How much time a week do you spend on investments

[dtbach]

I'm curious to know how much time a week most ER investors spend on reviewing, tweaking, studying, shifting assets, building spreadsheets, etc, etc.

Some of you have an AA process which should be very low time maintenance, while others build extensive spreadsheets which means they (may)be time consumers.

I'm sort of in between. I check the market and my accounts daily. Read a couple of market newsletters and try to see my FIDO account exec about 4 times a year for an hour or so. I'm guessing I spend about 4 hours a week on my portfolio.

 

[Keim]

I check my accounts daily via Quicken. Likewise I peruse this board and Bogleheads daily. Otherwise, adjustments are made only if bands are exceeded. IE not often.

 

[racy]

Probably too much. I keep one of the TVs on the business channel all day, I update my expense tracking spreadsheet every Sunday morning, I accept invitations to Vanguard's webinars, update portfolio positions every month, check this forum and the Boglehead forum almost daily, etc. Having come from a background of production management, I like to plan and track against the plan. So, I create charts & projections. I'm sure this is overdoing it, but it's a source of entertainment for me.

 

[travelover]

........ I'm guessing I spend about 4 hours a week on my portfolio.

About the same - 4 hours a year.

 

[W2R]

I am one of the ones with the extensive spreadsheets. However, I have an asset allocation that I stick with, and my spreadsheets are already set up to do what I want them to do.

Most weeks I probably spend a total of about a minute a day, or 5 minutes for the week, copying six share prices from my Vanguard Watch List manually into Excel. I must embarrassedly admit that during this recently booming market I also look at how things are doing and gloat for a bit, but that is completely voluntary and only takes a minute usually although more sometimes. During the market crash of 2008-2009, I spent probably an hour a day reading and trying to figure out if I needed to do anything. I didn't, other than DCA'ing into my investment portfolio which turned out to be the best thing for me at that time.

Once a year, during the first week in January, I compute my withdrawal amount, withdraw it, and then rebalance. I suppose that takes several hours, maybe 2? 3? I am not sure but I do it very slowly and deliberately to make sure I don't mess up.

 

[akck]

I look at my account daily, but I go for long spells with no activity. I also keep track of the month-end market value of my account on a spreadsheet.

 

[veremchuka]

I DVR Closing Bell and Kudlow's show, iget several RSS feeds from people that write about finances but for me it is entertainment. I do look for trends but not actionable advice from day to day or week to week.

I check balances on investments on the 15th and last day of the month just to monitor them and track the AA. I spend almost no time at all each month, forget each week.

 

[dtbach]

If you add in how many hours you spend on the ER forum as "investment time" what do you get then?? LOL

 

[Meadbh]

I spend a lot of time reading and informing myself but I do not watch financial channels on TV. I do check all my bank accounts daily to monitor cash flows. Since 2008 I also check my investment accounts daily. I check my credit card accounts a couple of times a week to watch for fraud. I use spreadsheets to do a monthly expense reconciliation with my budget and once or twice a year to document net worth, asset allocation, debt ratios, etc. I rarely trade. On a regular day I might spend 10 minutes monitoring, unless there is a transaction. On a monthly budget day, perhaps 30 minutes. The annual or semiannual net worth data entry, calculation and analysis takes about an hour.

 

[foxfirev5]

I spend way more than I need to keep track of my investments. A fixed AA and periodic rebalancing take a minute fraction of the time I actually spend investigating and studying.

 

[marko]

Probably too much. I keep one of the TVs on the business channel all day, I update my expense tracking spreadsheet every Sunday morning, I accept invitations to Vanguard's webinars, update portfolio positions every month, check this forum and the Boglehead forum almost daily, etc. Having come from a background of production management, I like to plan and track against the plan. So, I create charts & projections. I'm sure this is overdoing it, but it's a source of entertainment for me.

Were we separated at birth? I could have written your post in it's entirety (including having the TV on CNBC all day).

 

[seraphim]

I check out out MorningStar several times a day: futures in the morning, indices around noon and five, and the effects on my portfolio sometime in the evening. I also look at interesting new articles. Maybe 30 to 45 minutes a day. Once a month I update purchases and reinvestments in their portfolio manager. Watching the pot trying to boil isn't going to change anything, but it's interesting to observe how certain events affect the market during the day.

 

[marko]

Watching the pot trying to boil isn't going to change anything, but it's interesting to observe how certain events affect the market during the day.

Agreed, but I found that 'watching the pot' on a regular basis has allowed me to learn a lot and, in times when I might otherwise panic, knew that I didn't have to.

During the 1000 point Flash Crash I was allowed to be more fascinated than worried...I was able to say: "whoa, something isn't right here...(it'll get straightened out)"

I'm able to know within a few hundred bucks how much I've gained/lost each (most) day just by looking at the S&P.

It's become sort of a hobby more than a life or death activity.

 

[pb4uski]

I update all my investment, bank and credit card accounts in Quicken 2-3 times a week, but more to keep track the I don't overdraw my checking account than for anything else. I monitor my AA once a month or so and it take me about 10 min to update my spreadsheet. And typically once a yer I rebalance which takes a couple hours of analysis and 20 minutes to make the trades.

The reality is that I probably do more, but it is more because I like to rather than that I need to and in most cases my curiosity is satisfied and I don't take any action until I rebalance.

 

[brewer12345]

I am a finance type by trade and in the process of morphing my portfolio into one more acceptable for an ER/ESR, so I spend a fair amount of time. When I am no longer chained to a computer by work, that will likely cease.

 

[scrabbler1]

I look at my account daily, but I go for long spells with no activity. I also keep track of the month-end market value of my account on a spreadsheet.

This pretty much is what I do. I look at my main account daily, record my holdings at various monthly checkpoints, but make few actual transactions or exchanges each year (excluding automatic dividend and cap gain reinvestments).

 

[H2ODude]

I check in to see what the accounts do/did about daily. BUT, it's only to see what's going on; I probably make moves only once or twice a year. Now, as to the daily goings on of the spending, I do spend ~10-15 minutes a day, average, seeing what that is doing. We're blessed with a WR of about 2.5%, so no real reason to sweat the big pot or for that matter the small pot. As in, we leave the FIDO big pot to simmer, only taking a monthly withdrawal to the local credit union. That I follow carefully, for just about no reason other than I always have. To the point of setting aside $ for taxes, insurance, and utilities each month. The remainder I divide by 30 or 31 and paste it into the spreadsheet, then keep quicken updated with the CC and checking accounts and put the balance into the spreadsheet every day or so. It's fun to see how far to the good we get by the end of the month, putting that into the CU savings, which has grown to the point we need to reduce the monthly move or figure out a new expensive hobby. Unfortunately (?) a lifetime of LBYM attitude makes it hard to enjoy spending on stuff that really isn't all that important. Travel to see family or new places, yep. Anything else except good food and drink, meh.

 

[Dawg52]

Like others, I take a peek at my brokerage acct almost daily. But as far as reviewing/analyzing each stock, not that much.

 

[eta2020]

I spend lot of time even though our portfolio is static and I am buy and hold type.
By lot I mean maybe an hour a day........

I think for me putting another 50k into market is kinda like buying a car. I want to get a deal on that 50k And I take my time shopping for that deal.

 

[palomalou]

I spend perhaps 3 hours/week, most of it in 1 minutes increments checking the stock market. But I can't tell you how much my beloved spends on it, and he does most of it. He updates our spreadsheets (calling them "our" is a stretch--he did them, I know how to consult some of them) weekly; sometimes I'll do a few updates to them mid-week. I think he enjoys it, and I enjoy what I can do.

 

[RenoJay]

I calculate net worth and spending activity on the last day of every month and record into a spreadsheet. If there's any rebalancing ill do it as well. All told its about an hour a month. But for fun I'll spend several hours a day reading about finance, talking about business deals, etc. simply because it's a hobby.

 

[Alan]

Like others, I take a peek at my brokerage acct almost daily. But as far as reviewing/analyzing each stock, not that much.

+1

I spend more time these days figuring/guessing tax implications of withdrawal strategies, when to take pensions when to do ROTH's etc, than on portfolio AA, and fund performance. The portfolio is pretty well set on auto.

 

[MichaelB]

I suspect the time I spend on investments is inversely correlated to short term future stock market performance. As the market rises, and my portfolio follows, I lose interest and shift my focus to other things. Then the market falls and all of a sudden I'm deeply interested once again. Lately I've not been interested in investing...

 

[samclem]

Actually making changes to the portfolio, rebalancing, etc: 6 hours per year (3 hours sometime late in the year to do any loss harvesting, estimate dividends for tax purposes, and to devise any plans to get under the next highest tax rate. 3 hours before filing my taxes in conjunction with IRA investing, solo 401K investing, and rebalancing).

I seldom check my account balances (most years I don't look at them at all outside of the normal rebalancing sessions). Why do it?

 

[Ed_The_Gypsy]

I am not retired yet.

I spend about 2 hours a week reading this forum (there are long stretches of boredom at work). Longer, if I am writing a post (after work). Maybe one hour a week looking for interesting articles on retirement etc. on the web.

I spend about 30 minutes total a week peeking at my Vanguard IRA to see how much has dropped into the MMF and thinking about what I will buy next. Like many here, my AA is pretty fixed. Every year or two I look at rebalancinng which takes about two hours.

I have spent several hours a week investigating the Roth conversion but I have a plan now so that is all until I do pack it in.

Sometimes I watch CNN when I get home from work. The market opens at 6:30 PM my time. For amusement only. I also buy Kiplinger's when I am home because I like to read. Also for amusement. My decisions were made long ago.

I don't expect this to change much after I stop working.