Are you better of than you were 4 years ago?

[GTM]

As we know in the last 4 years equity investors have seen the tail end of the bull market of the 90's and then the 2001 crash.
Bond investors low interest rates.
Real estate investors saw appreciation.

In light of all of this would you say your net worth is currently valued at more or less than it was 4 years ago?

What investment contributed most to your current situation?

[REWahoo]

In light of all of the this would you say your net worth is currently valued at more or less than it was 4 years ago?

What investment contributed most to your current situation?

My net worth is significantly improved from what it was 4 years ago. *The investment responsible for this was the Dodge & Cox Balanced Fund which was (is) my core holding. *The fund's returns were:

2001 * 10.1%
2002 * - 2.9%
2003 * 24.4%
2004 * 13.3%

Unfortunately, the fund is closed to new investors.

REW

[retire@40]

Yup, I am much better off in January 2005 than I was in January 2001. Net worth is up $200K from 4 years ago mostly from savings, although 2003 and 2004 provided some pretty good investment returns.

Contributions to this include lower tax rates on income and capital gains. Low interest rates hurt my cash accounts, but allowed me to sell long-term bond funds at substantial gains. Low interest rates also contributed to the increase I got from my equity accounts in the past 2 years that more than made up for the poor rates I'm getting in money markets and CDs.

[Spanky]

2000 12.50%
2001 -3.93%
2002 3.57%
2003 25.31%
2004 27.86%

Tilt small cap val, international small and REIT in 2002.

[JohnP]

We are better than four years ago.
Net Worth Increases
CY2000 -0.6%
CY2001 +5.1%
CY2002 -7.7%
CY2003 +27.9%
CY2004 +15.2%
Results are tempered by relatively high savings (~25% of income) throughout period, including after we both retired in early 2003.

Good results due to VG REIT, CapOpp, SmallCap, TotalStock, 500Indx
Offset by poor performance throughout by CSTGX, SHAPX, AVLFX, OMDAX (all are 3-Alarm funds from fundalarm.com).

JohnP

Hmmmmmmmmm..........good question. Assuming we are only talking financially, I would say yes I am much better off. Even being
retired for the whole period, my net worth is up
substantially and I only have 1 year, 8 months and
4 days to SS. No equities. Main contributor was my small PHC (bonds and real estate).

JG

[Calgary_Girl]

Yes, much better off. Overall, our net worth has doubled in the past 4 years due to:

-Hubby had a 6 figure bonus in 2001.
-Moved back to Canada from the States and took advantage of the awesome exchange rate (back then it was 1.5) when converting our greenbacks to monopoly money :P Because of the bonus and exchange rate we were able to pay off all of our debt and bought our house in Canada with cash.
-Save over 30% of our gross income every year in retirement accounts and other investments.

[ordway]

Hell yeah. In 2000 we had about $10K in net worth. (OK, that's a shade more than 4 years depending on how you count, but it's the date I remember from Quicken) Now we just broke $300K. Most of that was savings, though the market doing well in 2003 certainly helped.

[grumpy]

Net worth more than doubled from the end of 2000 to the end of 2004. Percentage changes were:

2001 -2.03%
2002 +35.23%
2003 +33.96%
2004 + 14.11%

Both wife and I fully retired (from part-time work) in 2004. Above figures do not include home equity, which also increased over 60% during that period. 2002 and 2003 were large due to large savings from part-time income plus pension income.


Grumpy