Dow over 28,000!

[audreyh1]

Years ago, I read a wine column in the WSJ that basically amounted to "Don't try to 'age' wine on purpose; life is short; enjoy it soon, or now." They cited various examples of old bottles, carefully cellared and proudly brought forth, only to turn out spoiled.

The need to age wine totally depends on the winery and regional tradition. Some wines are created to be aged. This is typical of French and Northern Italian reds which expect their customers to lay wine by for a while. In the US wines are designed to be ready to drink when released and certainly within 10 years. They simply aren’t designed for long storage and won’t benefit from it. They might benefit from waiting a year or two, but not super long.

Bordeaux reds and Barolos are tight and need aging and/or complete decanting to open them up through careful exposure to oxygen. Barolos need to cellar at least 10 years from what I’ve read.

So a wine connoisseur needs to be selective with their aging.

I have a nice wine fridge, but I don’t buy stuff that needs many years of aging and I don’t bother with aging for 10 years or more.

 

[NW-Bound]

I am just a wine guzzler, not a connoisseur, hence do not buy any bottle with the intention to age it. I do have quite a few "forgotten" bottles, and thinking about this, the majority did not age well when rediscovered. They are either drinkable or baaad, with the latter outnumbering the former.


PS. Come to think of it, if it is the cork that is the cause of wine bottles going bad, then why not age wines in sealed plastic containers? Remember that you hear about aging wines in boxes here first. Heh heh heh...

 

[tmm99]

OMG, it's over 29,000 now...

 

[aja8888]

OMG, it's over 29,000 now...

Shall we SELL! SELL! SELL!

 

[Another Reader]

The W-Girl is oddly quiet...

 

[Major Tom]

Holy Moly. I am just under 1K shy of having a cool million! I know that many here passed that milestone a long time ago, but it's a pretty big deal for me. If I include the money in my checking, I am already over the mark, but that would be cheating

Looking at those three 9's in a row on my balance feels like the adult delayed gratification version of winning the jackpot on a slot machine

 

[UnrealizedPotential]

Why not count the money in your checking? I sure count mine. I count savings and checking with my investment accounts.

 

[NW-Bound]

Holy Moly. I am just under 1K shy of having a cool million! I know that many here passed that milestone a long time ago, but it's a pretty big deal for me. If I include the money in my checking, I am already over the mark, but that would be cheating

Looking at those three 9's in a row on my balance feels like the adult delayed gratification version of winning the jackpot on a slot machine

No, it's not cheating. Money is money, no matter if it is in your left trouser pocket or the right pocket.

When I look at the total reported by Quicken at the bottom left corner of its screen, everything is there. Of course, the negative balance of still-unpaid credit card charges is also there to cancel out part of the checking account balance. Still, I just looked because of your post, and saw that it still contributed more than 0.2% to the total stash.

 

[tmm99]

Hi Major Tom, I count every nickel myself as all my money shows up on Mint. Congrats on becoming a millionaire! Your frugal ways (which I'm quite impressed with, especially because you live in a very HCOL area) and this up-and-up market are sure ingredients for success!

 

[MissMolly]

Holy Moly. I am just under 1K shy of having a cool million! I know that many here passed that milestone a long time ago, but it's a pretty big deal for me. If I include the money in my checking, I am already over the mark, but that would be cheating

Looking at those three 9's in a row on my balance feels like the adult delayed gratification version of winning the jackpot on a slot machine

I agree. Money is money. It doesn't matter where it is, it's your money. So congratulations!

 

[Major Tom]

Why not count the money in your checking? I sure count mine. I count savings and checking with my investment accounts.

It's simply a matter of how I track my money. I consider my portfolio to be the sum of my 3 Vanguard funds and the fairly substantial cash balance in my non-Vanguard savings account. All these balances are tracked, and shown as one portfolio value on my Vanguard account. I don't track the (smaller) checking account balance as part of my portfolio.

What it comes down to is that I want to be able to look at my Vanguard account balance and see 7 figures, and 2 commas staring back at me!

No, it's not cheating. Money is money, no matter if it is in your left trouser pocket or the right pocket..

Totally understand, and agree. See above.

Congrats on becoming a millionaire! Your frugal ways (which I'm quite impressed with, especially because you live in a very HCOL area) and this up-and-up market are sure ingredients for success!

Thanks tmm99. I don't own a home though, which would be a boon in this HCOL. I'm one of the lucky ones who have cheap rent and, due to recent developments with this property, it looks like that situation should stay the same for the foreseeable future. However, I have itchy feet, and may end up moving out of the Bay Area in a few years. We shall see!

I agree. Money is money. It doesn't matter where it is, it's your money. So congratulations!

Thank you MissMolly!

 

[NW-Bound]

OK, so mentally add the checking account balance to your Vanguard stash, and consider yourself a millionaire.

Now, I hope the market will continue to rise to get you further away from the magical line. Else, you will have to suspend spending to try to stay in the 7-figure club.

 

[NW-Bound]

OK, so mentally add the checking account balance to your Vanguard stash, and consider yourself a millionaire.

Now, I hope the market will continue to rise to get you further away from the magical line. Else, you will have to suspend spending to try to stay in the 7-figure club.

 

[Major Tom]

Now, I hope the market will continue to rise to get you further away from the magical line. Else, you will have to suspend spending to try to stay in the 7-figure club.

I'd like to avoid being an old geezer who bores everyone by constantly living in the past, and telling anyone who will listen, "I was a millionaire once you know - for a whole week!"

 

[NW-Bound]

As often told here, I keep a diary of my total stash, starting on 1999/12/13 when I realized that I was about to get to the magical 7-figure value. My 1st entry on that day was 964,852.

Two weeks later, I recorded:

1999 12 27 996380
1999 12 28 1000503

Ta dah!

The market was going up like mad in early 2000, as many of us still remember. My top was logged here

2000 03 24 1183123

It went down from there, and I ended up crossing the million mark up/down for quite a few times in 2000, before entering a trough with the bottom on 2002 10 09.

Oh boy, it was painful. All this brings back bad, bad memory.

PS. Looking at the above numbers, I saw that I had a gain of 23% in 3 months. Boo yah! And I was not even 100% in stocks.

PPS. And as often told here, I was losing sleep getting all that gain. It could not be right! I did not know what to do. I could not sell, because of FOMO.

 

[Major Tom]

Was that the first time you had lived through such a deep drop, NW-Bound? I imagine the experience toughened you up and prepared you for the drop in 2007/2008. Subsequent downturns - even sharp ones, should be plain sailing from now on!

 

[NW-Bound]

Yes! The bottom reached on 2002/10/09 was 665507. It is left to the reader to figure out the percentage from the top at 1183123. Now, that is a smaller drop than that of the NASDAQ.

By the way, I did sell some while on the climb up to the top in March 2000. I did not have any dot-com, but had plenty of tech stocks such as Cisco, semiconductor chip companies, etc... I remember one day saying this was not sustainable, so sold off 3 of my stocks to raise $60K of cash.

Just a few days later, saw that those shares would become $90K. Darn! I left $30K on the table. And so, I stopped selling. Big mistake...

It was a heck of a time. But it is still not the most exciting and scary time in my life.

 

[GrayHare]

The Dow's first climb to and overnight at the top of Mount Everest!

Heck, if my total came to 999,999 I'd be checking under the sofa cushions.

 

[NW-Bound]

Here is something that disturbed me greatly during the above 3 months in 2000 that handed me a gain of 23%. The NASDAQ went up 33%. However, the Dow dropped 10%! It was all about the new-economy stocks. Brick-and-mortar businesses would be dead.

What the heck! I remember thinking to myself, how could the world live on silicon chips, and stop caring about potato chips. This was very wrong. That was when I started to look into buying some of the beaten-down "old economy" stocks. However, I did not buy enough to make a difference.

But then, the market kept on rising, and I told myself perhaps it was me who was wrong. How could I argue against the market?

 

[street]

Some interesting history NW-Bound. In those years you talked about I was in stocks/bonds never knew where I was at in wealth through those years you were talking about. I'm pretty sure I was 2 comma's but no idea the exact numbers. I was busy with life and just kept buying each month and sticking money away, had know idea where I was on numbers. LOL

I know that isn't good business but I figured I would have a W2 till I dropped and never worried about my total wealth numbers. LOL when I finally got around to count it up, well there was a lot.

 

[NW-Bound]

^^^ Prior to making a log of my stash value, I was not aware of its value either. Same as you, I was busy with work, and paid no attention to the values of my accounts, even what I was invested in.

It was only when my startup business was in trouble, and it occurred to me that I might need to live off my stash for a while while pondering about what to do with the rest of my life; do I go back to megacorp to be in balls and chains, or be a free-lancer?

It was at the time that I pulled out stacks of account statements from my MFs and 401k's that were piled up over the years, and looked to see what I had. And I realized that I had been neglecting my investments, and I should be more aware of my holdings. I firmly believe that one should be aware of his holdings, even if he is not an active investor.

And that was when I found that I needed something to summarize on a screen what my stash was. I started to use MS Money on the Web, then on my PC when MS shut down the Web version.

 

[MRG]

I'm not a big record keeper like I should have been. I remember in early 2000 going over a million. At the time most of my assets were in a private fund I had zero control over or company stock with the same restrictions. Then it crashed and stayed low till the next crash in 08. Sometime after the crash Megacorp allowed us to transfer assets out, I took the company stock and started liquidating and teaching myself how not to invest. The balance that I just found from the beginning of 2010 was 319k. That account is now 1.25MM. I guess 1.25mm can go back to 300k too.

 

[RobbieB]

Welcome Major Tom our newest millionaire!

 

[street]

Very interesting stuff. Looking back I'm glad maybe I didn't know what my worth was at the time with all the down markets. I might have panicked did something very stupid. I guess what I didn't know didn't hurt me but I beleive now how those bad times have given me a lot of confidence. I do know now I can and will weather any storm, because my numbers had to been bad but have come back again.

 

[W2R]

Welcome Major Tom our newest millionaire!

+1 Congratulations, Major Tom!

The W-Girl is oddly quiet...

Yes, I just now noticed! Wow!

29,030!!! The Dow busted that 29,000 ceiling like it was nothing. Just exactly 2 months after it broke through 28,000.

Next, 30,000?

Today I paid both federal and state estimated taxes, and my credit card, and despite all those payments I reached yet another all time high for portfolio plus bank accounts.