etfking wrote: ↑Thu Aug 20, 2020 1:03 pm
New to posting on the forum and a recent follower of the Bogleheads philosophy. After years of trying to actively manage and beat the market, I've succumbed to simplifying my portfolio after realizing that I wasn't generating much (if any) alpha.
As my wife and I approach the 2 comma club I wanted to ask how often people check their portfolio / net worth? Hourly, daily, weekly, monthly? I only ask because I think the obsession of reaching the $1mm mark (not that it means much given it's an arbitrary number and not our end goal) provides a sense of satisfaction but I've recently deemed it to be unhealthy and feel I need to lose the attachment given it has no bearing on my end strategy. Hope to hear others' opinions!
etfking wrote: ↑Thu Aug 20, 2020 1:03 pm
New to posting on the forum and a recent follower of the Bogleheads philosophy. After years of trying to actively manage and beat the market, I've succumbed to simplifying my portfolio after realizing that I wasn't generating much (if any) alpha.
As my wife and I approach the 2 comma club I wanted to ask how often people check their portfolio / net worth? Hourly, daily, weekly, monthly? I only ask because I think the obsession of reaching the $1mm mark (not that it means much given it's an arbitrary number and not our end goal) provides a sense of satisfaction but I've recently deemed it to be unhealthy and feel I need to lose the attachment given it has no bearing on my end strategy. Hope to hear others' opinions!
For me, never.
Not needed.
j
+1...this guy is rocks! When you got it, you got it!
Once a month, manually, on the same date (usually). I've been doing this religiously for about 12 years in a notebook. For me it's interesting to compare months, quarters, and years to see which were the best and worst. I can also see how my average monthly increase has changed over the years. As I add up the numbers I make a game out of it to see if I did better or worse than my monthly average. This motivates me to stay the course and keep investing.
I officially calculate it every Jan 1 but I keep an informal running tally in my head throughout the year just because I always know my financial assets and have a rough idea of other assets. I will monitor it more closely if I am nearing a nice round number.
Time is your friend, impulse is your enemy. - John C. Bogle
Normchad wrote: ↑Thu Aug 20, 2020 4:33 pm
I see it every time I start up Quicken. I do like seeing it.
Once a year, I print out a screen shot of it and put it in the filing cabinet. If I croak unexpectedly, hopefully somebody will see it and think “oh, there’s another $50k over there in some account I didn’t know we had”.
Same here. I open Quicken these days about 2x month, but when I was working it was more like weekly.
When my 25x target was in sight, I checked weekly sometimes daily as I was very stressed out by my job.
Once I reached, I check in a very good day or a very bad one like Mid March this year. When it approaches next whole $M, I checked couple times a week so I can smoke a celebratory cigar.
I relate to what tryingtogetahead said. If there was a pill I could take to keep from looking at balances, I would. It serves no positive purpose in my life and distracts me from feeling present. And for some reason I have five different devices to do it on.
etfking wrote: ↑Thu Aug 20, 2020 1:03 pm
New to posting on the forum and a recent follower of the Bogleheads philosophy. After years of trying to actively manage and beat the market, I've succumbed to simplifying my portfolio after realizing that I wasn't generating much (if any) alpha.
As my wife and I approach the 2 comma club I wanted to ask how often people check their portfolio / net worth? Hourly, daily, weekly, monthly? I only ask because I think the obsession of reaching the $1mm mark (not that it means much given it's an arbitrary number and not our end goal) provides a sense of satisfaction but I've recently deemed it to be unhealthy and feel I need to lose the attachment given it has no bearing on my end strategy. Hope to hear others' opinions!
I have a tool/system to make it easy to check essentially anytime. I check it more than weekly.
bogleblitz wrote: ↑Thu Aug 20, 2020 1:49 pm
On good days like stock market at an all time high this week, I check daily. It's a quick login to an app like Mint / Personal Capital.
On bad days like Feb / March 2020. I check once a month.
twice a day. Took over from Eddie Jones first of the year, so I am so happy to be in charge! Plus, DH bought 50 shares of Tesla so its fun to watch and learn.
Sheepdog wrote: ↑Thu Aug 20, 2020 2:36 pm
My Microsoft Money 2002 works great for all financial records. I keep it up almost daily with all fund prices, expenditures and receipts. So, my net worth is available on a moments notice just by a click of the mouse. But, when do I look at it? Whenever I feel like it or when my spouse says "How are we doing." I bark back the answer, but with a whimper when it is down.
Woof Woof
I have a Google Sheets document that I had updated every month for the past 5 years, with balances in all my accounts and % change from the previous month. Pretty basic.
When March hit I lost interest in updating it and haven't touched it since. I kinda wish I kept with it, but now for some reason I don't really care anymore. I do check accounts individually time to time, but not the monthly review/tally anymore. Maybe Ill pick it up again next year.
I check my retirement balances every few months. I have never calculated my "true" net worth, which would include the impact of our mortgages, but I suspect I could guess what it is within +/- 15% or so.
bogleblitz wrote: ↑Thu Aug 20, 2020 1:49 pm
On good days like stock market at an all time high this week, I check daily. It's a quick login to an app like Mint / Personal Capital.
On bad days like Feb / March 2020. I check once a month.
Hilarious. I do the same thing.
This is also what I do. I know better but cannot help myself. I do wait until the morning after a big day to check.
“As long as the roots are not severed, all is well.” Chauncey Gardner
etfking wrote: ↑Thu Aug 20, 2020 1:03 pm
New to posting on the forum and a recent follower of the Bogleheads philosophy. After years of trying to actively manage and beat the market, I've succumbed to simplifying my portfolio after realizing that I wasn't generating much (if any) alpha.
As my wife and I approach the 2 comma club I wanted to ask how often people check their portfolio / net worth? Hourly, daily, weekly, monthly? I only ask because I think the obsession of reaching the $1mm mark (not that it means much given it's an arbitrary number and not our end goal) provides a sense of satisfaction but I've recently deemed it to be unhealthy and feel I need to lose the attachment given it has no bearing on my end strategy. Hope to hear others' opinions!
For me, never.
Not needed.
j
+1...this guy is rocks! When you got it, you got it!
As we are retired and somewhat secure per "boglehead numbers", there's not need to over worry.. . . I hope.
Every three months I write down a complete summary of our investments for the DW. In between I informally look at how our accounts are doing (IRAs and Roths for both of us to make sure they are intact)--about once a week.
We check account balance totals twice a year for the purpose of rebalancing.
Literal net worth? Never. It just didn't occur to us when we started tracking and now that physical assets are an ever shrinking percentage of the total, it just isn't important. We might think differently if we owned real estate.
I don't keep track of my net worth. The information would be of no use to me. I do, however, track the market values of the funds in my investment portfolio.
More often than I should but technically in my Excel file I do it each april after wife's bonus comes in. I was doing march but it came in late this year and that didn't sit well with me. So april it is.
Monthly, now I’ve built out my spreadsheet to track it (along with monthly expenses, tax brackets, etc.). To me NW just a measure of accomplishment, not something to use (generally) for making financial decisions.
Good question. I used to devise complex spreadsheets so things would update at the touch of a button each time I opened them. I was proud of having learned excel well enough to do that, but them I would invest in something else that required a redesign. What a glorious waste of time! Now I have everything entered into Fidelity (except my house), and I see the totals every Time I log in. I don’t obsess over it (too much), but it’s fun to see, especially lately. Was not much fun in March, I must admit, when I’d lose several years’ salary per day. But that’s the nature of investing. I can almost say that and convince myself I believe it!
moghopper wrote: ↑Thu Aug 20, 2020 3:22 pm
I'm a Quicken holdout, so I probably see it every day, even if I'm not specifically checking for it. At this point, I'm sort of numb to it... it is just numbers.
Me too. I do pay attention to the difference between today and the same date last year.
I also look at NW when I try to interest my DW in how we are doing. She “smiles and nods.”
We keep track of all expenses and add them up each month. This was done as an exercise pre retirement to know exact costs. After a few years started adding up investment and debts. So for a few years we do it monthly. On good days I’ve mentally done math for what investments are on a regular basis. For COVID scare i decided to not add up investments as I did not want pain and emotions to guide decision making.
That which gets measured gets done.
I’d encourage people to know their expenses and to set long range goals, deciding what you want, and undertaking the steps needed to reach goals. NW calculations provide the feedback.
I keep historical SS record on monthly, yearly, and track from date of retirement (1117 days ago). I like to create each year a chart that shows monthly since retirement all four financial areas of my retirement (passive income, portfolio [currently 84/16], real estate, and debt. Since retirement my NW is up 32.75%.
Once a month. At some point I realized I was accumulating too much in my checking/savings accounts and decided to DCA into a brokerage account. After about a year, I realized I had only made 3 or 4 small deposits, and I wasn't making a dent. I set up a reminder for the end of every month. Since I was going in and moving money around anyway, I just started recording the values...what accounts I check has expanded to essentially everything since then so I get NW number every month now...and make pretty graphs to show my progress.
Once a month, mid-month, and December 31st. And once in a while when I am curious to see if I have reached some record high or big drop. I check the IRA portion a little more often because I rebalance there more often, too.
Until COVID-19 once a month. However, I used this "event' to revamp my portfolio. I had small value etfs that haven't made a dime and I've owned them since 2008. Now that I've hit "critical mass" a 1% change in the S&P equates to +3X my monthly net income. So yeah, I keep tabs on it several times a day. Saying that, I seldom trade now. I have automatic transactions going into my Roth TSP bi monthly and I have a play money allowance of $400 a week. I just enjoy keeping up with financial news, it's a hobby and a very profitable one at the moment. For instance, I have several small holdings like Tesla and MARA (cryptocurrency) that are up over 300% since March. Great watercooler chat holding, but then again, because of COVID, I'm teleworking most days....
For the record, the vast majority of my holding are in my TSP accounts that mimic index funds.
The question isn't at what age I want to retire, it is at what income. - George Foreman
I tend to have my spreadsheet open while at work. It is hooked up to Factset live, so the 10% of my portfolio that trades during the day (the other 90% is just daily priced index mutual funds) I can see changes tick by tick changes in my spreadsheet totals. It's a little overkill, I know, but I'm probably watching it more closely now since we are just one good stock market day away from hitting two commas in investable assets. I'm hoping to make it before my next birthday which is a couple of weeks away.
The workbook has all my other financial data too (amort table for mortgage, SS estimates, budget, etc), so there are other reasons to look at it.
I check my investment balances almost daily when I have free internet access, so most days (haven't been on a cruise in a while.) I use the Vanguard aggregation and I'm mostly looking for an unanticipated change. I have transaction alerts set up on most/all of my accounts, but it's just another way to check that nothing has gone wrong. Two accounts don't work with Yodlee so I check those less often.
Once a month when I do my budget. Since I don't own a home (nor would I count it against my NW, I would only count the mortgage as a liability) and all my accounts are aggregated online, it only takes 1 minute to take a look at my NW.
So yeah, I keep tabs on it several times a day. Saying that, I seldom trade now. I have automatic transactions going into my Roth TSP bi monthly and I have a play money allowance of $400 a week. I just enjoy keeping up with financial news, it's a hobby and a very profitable one at the moment. For instance, I have several small holdings like Tesla and MARA (cryptocurrency) that are up over 300% since March. Great watercooler chat holding, but then again, because of COVID, I'm teleworking most days....