Beats me how some of you can figure this number to one, much less two decimals with all the fudgeries in real estate valuations, collectibles, unrealized gains, etc.
The unrealized gains thing is easy, you multiply share count times the price on 12/31, hehe. I don't put real estate or collectables in my numbers.
But I think if an accountant went in and audited some of these reports, there would be some discrepancies
. The figures posted by a web site for assets held there are probably pretty close, but then the CD's and bank acounts (which, in this year would have dragged down the result) are left off. And that can make a huge difference, as I'm about to show.
I do an IRR (Internal Rate of Return) on each account's cash flows. I sum up all accounts' cash flows and do an IRR there, which is how I come up with my result. It's not "perfect" because I smash all transactions in a quarter into one line of the spreadsheet. So I'm doing an IRR calculation on 5 values: Jan 1, 2013 starting balance, ins&outs in Q1, i&o's in Q2, i&o's in Q3, Dec 31, 2013 plus i&o's in Q4. The formula makes it annual:
Code:
=(1+IRR(H155:H159,0.1))^4-1
With an asset allocation of 15% Bonds, 30% Domestic Equities, 34% Foreign Equities, 17% Hard Assets (REIT, Gold), 4% Cash:
Good ones (covers 56% of liquid investments):
Vanguard: 16.7% (site reports 16.8%) - this is a mix of funds that doesn't follow my asset allocation.
401k Equities: 32.7%
DW's Roth: 20.6%
Swiss iShares: 27.0%
Employee Stock Program: 139.3% (only a couple bucks here)
That all might sound pretty good, but when I put in every dime of liquidity into the equation, it's not so rosey. For instance, the kids' college funds IRR was 3.4%, The bond allocation did about 3%, emerging markets lost 5%, cash just sat there. TIPS down 5%. The bottom line IRR for everything? 10.9%.