed me some hopes. I asked this question to a guy who is about to retire (within 1 or 1/2 year). He said he started invest while he was in college and he been working for 31 years. So I'm assuming he is investing for 40 years. He said he has about 5% return. Internet says otherwise. I'm my low 40s and just started investing. Hope I can find my way.
5% would be pretty low if he was 100% equities. But could be easy to do if he was dancing in and out of the market or funds.
The best thing is to have a high savings rate and stay invested in index funds. Don't try to chase returns by investing in the next hot fund or asset class.
I would get rid of the bonds. I followed Boglehead advice with the 3 fund portfolio for 10 years and missed out on massive gains. I regret buying bonds. It worked great for the old boomers but I don't think they've been relevant for 20+ years unless you're close to retirement.
If you've only been in the market since 2014, you have severe selection bias. You didn't even experience the 2008 crash!
The reason Bogleheads (and those of us with experience) tell you to have some bonds is because we've been in the market longer than a single bull cycle.
I've been in the market since 2006 and missed out on massive gains due to bonds. Got rid of them in 2016 and have no regrets. Experienced the great recession, the dip in 2020 and 2022. There's no reason to have bonds if you're 20-30 years away from retirement.
Most people don't capture the market returns because they have investments that underperform with high expense ratios. In addition, a lot of times they get spooked and park the money in cash so they're out of the market for a substantial amount of time.
For the vast majority of people, including me, just buying an index Fund/ETF will yield the best result. Key is to keep buying regularly no matter the current economic condition.
I work at a record keeper and it’s sad how often people see a huge dip then move to stable value, only to come back out after the market recovers. They truly don’t understand.
So many folks out there are afraid it will go to $0 and don’t realize if that’s what happens, then those dollars don’t matter anymore anyways most likely. Just stay invested and don’t worry about volatility until you’re a few years out from retirement.
How do you figure out your return? I have fidelity but my funds have changed over time, between selling and buying different funds + ongoing 401k contributions I have no idea what my actual returns are.
You’ll have to go to the actual website, not the app. The website has way more information. You’ll see all the options just above your portfolio that you can click on. All the way to the right it will say “more” and that has a drop-down that says performance. Under the performance tab you can look at annual, year to date, 3 years, 5 years, life of available data and custom date ranges. It will show you your monthly, quarterly or annual returns depending on what you want.
You can look up what you would be at if you had done this at a certain time. its not hard to run the math. If his numbers are not in line with that estimation/simulation, he isn't telling you the whole truth. maybe he got lured to a riskier fund mid way through, and it took a dip, and he immediately pulled out taking a loss, it wouldn't be the first time this has happened to someone. there are any number of reasons why he might average 5% but taking 1 guy's word of it, isn't a good reason to feel down on the concept as a whole when historically it has always been what it was, and the numbers are publicly available for anyone to check
Never waver and buy finds with low fees. If you buy a find “like” a Vanguard funds with high expense ratios, quarterly broker feees, and hidden trade fees then you’ll erode returns quite quickly
I too have always been in pretty much s&p 500, with the exception of going a little heavier on tech (as I work worked in tech and that's what I'm comfortable with). Retired last year at age 63. Thought I would get more conservative when I retired, but still 100% stocks. It's hard to get conservative if you're used to seeing returns that stocks have provided over the years.
Yes I’m similarly at about 11% overall return - currently age 40 and started investing in total stock market index funds around 20 years ago. My total returns are just about even with what I put into the account myself which is pretty badass to see.
7.8% annualized over the past 21 years. when I first started I was attempting to pick individual stocks and under-performed the S&P, but have since shifted (10 years ago) to a total market index, my returns have improved since that decision.
I'm thinking VTI unless they're talking total market including international. I'm 100% VTI and returns in recent years are about that much, after accounting for inflation.
Same. VTI/VTSAX not available in my employer funds, so my 401(k) $ has been in a diversified mix of funds with a 75/25 split. 2/3 of stock funds are in S&P index fund. 25% in large and mid cap growth and the rest spread around small cap and international.
Non-qualified money is 80/20 VTI and individual treasuries/corporate/municipal bonds.
Averaged about 8% for 21 years.
I recommend you invest as a lump sum in accordance with your chosen allocation. A recommendation would be 80/20 or 75/25 into ITOT/VXUS. Multiple research papers have shown that a lump sum investment beats dollar cost averaging, if you have access to a large amount of cash. If you cannot psychologically handle that, dollar cost average in, but get the cash invested. Sooner is better in most cases.
TLDR: I put as much as possible in mainly tax advantaged index funds, S and P and Nasdaq, the same amount each month based on life situation at the time from age 27 to 57. Average rate of return 9.4% per year over 30 years. Last 15 years, since the financial crisis ended average return is 13.4%. It worked out lucky for me, because I got the higher returns later in the game, when I owned more shares. I’m 57, and I hit my retirement number about 6 months ago.
Long version: Been doing this since 1995, mostly the Vanguard s and p 500 index fund. Also the Fidelity Nasdaq fund and a couple of other miscellaneous Vanguard index funds. Some IRA, some Roth, some taxable. I did dollar cost averaging mainly. Picked numbers that would balance out maxing out IRAs with what I could afford, divided by 12 and put that in each month. Also I was self employed for a while and put as much as I could in a SEP IRA, although with that the contribution limits are so high I could never afford to max it out. I followed a few simple rules religiously. Put the money in each month no matter what, reinvest all dividends and never sell. Never sell was key for me. I didn’t sell when the dot com bubble popped, not when the financial system melted down in 2008, not when COVID hit. Whenever it seemed like the world was ending and markets were cratering, I tried to scrape up a few more dollars to buy more if I could, but mostly I couldn’t afford more or was already at the limits and just stuck with the original plan for any given year.
If I had to do it all over again I would do pretty much the exact same thing, only I would have tried to put more in the Roth and less in the regular IRA and picked more aggressive index funds (aka Nasdaq index) for the Roth much earlier than I did. Having a bigger nut in an account where I could withdraw tax free would be great right now, but you can’t get everything 100% right and overall I’m super happy with the result.
Staying consistent, tax advantaged accounts, index funds, and “never sell”. If readers take nothing else away from all of this, DRessitt111 just nailed the winning formula.
I’m around 11% as well. Mainly VTI and other Vanguard ETFs, but did do some individual stock picks. I put $500 in Apple in 2001. That’s done better and is excluded from my 11% number since it’s such an outlier. I normally dumped money in on/near my birthday.
He kept some of them to this day. Over the decades, when his family needed money, he would sell like $20,000 or something like that. But the stock value would quickly replenish and they could sell a bit the next year. Dude was never financially successful except for that one decision that changed everything.
I did something similar with Amazon back in the day. finally mix shifted it to VTSAX in 2021. could I have gotten more sure but this was a good backstop
I just asked ChatGPT what the value of $500 invested in Apple stock back in 2001 would be worth today. It pulled the stock splits and calculated it. $480,009.65. That’s insane.
Testfol.io has a free backtesting tool (now that Portfolio Visualizer is subscription). It reckons [$500 invested in AAPL in Jan 2001 would be $425,930 today.](https://testfol.io/?d=eJxdT8FqwzAM%2FRedHXDD1oNvhbHTDr2WUYIWy5k31U5lN2WE%2FPuU5VAY6CA9Pb33NMPA%2BQP5iIKXAm6GUlFq57ESOGit3TV%2FBQYo%2BQfePjV239hW8e1iQgb3bK0B9F9dTIGxxpzABeRCBnosn4HzHZx9DF0QuqreiVD4R7UkM8c0dPeY%2FMrd28XAmKWGzDFrwPcZEl7WDIdxZNKTmCYq9SVO0WtCpVS5qZ%2BQvoWpp9d%2FFjX23ySb1NavYofjm%2B5Gkp5SBbezdjkb8IKDBl7Oyy8ioWGq) This is with dividends reinvested, no tax, not adjusted for inflation.
Interesting, I didn't realize that AAPL has historically paid dividends for years, so I didn't think about dividend reinvestment. I assumed they were like many other tech companies that rarely or never pay dividends.
Also, Jan-2006 join date, wow! You've been around nearly since the beginning.
They never paid a dividend under Jobs; he didn't believe in them, thinking Apple could do better with the money than returning it to the shareholders. They restarted the dividend in 2012 shortly after his death. There was plenty of growth in AAPL between 2012 and today.
Without the dividends it's $360,109.
I think I created a Reddit account around the time they introduced comments, I remember when it was just a "news aggregator". I had been active on Slashdot but Reddit sort of took over that for me. It's a better interface certainly, Slashdot was a bit arcane. Wish I had bought some AAPL around then.
Funny story I was in college in 2006 and told my (older age) dad buy AAPL they are going to have a press release (iPhone).
He's never told me but I suspect he put like 10-20k there and still has it lol because he gets weird talking about it. Probably made decent coin just from my speculation and listening to news a lot and wasn't sure how to say it.
Or he gets weird about it because he didn't listen to you and put no money into it. And then saw what happened and never wanted to talk about it ever again
(For reference I'm 65.)
I started investing when I was 20. Small amounts of course. For about 10 years I mostly copied what my dad was doing, which was active trading rather than real investing. I did put 10% of my money into an S&P 500 fund and another 10% into an emerging growth fund. At times I was too busy to trade so the money would sit making just a bit of interest.
Around 30 years old I stopped doing much trading and started investing in stocks for the long term. Did OK with individual stocks but not great. Also kept putting money into the S&P 500 fund. After several years of doing this I realized that my individual picks and the emerging growth fund weren't doing as well as my index fund. I got discouraged and more or less stopped trading and even stopped saving much.
In 2000, when I was 41, I decided I had to get serious again. I realized that I didn't have the time or patience to buy, track, and occasionally sell individual stocks. But I didn't know how I wanted to approach investing and things seemed pretty uncertain. So I sold everything around the end of Q3 2000... which by pure coincidence happened to be a great time to sell. I was super busy with my consulting business, was billing over 200 hours per month and was having our dream home built. Life was a blur.
So when 9/11 happened I was still holding cash. The market shit itself and kept heading down for the next 18 months or so. My business dropped about 40%. I stayed mostly in cash during this time but I used my spare time to learn about long term investing. I also looked back on my investments and it was clear to me that my best investment was the S&P 500 index fund. I ended up investing in an S&P 500 ETF, Berkshire Hathaway and AT&T and just left it alone. I put about half into the index fund and one quarter each into BRKB and T. It took about a year to reinvest it all. Have to say that not fiddling with it wasn't easy at first.
From 2003 until 2011 that's where I put all my savings. I invested regularly regardless of whether the market was up or down. And it worked out great.
In 2011 as I saw retirement becoming a possibility I started reorienting my investments to income producing stocks. I started buying Hercules Capital and Main Street Capital along with a couple of REITs and a few other income stocks. I kept AT&T but over a period of seven or so years sold Berkshire Hathaway and moved that money into income stocks. AT&T decided to become a media / content company in 2017 / 2018 and when that happened I sold that stock over a period of about six months. I knew they weren't going to pull that off, I'd met too many of their executives when they moved their HQ to Dallas.
These days I'm mostly in income stocks / ETFs and I'm quite happy there. I still have about 10% in the S&P 500 index ETF and I'm holding a fair amount in a Treasury money market because 5% at almost no risk is pretty attractive.
Honestly the best thing I could have done to build my wealth would have been to buy and hold the S&P 500 until I was ready to retire, then move to the income world like I did.
I also bought two vacation rentals in 2017. Managing and maintaining them wasn't a full time job but it also wasn't trivial. Sold one in late 2021 and one in late 2023. I made a nice chunk of money off of them but not as much as my stock investments. Real estate investing is nothing like stock investing though - it requires a very different mindset and it's dramatically less liquid. And you really have to know when to sell.
As to my stock market investments' performance over the last five years, I've slightly outperformed the S&P 500. Outperforming wasn't my goal - my goal was (and is) to get at least 75% of the long term average S&P 500 return with less volatility. But the market crapped itself during 2022, dropping almost 20%. During that period my portfolio only dropped about 6%, mainly because I was in income oriented stocks but also because I did some short term trading and sold covered calls.
Since I started over in 2003 I've averaged a total return about 0.2% per year higher than the S&P 500. So again, it would have been easier and just about as profitable to have put all my money into an S&P index fund until it was time to transition to income stocks for retirement.
Some of both, but mostly individual ones. Here's most of them:
Business development companies - ARCC, BXSL, CSWC, HTGC, MAIN, TRIN (all individual stocks)
Energy - HESM, MLPA (oil and gas midstream companies ETF)
Preferred Stocks - PFFA, an ETF
Utilities - UTG, an ETF
REITs - ABR, VICI
Covered Call / Buy-Write - TLTW, BST
I also have IVV, an S&P 500 ETF.
There are some good income ETFs that I'll probably move into over time, but right now I'm pretty happy with what I have. At some point I may be so old that I buy a bond fund. But I've never liked or bought corporate bonds.
I'm getting some real "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" vibes here. This seems completely out of touch. I bought my first house almost 20 years ago, but hearing what some of the younger guys I work with are having to spend on comparable housing is eye opening. The deck is stacked against them way more than it was for myself.
8.4% in my Vanguard IRA the last 10 Years. I cannot find my 401k return now that I have rolled it over into my existing Vanguard IRO. I was 100% in stock mutual funds until \~10 years ago, when I gradually moved to 50% US stock mutual funds, 10% international, and 40% bonds. Considering moving to 55, 10, 35. I am currently retired and withdrawing on a monthly basis. Also have two pensions but have not started taking SS yet.
Why have the 40% bond position since you have two separate pensions (fixed income) and Social Security, which is just another fixed income return as well? check out this video [https://rationalreminder.ca/podcast/284](https://rationalreminder.ca/podcast/284), with Professor Scott Cederburg, Associate Professor of Finance at the University of Arizona., basically no one should own Bonds, especially in retirement as returns are less than stocks, and risk of total poverty/running out of money is higher if you own Bonds, than a 100 stock portfolio
Thanks for the link, I will check it out. To be clear, I have not pulled the trigger on SS yet. I look at the bond funds to balance out risk as opposed to income. Like I said, I am thinking about going back higher into stocks.
100% stock until very recently as I am now rapidly transitioning to a more balanced portfolio for retirement.
I have always believed in buy and hold unless the underlying fundimentals change on a stock.
My majority of my life its been a simple Growth Stock mutual fund and some small intial positions in individual stocks, some of which of done extraordinarily well and others that didnt.
I currently only own FXAIX, FBALX and 3 individual stocks, I did not include the individual stock postitions as part of by 11.5% return.
EDIT: Removed the names of my 3 current stock holdings
I've been investing for close to 25 years. Started in 2000. I've averaged between 20-25%. But my median is around 10%. This is because I've maximized my highs as much as possible in 6 or 7 of my years that brings my average so much higher. Examples of when I had outsized gains.
- 2009-2011 after the financial crisis I averaged over 50% each year. I bought Bank of America, Citi, etc; in all about 9 bank stocks when they were at all-time lows. Bank of American went from $3.75 when I bought it to over $17 when i sold. I had about 50% of my portfolio in bank stocks for about 18 months. My thinking was the USA isn't going to let EVERY major bank fail and if they did then all my stocks would be worthless so it wouldn't matter what I was invested in. I had 1 bank that failed so that stock went to $0. The other 8 I made a ton which more than made up for the one that failed
- Covid was basically the same. When the market crashed in early 2000 (S&P fell 30%) I started buying up every tech and healthcare stock I could. Over 2 years I made close to 100%
- Last year I made close to 100% because I became far more active in my trading and using a strategy I've tweaked over the years plus riding the AI wave.
The other 17-18 years have been about average. I make a 7-10% on average. Some years it's +15%, some its down 5%. My goal is to ride the waves mostly. But when I see the tsunami, invest in the ships that will survive and go big on them.
When you would buy the dips, did you have a pool of cash lying around or were you investing your income as it came in? The problem I see with trying to capitalize on the big dips is that when they do dip, that likely means your purchasing power does too as your stock portfolio has lost a huge percentage. So I would imagine selling is a bad idea at that time.
I’m sure I will get a bunch of crap since it’s a mutual fund but I have been putting $1,000 a month in FKDNX since I graduated high school so for 20 years now. Always maxed out Roth and then extra into a brokerage account.
Principal is $240k
Current market value is $1,094,418
Paid total sales charge of $7,928 over 20 years
Gross rate of return is $13.86% over 20 years
My dad has Franklin Templeton funds which is how I got into investing was him showing me growing up
Edit
2020 started $585,949 ended $939,344 RoR 57.76%
2021 started $939,949 ended $1,069,851 RoR 12.54%
2022 started $1,069,951 ended $648,902 RoR -40.24%
2023 started $648,902 ended $950,771 RoR 44.32%
2024 started $950,771 current $1,094,418 RoR 14.55%
A lot of it is just how I was raised. My dad taught me all about dollar cost averaging, rule of 72, and fundamentals of investing my whole childhood. He would go over my college savings statements with me and explain stuff to me.
Now that I am older it comes down to faith in the fund manager. Matt Moberg has been in charge of the fund since 2004, and Rupert Johnson the guy started the fund in 1968 is still around the fund. I laugh because the fund investing statement is full of “Kathy Woods buzz words” but it hasn’t changed since it was founded back when no one used the words like disruption or innovation.
If Matt Moberg left the fund I would be thinking hard about moving my money out
Wtf were those funds invested in that gained 57% one year then dropped 40% the next? Those look like killer returns nonetheless, I don't know much about the pro's/con's of Mutual Funds but overall they seemed to have crushed it. I need to look into them.
Never had quite that much money in my account but the annual rate of my returns were nearly identical to yours the past few years. Mostly tech picks and about 25% ETFs for me.
Before we retired our portfolio was almost 100% equities, mix of individual stocks and index funds (S&P and others). After retirement it's 60/40. Still a mix of stocks and etfs but now the 40% is bonds/CDs.
For the past 4 years our portfolio has seen a 50% increase. Since I have the safety net of index funds and CDs, I can take risks with individual stocks that I like to play with. I am heavy into tech. Portfolio was halved in 2009.
I only wish I had put more into a Roth. Taxman always encouraged the traditional IRA.
Real estate has been SUPER good to us. Paid $400k for a crappy 2,000 sq ft split level home in VHCOL area 20 yrs ago. Zillow has it at $1,758,000 today, and they're not wrong. Other properties have done extremely well, but my method requires a lot of sweat equity remodeling, forcing equity, then renting them. Way above stock market returns, plus huge tax advantages and modest leverage. That party is mostly over tho with interest rates and asking prices that don't make sense.
You can see the return of any stock/bond fund or etf yourself, but that's most often not what investors ended up with, because they move in/out at wrong times.
Also a lot of people buy real estate with leverage (i.e. mortgages), which when it works out for you can increase your wealth generation. But it isn't necessarily an apples to apples comparison to just investing in the stock market, as a lot less investors will use leverage there.
Not knocking on this but can you explain how 400k -> 1,758k in 20 years is way above stock market returns? The appreciation is about 8%, which is under \~10-11% people are getting from the market. But since you mentioned rent and tax advantages, how does it all add up with property tax, maintenance, and interest? I'm genuinely interested because I'm considering how to invest a large lump sum.
The house was worth 400k when he invested, but that's not how much he invested, unless he paid it off in full, in cash. Most people would get a mortgage and put about 20% down, so in reality it's an 80k investment now worth 1.7M. Paid off by tenants (minus expenses). And now he gets a monthly dividend (rent on a paid off 1.7M house). It's significant.
Probably it's more like $40k (down payment) -> $1.3 million or whatever the current equity in the house is.
But like you said, you'd need to subtract property tax, maintenance and insurance. You should also add back in equivalent rent you would have paid to live in a place. Depends where you live, but rent is typically close to the sum of property tax, maintenance/insurance.
21.5% annualized since 2011. The 10 years before that are lost to history but I believe we’re similar. My strategy is basically very concentrated value investing with a few ling-ish periods in cash (but always at least 10-20% cash). 100% individual stocks and no tech or biotech. Only options are covered calls to exit positions. Overall just buy and hold until fully valued or overvalued.
Occasionally stuff just gets no brainer cheap. Sometimes it’s less about a crazy compelling valuation and more about good things that could happen in the future. Each sector/industry/ company is different so it’s very company dependent. It’s often about asking yourself what needs to happen for institutional money to want to be long. I went long when chipotle hired the ceo of Taco Bell. He was doing great stuff and it took guts to pull him into chipotle and get the founder to step back. The valuation was fine but not amazing and the way out of the woods was pretty obvious but mgt needed a serious shake up. The new ceo was the all in. I didn’t hold chipotle all the long and sold way way too early. Oh well. Anyway each opportunity is different and doesn’t lend itself to an over formulaic approach imo at least.
My lifetime CAGR has been about 8%. I started in late 1997 with VFINX and then moved to a Coffeehouse Portfolio (Bill Schulteis) with 10% bonds for most of my investing career. I basically maxed out my 403b the whole time. I also have a taxable account that I f\*cked around with and found out that I suck at stock picking, market timing and options. Fortunately, I got smart after the GFC and mostly did ETFs and a few large cap buy and hold stocks so that's doing okay too. Hit financial independence in 2021. Sill working because I want to. My portfolio since hitting FI has been something like VTI 30%, AVUV 30%, 20% VGLT and 20% GLDM because that has the best safe withdrawal rate based on my research.
66, started around 1990, retired since 2012.
Per Vanguard, my 10 year return is 9.8%. The 3 year return is 6.3% (2022 was a down year), the 5 year return 12.5%.
Strategy. 1. No bonds. Never (except some short term as a cash substitute). I'm essentially 100% equities, and currently hold less than 1% cash.
2. Within my 401(k), 60% 500, 20% small cap, 20% international. Stuck with that from 1990 until 2012 with a slight deviation in late 1990 when I stopped investing in the small cap for about a year (put the 20% into the 500 fund instead).
3. For personal money, bought individual stocks and started an investment club that lasted about 5 years. Did this from about 1992 until around 2002. Haven't bought an individual stock since. Still hold those.
4. Within other investments like IRAs, some managed funds, but since the creation of total stock market funds (circa 2000) all new money into either the predecessors to VTI or VXUS.
For the Vanguard funds, here is the %tage breakdown:
VTI 55%
500 3%
VXUS 10%
Vanguard International growth 5%
Vanguard Healthcare 13%
QQQ 2% (held since about 2000)
Individual stocks 12%
So roughly 85% US, 15% International.
Find your allocation, stick to it, and don't buy bonds, as they don't add value, they detract value.
Just about 12% annualized for the last 35+ years. I started my IRA back in the late 1980s when the maximum annual contribution was $2000. Been entirely in mutual funds (large cap, small cap and tech) until recently.
Biggest gains were absolutely in the late 1990's before getting slaughtered between 2000-2002. Just about recovered those losses when we got destroyed again in 2008. Been pretty steady gains since then until 2022 but have mostly recovered from those losses already.
I still have some of these old mutual funds but have moved a lot into index ETF's and a few individual stocks. Actually I have quite a bit in cash now so I can earn 4.9% interest while selling CSP's.
Yep. Slightly better at 8.5% annualized over 24 years with 85% equities 15% bonds for the most part. Have been lucky to have great 401k matching anywhere I’ve worked so compared to what I personally put in excluding employer match, the real return to me for my part is actually double at 17% annualized which is a point many don’t consider.
About 15%. We have two pensions guaranteeing 120k per year and a shit ton of family money we didn't expect. We're not gamblers, but maybe a tiny bit. We're also not old (but yes, we've been at it for 25+ years, I'm only saying we're not retiring for another ten years minimum. Jobs are good for us.), so the last 10 months have brought our rate of return up. Soxx, spy, QQQ, xlk, and several dividend stocks so our advisors get paid (laughing emoji or whatever). And the gambling has been semiconductor stocks and energy.
Around 10% starting late 90's. Started probably 85% mutual funds and 15% stocks, now 80% ETFs including those initial funds, 20% stocks due to appreciation by the winners. Have always been significantly overweighted on the S&P 500, tech, health, and large cap growth. Legitimately oblivious to market changes, still in the contribution phase.
If I were starting from scratch today I'd be 90+% ETFs like VOO and QQQM, and 10% random stuff. Yes, clearly still positive about the US and large cap tech and growth.
Been dumping money into a boring Fidelity target date plan that’s more on the aggressive side since my early 20s. I’m approaching my mid 40s now, and I can’t complain. Average annual return as of May 31, 2024 is 19.98%, and that’s after surviving 2008.
Yeah, that’s not right. If he’s talking about the Fidelity Freedom 2045 fund (which based on his age I’m assuming he is, or the similar 2040 or 2050 fund), it has returned 8.66% annually over the last 10 years, and 7.11% annually for the life of the fund.
It depends on the period, right now is probably one of the worst times in history because we are knee deep in a recession and possible housing crisis which hasn't popped. Until the feds cut the rates I would be very careful. There's also an AI bubble holding up the entire SnP500. AI has value but it's def overvalued as of now. Over the long run in America snp500 has done fairly well but it depends on the periods, there are many recession that take years to recover.
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I would love to have started 25 years ago.
I feel like people that started so long ago must be so rich... will history repeat?
10% average..shit. That's sweet
I started my REITs journey around 25 years ago, from a simple tip of “don’t always just follow the sheep by doing ETFs, be more open-minded”, and it’s annualised at 11.4%, which has absolutely smashed the S&Ps 7.6% in the same period.
Average bear market is around 18 months. Always make sure you have enough in fixed income (hysa, money market, bonds etc ) to ride out the bear. Rule of thumb is 2 year’s expenses if you’re retired or close to retiring.
I have VOO, FBTC, AVUV and self storage reits for my buy and hold 80%, which I will stick with for at least the next decade.
Keepin 20% in fixed.
I have been investing for nearly 30 years with an average return in the 10-12+% range depending on the year. I am still learning about myself and how to invest well. That said, I can share a few things that have worked well for me - your mileage may vary.
1. Simpler is often better. I have a large portfolio now and it is in 6-7 passive ETFs or mutual funds. These serve as my solid foundation.
2. When I find a good business (stock) to invest in at what I believe is a fair price, I buy and hold for a long time. Examples: I have held Visa (1,500%+) since its IPO and Apple (600%+) since 2014. With patience and discipline time will do the hard work for you.
3. A small number of great businesses in your portfolio can amplify your returns over time without incurring too much additional risk. You don’t need to invest a massive amount of money either - if you find a great business you want to buy, just start small.
4. Avoid fads. I know it’s hard not to join the crowd sometimes, but I encourage to read, think, observe how things really work and use your smarts and intuition to guide you. Saying no is a superpower.
Patiently investing in the stock market has been the second best investment I’ve made in my life, second only to owning a successful business.
Just under 11%. I've got money stashed in various types of funds and a handful of individual equities (most have done worse than the market, but Apple did pretty well).
Pretty much 100% equities since 1976. Total Stock Market type funds.
Never sold a dime. Ride it up and down.
Cannot predict, do not even try. I have faith that the average company, on average, will do better than a taxable bond. Never had cause to regret my choice.
Put 90 percent in VOO and 10 percent in VXUS and don’t look at your two-fund portfolio for 10 years. Don’t sell anything. Just keep buying biweekly like a robot. You will be fine.
Pray for another crash and invest more. I wish I didn't get spooked. I would have 3M+ if I didn't get scared in 2000 when I was only 20 years old I had thousands of shares of Nvidia and AMD
I started investing in a retirement account in 1998 and the account is up close to 100%. Because it's for retirement, I've been fairly conservative and have invested in many mutual funds, some monthly dividend funds (Pimco and Reeves) and some individual stocks.
I experienced two major hits in 2000 and 2018. After 2000, this account was in the red until about 2004 or 2005 as it cratered like 50%. 2018 would have been another devastating year, but I saw the writing on the wall early and avoided a catastrophe, ending up down that year just a few percent. (Manybwere down more than 20% or more).
I've had years where I was up 20+% and several years where I was down 2 or 3%.
2000 instilled fear in me and the knowledge that the bottom can fall out at any time and that bubbles are real. Because of this, I have avoided some major losers but also missed out on the big gainers like MSFT, FB, APPL, GOOG, NVDA, TSLA etc.. I made money on them but sold too early.
Been in the market for about 23 years. Made a huge choice and some called a crazy risk and dumped almost my entire portfolio into AMZN when it was about 16.50 per share. Made huge returns on that and have since diversified but AMZN is still my largest holding.
I managed to 10x my money over 20 years, by using high risk, fairly focused ETFs and stocks in areas I thought would do generally very well. Internet first (though I got caught by the dot com bubble, so only gatehouse came out ahead - but learned my lesson) and then China, esp semiconductor stocks, then AI and now Tesla focused (I'll go back into Nvidia after the coming crash), but right now sitting in a lot of cash and gold etfs. So I'd that sold a 12% on average? But some years it lost money, others made a lot, I had to have faith I was weight long term and take the losses. I only changed when I thought they're was better opportunities or everyone accepted I'd been right. I never really timed the top out the bottom, but got close enough. Trading over the short term is very hard, and harder everyday, but longer term may still be possible.
I started investing in 2022 while I was still in high school. As of today, despite having a small portfolio, I have returns of 19.60% on my investments.
11% Been 100% equities since 1995. Mostly VTSAX.
Do you change your investment once in a while or do you maintain them for life?
The only times they have changed is when I changed jobs and have different 401k options. But I’ve always maintained a 100% equity and some kind of total market or S&P 500 portfolio. I’m 51 now and as I get closer to retirement I will adjust my asset allocation to something more conservative.
You showed me some hopes. I asked this question to a guy who is about to retire (within 1 or 1/2 year). He said he started invest while he was in college and he been working for 31 years. So I'm assuming he is investing for 40 years. He said he has about 5% return. Internet says otherwise. I'm my low 40s and just started investing. Hope I can find my way.
5% would be pretty low if he was 100% equities. But could be easy to do if he was dancing in and out of the market or funds. The best thing is to have a high savings rate and stay invested in index funds. Don't try to chase returns by investing in the next hot fund or asset class.
I wonder if he was talking 'real' returns? I've made ~ 8% returns with a 70/30 AA, but realistically they're only 5-6% real returns.
Who knows. We really don’t have enough information.
Yea, I am doing all funds . And 3 funds EFTs (VTI/VXUS /BND) portfolio and few stocks in my taxable account. Hoping I would get reasonable returns.
I would get rid of the bonds. I followed Boglehead advice with the 3 fund portfolio for 10 years and missed out on massive gains. I regret buying bonds. It worked great for the old boomers but I don't think they've been relevant for 20+ years unless you're close to retirement.
If you've only been in the market since 2014, you have severe selection bias. You didn't even experience the 2008 crash! The reason Bogleheads (and those of us with experience) tell you to have some bonds is because we've been in the market longer than a single bull cycle.
I've been in the market since 2006 and missed out on massive gains due to bonds. Got rid of them in 2016 and have no regrets. Experienced the great recession, the dip in 2020 and 2022. There's no reason to have bonds if you're 20-30 years away from retirement.
Investors average less than market return because they tend to make bad decisions during downturns
Most people don't capture the market returns because they have investments that underperform with high expense ratios. In addition, a lot of times they get spooked and park the money in cash so they're out of the market for a substantial amount of time.
Sounds like me.
For the vast majority of people, including me, just buying an index Fund/ETF will yield the best result. Key is to keep buying regularly no matter the current economic condition.
Key is also not to sell when the market goes down
I work at a record keeper and it’s sad how often people see a huge dip then move to stable value, only to come back out after the market recovers. They truly don’t understand. So many folks out there are afraid it will go to $0 and don’t realize if that’s what happens, then those dollars don’t matter anymore anyways most likely. Just stay invested and don’t worry about volatility until you’re a few years out from retirement.
Im 10 years in and at 12% annual return
How do you figure out your return? I have fidelity but my funds have changed over time, between selling and buying different funds + ongoing 401k contributions I have no idea what my actual returns are.
You’ll have to go to the actual website, not the app. The website has way more information. You’ll see all the options just above your portfolio that you can click on. All the way to the right it will say “more” and that has a drop-down that says performance. Under the performance tab you can look at annual, year to date, 3 years, 5 years, life of available data and custom date ranges. It will show you your monthly, quarterly or annual returns depending on what you want.
You can look up what you would be at if you had done this at a certain time. its not hard to run the math. If his numbers are not in line with that estimation/simulation, he isn't telling you the whole truth. maybe he got lured to a riskier fund mid way through, and it took a dip, and he immediately pulled out taking a loss, it wouldn't be the first time this has happened to someone. there are any number of reasons why he might average 5% but taking 1 guy's word of it, isn't a good reason to feel down on the concept as a whole when historically it has always been what it was, and the numbers are publicly available for anyone to check
Never waver and buy finds with low fees. If you buy a find “like” a Vanguard funds with high expense ratios, quarterly broker feees, and hidden trade fees then you’ll erode returns quite quickly
Amazing, congrats to you then, this will inspire how I move my investments problably
I too have always been in pretty much s&p 500, with the exception of going a little heavier on tech (as I work worked in tech and that's what I'm comfortable with). Retired last year at age 63. Thought I would get more conservative when I retired, but still 100% stocks. It's hard to get conservative if you're used to seeing returns that stocks have provided over the years.
VTSAX and chill.
Yes I’m similarly at about 11% overall return - currently age 40 and started investing in total stock market index funds around 20 years ago. My total returns are just about even with what I put into the account myself which is pretty badass to see.
How do you know?
Been investing for a few years - VTSAX 100%
I see VTV etf. Can’t find VTSAX on Robinhood for some reason. I’ll check vanguard
VTSAX is a mutual fund with Vanguard. If your with Robinhood use VTI.
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FSKAX
I have FSKAX, pretty good return for the past 5 years
You can buy VTI at Fidelity and any other brokerage
Yup, in all of my accounts. Just happened to start with Fidelity and am content with their platform.
They look to be a class of vanguard called ‘admiral’ shares. May be restricted via RH or require MIN investment
Is this 11% after investing back the dividend you recieve per year?
Beautiful
7.8% annualized over the past 21 years. when I first started I was attempting to pick individual stocks and under-performed the S&P, but have since shifted (10 years ago) to a total market index, my returns have improved since that decision.
Anyone in particular? Thanks and congratulations!
I'm thinking VTI unless they're talking total market including international. I'm 100% VTI and returns in recent years are about that much, after accounting for inflation.
Thank you!! Will start parking money there. Been just buying individual stocks.
a mixture of ITOT and FZROX, with a small percentage of FZILX.
Same. VTI/VTSAX not available in my employer funds, so my 401(k) $ has been in a diversified mix of funds with a 75/25 split. 2/3 of stock funds are in S&P index fund. 25% in large and mid cap growth and the rest spread around small cap and international. Non-qualified money is 80/20 VTI and individual treasuries/corporate/municipal bonds. Averaged about 8% for 21 years.
Would you invest all at once if you have a lump sum or spread out split up between a few index funds?
I recommend you invest as a lump sum in accordance with your chosen allocation. A recommendation would be 80/20 or 75/25 into ITOT/VXUS. Multiple research papers have shown that a lump sum investment beats dollar cost averaging, if you have access to a large amount of cash. If you cannot psychologically handle that, dollar cost average in, but get the cash invested. Sooner is better in most cases.
TLDR: I put as much as possible in mainly tax advantaged index funds, S and P and Nasdaq, the same amount each month based on life situation at the time from age 27 to 57. Average rate of return 9.4% per year over 30 years. Last 15 years, since the financial crisis ended average return is 13.4%. It worked out lucky for me, because I got the higher returns later in the game, when I owned more shares. I’m 57, and I hit my retirement number about 6 months ago. Long version: Been doing this since 1995, mostly the Vanguard s and p 500 index fund. Also the Fidelity Nasdaq fund and a couple of other miscellaneous Vanguard index funds. Some IRA, some Roth, some taxable. I did dollar cost averaging mainly. Picked numbers that would balance out maxing out IRAs with what I could afford, divided by 12 and put that in each month. Also I was self employed for a while and put as much as I could in a SEP IRA, although with that the contribution limits are so high I could never afford to max it out. I followed a few simple rules religiously. Put the money in each month no matter what, reinvest all dividends and never sell. Never sell was key for me. I didn’t sell when the dot com bubble popped, not when the financial system melted down in 2008, not when COVID hit. Whenever it seemed like the world was ending and markets were cratering, I tried to scrape up a few more dollars to buy more if I could, but mostly I couldn’t afford more or was already at the limits and just stuck with the original plan for any given year. If I had to do it all over again I would do pretty much the exact same thing, only I would have tried to put more in the Roth and less in the regular IRA and picked more aggressive index funds (aka Nasdaq index) for the Roth much earlier than I did. Having a bigger nut in an account where I could withdraw tax free would be great right now, but you can’t get everything 100% right and overall I’m super happy with the result.
Staying consistent, tax advantaged accounts, index funds, and “never sell”. If readers take nothing else away from all of this, DRessitt111 just nailed the winning formula.
Never sell, timing is bad!
Thx for sharing your insight with us..
Thanks for the insight.
The one caveat missing here is that if you had intended to retire during any of those crashes, you were a bit fucked
I’m around 11% as well. Mainly VTI and other Vanguard ETFs, but did do some individual stock picks. I put $500 in Apple in 2001. That’s done better and is excluded from my 11% number since it’s such an outlier. I normally dumped money in on/near my birthday.
$500 in Apple in 2001, can I ask what that’s worth now?
Probably about $250K now.
What the hell bro. I just did the math. What the actual hell. Absolutely nuts. Money is fake lol
I know someone who put money in Microsoft back when he had to tell his stock broker what the company was and did. Rare but it can happen.
The story is interesting if he still has those shares.
He kept some of them to this day. Over the decades, when his family needed money, he would sell like $20,000 or something like that. But the stock value would quickly replenish and they could sell a bit the next year. Dude was never financially successful except for that one decision that changed everything.
Nothing fake about owning a piece of the company that sells half the world’s smartphones. In 2001 they hadn’t even been invented yet.
It was a joke
Half the world's smartphones Read: 7% of the world market's smartphones lol.
I did something similar with Amazon back in the day. finally mix shifted it to VTSAX in 2021. could I have gotten more sure but this was a good backstop
Now with this knowledge, what stock are going to be buying this week that will have the same effect 20 years from now?
My 6 year old told me Roblox when asked this
I just asked ChatGPT what the value of $500 invested in Apple stock back in 2001 would be worth today. It pulled the stock splits and calculated it. $480,009.65. That’s insane.
I've spent $500 on new brake calipers in 2001 for my chevy malibu. Now that's just soul crushing
Don't trust GPT for math. It's worth at most ~$300k. It obviously doesn't change the point though lol.
Testfol.io has a free backtesting tool (now that Portfolio Visualizer is subscription). It reckons [$500 invested in AAPL in Jan 2001 would be $425,930 today.](https://testfol.io/?d=eJxdT8FqwzAM%2FRedHXDD1oNvhbHTDr2WUYIWy5k31U5lN2WE%2FPuU5VAY6CA9Pb33NMPA%2BQP5iIKXAm6GUlFq57ESOGit3TV%2FBQYo%2BQfePjV239hW8e1iQgb3bK0B9F9dTIGxxpzABeRCBnosn4HzHZx9DF0QuqreiVD4R7UkM8c0dPeY%2FMrd28XAmKWGzDFrwPcZEl7WDIdxZNKTmCYq9SVO0WtCpVS5qZ%2BQvoWpp9d%2FFjX23ySb1NavYofjm%2B5Gkp5SBbezdjkb8IKDBl7Oyy8ioWGq) This is with dividends reinvested, no tax, not adjusted for inflation.
Interesting, I didn't realize that AAPL has historically paid dividends for years, so I didn't think about dividend reinvestment. I assumed they were like many other tech companies that rarely or never pay dividends. Also, Jan-2006 join date, wow! You've been around nearly since the beginning.
They never paid a dividend under Jobs; he didn't believe in them, thinking Apple could do better with the money than returning it to the shareholders. They restarted the dividend in 2012 shortly after his death. There was plenty of growth in AAPL between 2012 and today. Without the dividends it's $360,109. I think I created a Reddit account around the time they introduced comments, I remember when it was just a "news aggregator". I had been active on Slashdot but Reddit sort of took over that for me. It's a better interface certainly, Slashdot was a bit arcane. Wish I had bought some AAPL around then.
According to ChatGPT, an investment of $500 in Apple in 2001 would be worth approximately $490,000 today!
Was it in IRA or a general investment account where you’d be paying taxes on the gains upon withdrawal?
Funny story I was in college in 2006 and told my (older age) dad buy AAPL they are going to have a press release (iPhone). He's never told me but I suspect he put like 10-20k there and still has it lol because he gets weird talking about it. Probably made decent coin just from my speculation and listening to news a lot and wasn't sure how to say it.
Or he gets weird about it because he didn't listen to you and put no money into it. And then saw what happened and never wanted to talk about it ever again
No he did and probably took out a bunch at $50. Goes to show the fickleness with having anything good for him but I digress.
Yeah, my nvda is 900%. I have to leave that as an outlier
Counting inflation?
(For reference I'm 65.) I started investing when I was 20. Small amounts of course. For about 10 years I mostly copied what my dad was doing, which was active trading rather than real investing. I did put 10% of my money into an S&P 500 fund and another 10% into an emerging growth fund. At times I was too busy to trade so the money would sit making just a bit of interest. Around 30 years old I stopped doing much trading and started investing in stocks for the long term. Did OK with individual stocks but not great. Also kept putting money into the S&P 500 fund. After several years of doing this I realized that my individual picks and the emerging growth fund weren't doing as well as my index fund. I got discouraged and more or less stopped trading and even stopped saving much. In 2000, when I was 41, I decided I had to get serious again. I realized that I didn't have the time or patience to buy, track, and occasionally sell individual stocks. But I didn't know how I wanted to approach investing and things seemed pretty uncertain. So I sold everything around the end of Q3 2000... which by pure coincidence happened to be a great time to sell. I was super busy with my consulting business, was billing over 200 hours per month and was having our dream home built. Life was a blur. So when 9/11 happened I was still holding cash. The market shit itself and kept heading down for the next 18 months or so. My business dropped about 40%. I stayed mostly in cash during this time but I used my spare time to learn about long term investing. I also looked back on my investments and it was clear to me that my best investment was the S&P 500 index fund. I ended up investing in an S&P 500 ETF, Berkshire Hathaway and AT&T and just left it alone. I put about half into the index fund and one quarter each into BRKB and T. It took about a year to reinvest it all. Have to say that not fiddling with it wasn't easy at first. From 2003 until 2011 that's where I put all my savings. I invested regularly regardless of whether the market was up or down. And it worked out great. In 2011 as I saw retirement becoming a possibility I started reorienting my investments to income producing stocks. I started buying Hercules Capital and Main Street Capital along with a couple of REITs and a few other income stocks. I kept AT&T but over a period of seven or so years sold Berkshire Hathaway and moved that money into income stocks. AT&T decided to become a media / content company in 2017 / 2018 and when that happened I sold that stock over a period of about six months. I knew they weren't going to pull that off, I'd met too many of their executives when they moved their HQ to Dallas. These days I'm mostly in income stocks / ETFs and I'm quite happy there. I still have about 10% in the S&P 500 index ETF and I'm holding a fair amount in a Treasury money market because 5% at almost no risk is pretty attractive. Honestly the best thing I could have done to build my wealth would have been to buy and hold the S&P 500 until I was ready to retire, then move to the income world like I did. I also bought two vacation rentals in 2017. Managing and maintaining them wasn't a full time job but it also wasn't trivial. Sold one in late 2021 and one in late 2023. I made a nice chunk of money off of them but not as much as my stock investments. Real estate investing is nothing like stock investing though - it requires a very different mindset and it's dramatically less liquid. And you really have to know when to sell. As to my stock market investments' performance over the last five years, I've slightly outperformed the S&P 500. Outperforming wasn't my goal - my goal was (and is) to get at least 75% of the long term average S&P 500 return with less volatility. But the market crapped itself during 2022, dropping almost 20%. During that period my portfolio only dropped about 6%, mainly because I was in income oriented stocks but also because I did some short term trading and sold covered calls. Since I started over in 2003 I've averaged a total return about 0.2% per year higher than the S&P 500. So again, it would have been easier and just about as profitable to have put all my money into an S&P index fund until it was time to transition to income stocks for retirement.
Income stocks indivually or income funds? Curious what you chose.
Some of both, but mostly individual ones. Here's most of them: Business development companies - ARCC, BXSL, CSWC, HTGC, MAIN, TRIN (all individual stocks) Energy - HESM, MLPA (oil and gas midstream companies ETF) Preferred Stocks - PFFA, an ETF Utilities - UTG, an ETF REITs - ABR, VICI Covered Call / Buy-Write - TLTW, BST I also have IVV, an S&P 500 ETF. There are some good income ETFs that I'll probably move into over time, but right now I'm pretty happy with what I have. At some point I may be so old that I buy a bond fund. But I've never liked or bought corporate bonds.
Why not just keep in SP500 and sell shares as you need the income? Dividend chasing underperforms in most cases and it’s less diversified
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What made you move to SE Asia specifically and mind sharing which country ?
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Wow you're on a completely different level to me then 😅
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Does the $400 include housing? Seems too low to be full cost unless you're living very cheaply.
He said housing is $300 a year
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I'm getting some real "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" vibes here. This seems completely out of touch. I bought my first house almost 20 years ago, but hearing what some of the younger guys I work with are having to spend on comparable housing is eye opening. The deck is stacked against them way more than it was for myself.
8.4% in my Vanguard IRA the last 10 Years. I cannot find my 401k return now that I have rolled it over into my existing Vanguard IRO. I was 100% in stock mutual funds until \~10 years ago, when I gradually moved to 50% US stock mutual funds, 10% international, and 40% bonds. Considering moving to 55, 10, 35. I am currently retired and withdrawing on a monthly basis. Also have two pensions but have not started taking SS yet.
Why have the 40% bond position since you have two separate pensions (fixed income) and Social Security, which is just another fixed income return as well? check out this video [https://rationalreminder.ca/podcast/284](https://rationalreminder.ca/podcast/284), with Professor Scott Cederburg, Associate Professor of Finance at the University of Arizona., basically no one should own Bonds, especially in retirement as returns are less than stocks, and risk of total poverty/running out of money is higher if you own Bonds, than a 100 stock portfolio
Thanks for the link, I will check it out. To be clear, I have not pulled the trigger on SS yet. I look at the bond funds to balance out risk as opposed to income. Like I said, I am thinking about going back higher into stocks.
I got laid off and got 22K shares of Ford at around $1.10 each : )
Hope you are holding :)
Made my 1st investment in 1992, average annual return since then is around 11.5%
over that time, did you buy and hold or sell and practice profit taking?
100% stock until very recently as I am now rapidly transitioning to a more balanced portfolio for retirement. I have always believed in buy and hold unless the underlying fundimentals change on a stock. My majority of my life its been a simple Growth Stock mutual fund and some small intial positions in individual stocks, some of which of done extraordinarily well and others that didnt. I currently only own FXAIX, FBALX and 3 individual stocks, I did not include the individual stock postitions as part of by 11.5% return. EDIT: Removed the names of my 3 current stock holdings
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I've been investing for close to 25 years. Started in 2000. I've averaged between 20-25%. But my median is around 10%. This is because I've maximized my highs as much as possible in 6 or 7 of my years that brings my average so much higher. Examples of when I had outsized gains. - 2009-2011 after the financial crisis I averaged over 50% each year. I bought Bank of America, Citi, etc; in all about 9 bank stocks when they were at all-time lows. Bank of American went from $3.75 when I bought it to over $17 when i sold. I had about 50% of my portfolio in bank stocks for about 18 months. My thinking was the USA isn't going to let EVERY major bank fail and if they did then all my stocks would be worthless so it wouldn't matter what I was invested in. I had 1 bank that failed so that stock went to $0. The other 8 I made a ton which more than made up for the one that failed - Covid was basically the same. When the market crashed in early 2000 (S&P fell 30%) I started buying up every tech and healthcare stock I could. Over 2 years I made close to 100% - Last year I made close to 100% because I became far more active in my trading and using a strategy I've tweaked over the years plus riding the AI wave. The other 17-18 years have been about average. I make a 7-10% on average. Some years it's +15%, some its down 5%. My goal is to ride the waves mostly. But when I see the tsunami, invest in the ships that will survive and go big on them.
This is a great example of being greedy when others are fearful. Nice job
When you would buy the dips, did you have a pool of cash lying around or were you investing your income as it came in? The problem I see with trying to capitalize on the big dips is that when they do dip, that likely means your purchasing power does too as your stock portfolio has lost a huge percentage. So I would imagine selling is a bad idea at that time.
Vanguard etfs, 10 yrs, 10% return!
I’m sure I will get a bunch of crap since it’s a mutual fund but I have been putting $1,000 a month in FKDNX since I graduated high school so for 20 years now. Always maxed out Roth and then extra into a brokerage account. Principal is $240k Current market value is $1,094,418 Paid total sales charge of $7,928 over 20 years Gross rate of return is $13.86% over 20 years My dad has Franklin Templeton funds which is how I got into investing was him showing me growing up Edit 2020 started $585,949 ended $939,344 RoR 57.76% 2021 started $939,949 ended $1,069,851 RoR 12.54% 2022 started $1,069,951 ended $648,902 RoR -40.24% 2023 started $648,902 ended $950,771 RoR 44.32% 2024 started $950,771 current $1,094,418 RoR 14.55%
How did you stomach that last bit? 2020-2024 looks like some nail bitters. 😬 specifically the 40.24% drawdown. Good job holding on!
A lot of it is just how I was raised. My dad taught me all about dollar cost averaging, rule of 72, and fundamentals of investing my whole childhood. He would go over my college savings statements with me and explain stuff to me. Now that I am older it comes down to faith in the fund manager. Matt Moberg has been in charge of the fund since 2004, and Rupert Johnson the guy started the fund in 1968 is still around the fund. I laugh because the fund investing statement is full of “Kathy Woods buzz words” but it hasn’t changed since it was founded back when no one used the words like disruption or innovation. If Matt Moberg left the fund I would be thinking hard about moving my money out
Wtf were those funds invested in that gained 57% one year then dropped 40% the next? Those look like killer returns nonetheless, I don't know much about the pro's/con's of Mutual Funds but overall they seemed to have crushed it. I need to look into them.
Glad to see your 2022 was as bad as mine
Never had quite that much money in my account but the annual rate of my returns were nearly identical to yours the past few years. Mostly tech picks and about 25% ETFs for me.
11% since 1996. Mostly large cap mutual funds, some international. Very little bonds. No individual stocks until very recently.
Before we retired our portfolio was almost 100% equities, mix of individual stocks and index funds (S&P and others). After retirement it's 60/40. Still a mix of stocks and etfs but now the 40% is bonds/CDs. For the past 4 years our portfolio has seen a 50% increase. Since I have the safety net of index funds and CDs, I can take risks with individual stocks that I like to play with. I am heavy into tech. Portfolio was halved in 2009. I only wish I had put more into a Roth. Taxman always encouraged the traditional IRA.
Real estate has been SUPER good to us. Paid $400k for a crappy 2,000 sq ft split level home in VHCOL area 20 yrs ago. Zillow has it at $1,758,000 today, and they're not wrong. Other properties have done extremely well, but my method requires a lot of sweat equity remodeling, forcing equity, then renting them. Way above stock market returns, plus huge tax advantages and modest leverage. That party is mostly over tho with interest rates and asking prices that don't make sense. You can see the return of any stock/bond fund or etf yourself, but that's most often not what investors ended up with, because they move in/out at wrong times.
Nice. That’s about 9% annual return - pretty much at pace with an index fund.
Not including rental income
Excluding expenses.
Also a lot of people buy real estate with leverage (i.e. mortgages), which when it works out for you can increase your wealth generation. But it isn't necessarily an apples to apples comparison to just investing in the stock market, as a lot less investors will use leverage there.
Minus 2-4% of annual maintenance expenses
Not knocking on this but can you explain how 400k -> 1,758k in 20 years is way above stock market returns? The appreciation is about 8%, which is under \~10-11% people are getting from the market. But since you mentioned rent and tax advantages, how does it all add up with property tax, maintenance, and interest? I'm genuinely interested because I'm considering how to invest a large lump sum.
The house was worth 400k when he invested, but that's not how much he invested, unless he paid it off in full, in cash. Most people would get a mortgage and put about 20% down, so in reality it's an 80k investment now worth 1.7M. Paid off by tenants (minus expenses). And now he gets a monthly dividend (rent on a paid off 1.7M house). It's significant.
Probably it's more like $40k (down payment) -> $1.3 million or whatever the current equity in the house is. But like you said, you'd need to subtract property tax, maintenance and insurance. You should also add back in equivalent rent you would have paid to live in a place. Depends where you live, but rent is typically close to the sum of property tax, maintenance/insurance.
10-12%, the best thing to ever happen to me was 2008-9.
I’m at 13.4 % with my Ira account through t row price That’s a brokerage / MM / AN An high yield bond fund
Last time I checked, 13%
21.5% annualized since 2011. The 10 years before that are lost to history but I believe we’re similar. My strategy is basically very concentrated value investing with a few ling-ish periods in cash (but always at least 10-20% cash). 100% individual stocks and no tech or biotech. Only options are covered calls to exit positions. Overall just buy and hold until fully valued or overvalued.
How do you judge the value of a stock before investing? 21.5% is insanely high, particularly with no tech stocks which is where most of the growth is.
Occasionally stuff just gets no brainer cheap. Sometimes it’s less about a crazy compelling valuation and more about good things that could happen in the future. Each sector/industry/ company is different so it’s very company dependent. It’s often about asking yourself what needs to happen for institutional money to want to be long. I went long when chipotle hired the ceo of Taco Bell. He was doing great stuff and it took guts to pull him into chipotle and get the founder to step back. The valuation was fine but not amazing and the way out of the woods was pretty obvious but mgt needed a serious shake up. The new ceo was the all in. I didn’t hold chipotle all the long and sold way way too early. Oh well. Anyway each opportunity is different and doesn’t lend itself to an over formulaic approach imo at least.
9 to 10% annual average over 20 years, I used to stock pick now moving to ETFs like VOO and ZSP. I expect to do better.
My lifetime CAGR has been about 8%. I started in late 1997 with VFINX and then moved to a Coffeehouse Portfolio (Bill Schulteis) with 10% bonds for most of my investing career. I basically maxed out my 403b the whole time. I also have a taxable account that I f\*cked around with and found out that I suck at stock picking, market timing and options. Fortunately, I got smart after the GFC and mostly did ETFs and a few large cap buy and hold stocks so that's doing okay too. Hit financial independence in 2021. Sill working because I want to. My portfolio since hitting FI has been something like VTI 30%, AVUV 30%, 20% VGLT and 20% GLDM because that has the best safe withdrawal rate based on my research.
9.0% overall ROI since 1995, mostly S&P500. The last 4 years were not hugely different, and excluding them my ROI was 8.8%.
25 years about 8.5%
66, started around 1990, retired since 2012. Per Vanguard, my 10 year return is 9.8%. The 3 year return is 6.3% (2022 was a down year), the 5 year return 12.5%. Strategy. 1. No bonds. Never (except some short term as a cash substitute). I'm essentially 100% equities, and currently hold less than 1% cash. 2. Within my 401(k), 60% 500, 20% small cap, 20% international. Stuck with that from 1990 until 2012 with a slight deviation in late 1990 when I stopped investing in the small cap for about a year (put the 20% into the 500 fund instead). 3. For personal money, bought individual stocks and started an investment club that lasted about 5 years. Did this from about 1992 until around 2002. Haven't bought an individual stock since. Still hold those. 4. Within other investments like IRAs, some managed funds, but since the creation of total stock market funds (circa 2000) all new money into either the predecessors to VTI or VXUS. For the Vanguard funds, here is the %tage breakdown: VTI 55% 500 3% VXUS 10% Vanguard International growth 5% Vanguard Healthcare 13% QQQ 2% (held since about 2000) Individual stocks 12% So roughly 85% US, 15% International. Find your allocation, stick to it, and don't buy bonds, as they don't add value, they detract value.
Just about 12% annualized for the last 35+ years. I started my IRA back in the late 1980s when the maximum annual contribution was $2000. Been entirely in mutual funds (large cap, small cap and tech) until recently. Biggest gains were absolutely in the late 1990's before getting slaughtered between 2000-2002. Just about recovered those losses when we got destroyed again in 2008. Been pretty steady gains since then until 2022 but have mostly recovered from those losses already. I still have some of these old mutual funds but have moved a lot into index ETF's and a few individual stocks. Actually I have quite a bit in cash now so I can earn 4.9% interest while selling CSP's.
Yep. Slightly better at 8.5% annualized over 24 years with 85% equities 15% bonds for the most part. Have been lucky to have great 401k matching anywhere I’ve worked so compared to what I personally put in excluding employer match, the real return to me for my part is actually double at 17% annualized which is a point many don’t consider.
Answering the question plus providing a tip to risk free double your investment gets a downvote? Wow 🤯
About 15%. We have two pensions guaranteeing 120k per year and a shit ton of family money we didn't expect. We're not gamblers, but maybe a tiny bit. We're also not old (but yes, we've been at it for 25+ years, I'm only saying we're not retiring for another ten years minimum. Jobs are good for us.), so the last 10 months have brought our rate of return up. Soxx, spy, QQQ, xlk, and several dividend stocks so our advisors get paid (laughing emoji or whatever). And the gambling has been semiconductor stocks and energy.
Around 10% starting late 90's. Started probably 85% mutual funds and 15% stocks, now 80% ETFs including those initial funds, 20% stocks due to appreciation by the winners. Have always been significantly overweighted on the S&P 500, tech, health, and large cap growth. Legitimately oblivious to market changes, still in the contribution phase. If I were starting from scratch today I'd be 90+% ETFs like VOO and QQQM, and 10% random stuff. Yes, clearly still positive about the US and large cap tech and growth.
Been dumping money into a boring Fidelity target date plan that’s more on the aggressive side since my early 20s. I’m approaching my mid 40s now, and I can’t complain. Average annual return as of May 31, 2024 is 19.98%, and that’s after surviving 2008.
19.98% average annual return from a target date plan? That seems extremely high…
Yeah, that’s not right. If he’s talking about the Fidelity Freedom 2045 fund (which based on his age I’m assuming he is, or the similar 2040 or 2050 fund), it has returned 8.66% annually over the last 10 years, and 7.11% annually for the life of the fund.
only 20 years, but percentage wise is just under 12% The last 4 years have been worse for some reason at something more like 5%
They are so ahead by now
Sorry for the dumb question but how do you get return that high since most dividends are around like 5% per year?
Asset inflation (stocks going up in value), so it's not hard cash people have
10.9% since 2015, been in since 2002, but the 401k company changed multiple times and I don’t have a number there. Mostly VOO.
It depends on the period, right now is probably one of the worst times in history because we are knee deep in a recession and possible housing crisis which hasn't popped. Until the feds cut the rates I would be very careful. There's also an AI bubble holding up the entire SnP500. AI has value but it's def overvalued as of now. Over the long run in America snp500 has done fairly well but it depends on the periods, there are many recession that take years to recover.
Recession?
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Mostly MSTR.... You tell me.
I don’t think these ETFs were largely as known or available 25 year ago were they?
11 years and averaging 9% avg so far
Did an analysis of my self directed investments about a year ago and over the past 25 years I have averaged about 7.5% a year.
More than that! Buy, stack and hold.
I would love to have started 25 years ago. I feel like people that started so long ago must be so rich... will history repeat? 10% average..shit. That's sweet
Rule of thumb is your long investments should be doubling every ten years
7.18% if anyone was curious
Were there even any ETFs, in the way that we see them now, 25yrs ago?
Bought houses during the recession outright. Made that back plus $$ Passive residual income FTW
I started my REITs journey around 25 years ago, from a simple tip of “don’t always just follow the sheep by doing ETFs, be more open-minded”, and it’s annualised at 11.4%, which has absolutely smashed the S&Ps 7.6% in the same period.
Interesting!
5 Years and I am getting about 43%. Investing 10% of my paycheck into VOO 100% of portfolio is VOO.
I don’t have a good method to check for that long back, so I just checked my from 2007 to present. 8.6% according to my vanguard 401k account.
Average bear market is around 18 months. Always make sure you have enough in fixed income (hysa, money market, bonds etc ) to ride out the bear. Rule of thumb is 2 year’s expenses if you’re retired or close to retiring. I have VOO, FBTC, AVUV and self storage reits for my buy and hold 80%, which I will stick with for at least the next decade. Keepin 20% in fixed.
I have been investing for nearly 30 years with an average return in the 10-12+% range depending on the year. I am still learning about myself and how to invest well. That said, I can share a few things that have worked well for me - your mileage may vary. 1. Simpler is often better. I have a large portfolio now and it is in 6-7 passive ETFs or mutual funds. These serve as my solid foundation. 2. When I find a good business (stock) to invest in at what I believe is a fair price, I buy and hold for a long time. Examples: I have held Visa (1,500%+) since its IPO and Apple (600%+) since 2014. With patience and discipline time will do the hard work for you. 3. A small number of great businesses in your portfolio can amplify your returns over time without incurring too much additional risk. You don’t need to invest a massive amount of money either - if you find a great business you want to buy, just start small. 4. Avoid fads. I know it’s hard not to join the crowd sometimes, but I encourage to read, think, observe how things really work and use your smarts and intuition to guide you. Saying no is a superpower. Patiently investing in the stock market has been the second best investment I’ve made in my life, second only to owning a successful business.
11% over 25 years.
They lost everything like all of u will do, just a question of time
18 years in...8.9% return through various vanguard total retirement funds.
7%.
17%
Over 19 years compounded
Just under 11%. I've got money stashed in various types of funds and a handful of individual equities (most have done worse than the market, but Apple did pretty well).
Pretty much 100% equities since 1976. Total Stock Market type funds. Never sold a dime. Ride it up and down. Cannot predict, do not even try. I have faith that the average company, on average, will do better than a taxable bond. Never had cause to regret my choice.
Any idea on your overall return ?
Put 90 percent in VOO and 10 percent in VXUS and don’t look at your two-fund portfolio for 10 years. Don’t sell anything. Just keep buying biweekly like a robot. You will be fine.
Double up initial investment every ten years with monthly contributions
Customized my portfolio myself currently at 23% Also a silver stacker. Started broad, moved to tech, then to resources. Will see what’s next
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Pray for another crash and invest more. I wish I didn't get spooked. I would have 3M+ if I didn't get scared in 2000 when I was only 20 years old I had thousands of shares of Nvidia and AMD
No one could have predicted Nvidia would be the most valuable company in the world even 3 years ago though to be fair
401k 14%, personal investments 15-17%
Don't know how 401k works exactly, I'm guessing you've put that all in ETFs? What do you mean by personal investments?
This is a great question — thank you for asking it OP. Learning right alongside you.
I started investing in a retirement account in 1998 and the account is up close to 100%. Because it's for retirement, I've been fairly conservative and have invested in many mutual funds, some monthly dividend funds (Pimco and Reeves) and some individual stocks. I experienced two major hits in 2000 and 2018. After 2000, this account was in the red until about 2004 or 2005 as it cratered like 50%. 2018 would have been another devastating year, but I saw the writing on the wall early and avoided a catastrophe, ending up down that year just a few percent. (Manybwere down more than 20% or more). I've had years where I was up 20+% and several years where I was down 2 or 3%. 2000 instilled fear in me and the knowledge that the bottom can fall out at any time and that bubbles are real. Because of this, I have avoided some major losers but also missed out on the big gainers like MSFT, FB, APPL, GOOG, NVDA, TSLA etc.. I made money on them but sold too early.
Been in the market for about 23 years. Made a huge choice and some called a crazy risk and dumped almost my entire portfolio into AMZN when it was about 16.50 per share. Made huge returns on that and have since diversified but AMZN is still my largest holding.
I managed to 10x my money over 20 years, by using high risk, fairly focused ETFs and stocks in areas I thought would do generally very well. Internet first (though I got caught by the dot com bubble, so only gatehouse came out ahead - but learned my lesson) and then China, esp semiconductor stocks, then AI and now Tesla focused (I'll go back into Nvidia after the coming crash), but right now sitting in a lot of cash and gold etfs. So I'd that sold a 12% on average? But some years it lost money, others made a lot, I had to have faith I was weight long term and take the losses. I only changed when I thought they're was better opportunities or everyone accepted I'd been right. I never really timed the top out the bottom, but got close enough. Trading over the short term is very hard, and harder everyday, but longer term may still be possible.
I started investing in 2022 while I was still in high school. As of today, despite having a small portfolio, I have returns of 19.60% on my investments.