I’ve tracked my net worth for years. Back in ‘08 - to about ‘10, it bounced back and forth over a significant milestone several times and then took off over several more in no time. Just keep doing what you’re doing and the pile will grow bigger.
Yep, same here. I had a lot less to play with back then, but, at the time it sure seemed like a lot! Anyway, I had hit a new peak in October 2007, but once the market started getting choppy in 2008, there was still a few times I came close to that number. Then, in Sept/Oct/Nov it all wiped out.
By November 2009 I was hitting new peaks again. One thing I do remember about that timeframe though, is that every time the market started to take a dip again, I started worrying and thinking oh crap, we're not out of this yet! I can remember a pretty sharp dip in early 2010, but I think it only lasted about a month. Then the summer was another down period, and I was worried it was going to crash again, only to see it take off in the fall.
I think the last time I really worried about a drop was in 2011. There was one month over the summer where I lost about 16%, and I was thinking here we go into the Great Recession again. I didn't fully recover from that one until early 2012.
We've had dips here and then since then, but I don't think there has been anything as big as that 2011 hit. Of course nowadays, with social media being so much more prevalent, and fear-mongering being the cry of the times, every time the market dips, people panic.
Personally I'm a bit annoyed with the current market, simply because I was getting close to a $2M milestone back in August. But then I bought a house, which cost about $179K up front in closing costs, inspections, down payment etc. And then October knocked my NW down about $120K. So, it's going to take me a bit to recover from that.
There is an old saying that the market loses money on average, about 1 every 3 years. Of course, that's not linear...it's not like you make money two years straight and then lose some in the third. But, lately it does seem like there's a bit of a cool-down every few years. For my own personal experience, those cool-down years were 2011, 2015, and now it looks like 2018 might be thrown in there as well. FWIW, I was only down around 0.1X% in 2011. In 2015 I was up around 1.X%, but with inflation that was probably a wash.