Weird Question... How often do you count your money/assets?

[CincyDave]

I watch the overall markets and my individual stocks daily. Most of my dough is in mutual funds and I update those and brokerage accounts quarterly in an Excel spreadsheet with formulas for quarterly and year to date returns.

 

[jr6035]

Daily. Along with my bank accounts, CC.

 

[YVRRocketSurgery]

As a default, I do a full total at the end of every month.

When markets are trending up or recovering, I end up doing investment account snapshot totals a few times a day: After market open, end of market, and nightly when my DC pension gets updated. I generally don't bother with the savings and chequing accounts until the end of the month.

After markets have taken a dive, I'll reduce the frequency to mid-month and the default end of the month total. However, I still watch the indices and individual stocks to see if I want to make a purchase as I'm still pre-retirement in accumulation mode.

 

[FREE866]

I check mine a few times a day. I know conventional wisdom says not to do that as it may prompt more trading, but 4 and a half years in I've stuck to my plan even when things looked bleak in December 2018 and then again obviously in March 2020.

 

[coveredbridge]

I check my account balances nearly every day. I do a weekly and month-end roll up to excel to track performance, and an annual and Retirement-to-date roll up to compare investment gain/loss to total withdrawals. 4 and 1/2 years in and still haven't touched the principal.

 

[Dd852]

Snip…
Absolutely NO criticism implied, but I'm surprised at how many retirees here check NW daily or weekly. Having said that I used to do that when anticipating FI. It was a good feeling seeing that I was approaching my goal (or, eventually exceeding it PRIOR to FIRE.) But, after retiring, most of my angst began to fade - especially after a year or two. Checking often became boring. I'm guessing that checking NW is a habit some of us formed and it's difficult to break. My (rhetorical) questions would be "How often do we make strategic or tactical changes based on daily or weekly NW calculations? If we're not tweaking our plans, why check so often?" Again, no suggestion that checking often is "wrong." Just wondering (to myself) what it gives us in return for the effort. Just wondering out loud, so YMMV.

Yes, habit - a few years of living close to the edge followed by years of prepping for FIRE ingrained in us the need to track spending first and foremost and investments as well. Since we are creatures of habit our spending is pretty predictable so in truth there is no need to check weekly, I’m sure quarterly or even annually would be fine, but it has become established ritual. And since it takes so little time and gives reassurance in return, it is a pretty harmless habit!

 

[karen1972]

You are not alone.

I go long times without paying attention and then I get obsessed and spend way too much time paying attention, but they are usually triggered by things.

1. Super stressed at work, running the #s helped me not do something stupid, stay the course, suck it up as I was so close

2. Super close to milestones

3. Active day trading (I don't regularly trade, but occasionally events happen and I will do a bunch at one time, then pay attention a lot).

I use to run firecalc often because I couldn't remember the results, so finally just made a spreadsheet including inputs and all remaining failure scenarios so I can just refer back to that. Hopefully I can then just re-run it once a year on my bday.

 

[SecondCor521]

Similar to most here.

I update Quicken daily with one-step update, mostly to reconcile downloaded transactions.

Approximately weekly I update my Excel spreadsheet with select Quicken data. In the spreadsheet I have a dashboard which shows me various personalized metrics that I like to know where I stand. Green means I'm OK, red means the metric is out of whack and I should consider taking action:

- How is my Roth conversion ladder looking?
- Do I have enough cash on hand?
- Is my kids' college funded adequately?
- Are my kids' college funds allocated appropriately?
- Is my AA within range?
- Am I spending at a rate that is reasonable?

Ever new year, I save off a copy of my net worth. I also do this if I happen to notice passing a milestone of some kind.

And now monthly, I review my Dad's transactions to make sure that he's not being taken advantage of and that he's doing OK financially. (He's given me POA on everything.)

 

[badatmath]

checking account once a month; any other accounts a couple times a year; mostly to keep them active. My state thinks you are dead if you don't log in.

If it matters I am approximately 1.5 years from retiring (I think)

 

[Palmtree]

Vanguard lets me add shares of stocks and funds to my portfolio (for tracking) that are held outside of my Vanguard account. I can also manually enter money market amounts that are held elsewhere also. Vanguard does not do an electronic info pull from the accounts, but it is able to compute the value of the outside accounts using the number of shares I entered and the daily value of the stock or fund. Every quarter or so, I will manually go in and tweak the outside investments to bring them up to there present value. With this, I can easily log onto Vanguard every week or so and get a very close total of all my investments.

 

[NW-Bound]

I just had Quicken count my money. It said I have quite a bit less than I did yesterday. And the day before that. And before that.

I really don't like to see losing several days in a row. But then, who does?

But I still have more than on last Thursday, and that's the consolation.

 

[CardsFan]

One of the reasons I check frequently is to become accustomed to the ups and downs. When I realize that a 500 point drop in the Dow (or 50 points in the S&P) are just noise in the equation, it helps me sleep better. Even though those drops can be more that I spend in 3-6 months. I yawn.

 

[UnrealizedPotential]

I check almost everyday. Mostly just to see how my investing philosophy is working compared to what the market does. I am not trying to beat the market , not at all, just trying to get some gains and at the same time take as little risk as possible in trying to do that all while getting enough income to support myself. It's a work in progress.

 

[LarryMelman]

One of the reasons I check frequently is to become accustomed to the ups and downs. When I realize that a 500 point drop in the Dow (or 50 points in the S&P) are just noise in the equation, it helps me sleep better. Even though those drops can be more that I spend in 3-6 months. I yawn.

Yup, I've run Quicken almost daily since I started using it in 1999. So I always know my numbers more or less, but more importantly a high 5-figure or even low 6-figure swing in a day, while rare, is not unusual, and it doesn't freak me out, because I've seen them before.

 

[NW-Bound]

Yup, I've run Quicken almost daily since I started using it in 1999. So I always know my numbers more or less, but more importantly a high 5-figure or even low 6-figure swing in a day, while rare, is not unusual, and it doesn't freak me out, because I've seen them before.

I have seen 6-figure daily moves more often in recent times.

But then, thinking more about it, my stash is now 1.5x its value 2 years ago. That's a crazy gain! In terms of percentage, the daily fluctuations may be the same, but it's a lot larger now in terms of dollar amounts.

I am afraid one of these days, the market god will take it all back.

 

[6miths]

During my accumulation phase when I had new money to invest, I looked frequently. Now retired I seldom look as aside from rebalancing every 18 months or so everything is already where it needs to be. I hear and see what the markets are doing but doesn't really affect me day to day.

 

[GravitySucks]

From the 90 days before I retired through the first 6 months of retirement I probably looked at my Fido accounts 2 or 3 times a day if I wasn't traveling. Checking maybe once a month.
Now I look at Fido when I get an alert of a change (bonds maturing mostly) or when I need to sell something to fund my life. Maybe twice a quarter, maybe once every 6 months. I do look at checking 5 times a week or so as I had a fraud issue last year and it is so easy to see recent transactions on the app.

 

[Rustic23]

Close to daily, it keeps me out of Retirement Hell.

 

[Qprkid]

Daily, with Personal Capital.

Take Action/Rebalance: 2X/Year.

 

[leftcoastjayhawk]

For some reason, I'm picturing Uncle Scrooge in his Bobcat, tossing around buckets of loot in his money bin.

Unca Scrooge was my first financial advisor!


http://www.filmfad.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/Ducktales-Scrooge-Money-Bin.jpg

 

[bluelight]

I have a spreadsheet of our assets that I update on the last day of the month. It's a bit overkill, quarterly would suffice.

 

[2retireearly]

A friend want to learn about investment, retirement and finance in general. He pop the question "how often do you count your money?" Hmm... caught me off guard and got me thinking.

I find that as I get older and closer to retirement, I obsessively check on retirement account, asset sheets, then calculate retirement needs and FireCal ... something like 2,3 times or even 4 times a week.

Am I nut or is this normal? I know my Buddies check on their stocks everyday because we're on a group chat and lots of "stock tips" exchanged every hour.

Just wonder if you can share your thought. : )

Enuff

I retired early (hence why I'm in this group!), and came from Actuarial background, finance and IT...so...yes, I'm obsessed with my spreadsheets, projections, and what ifs. Its my 'fun' to look at my investments (that I pay others to handle) about 5 times a week.

 

[albundyz]

I am 70, retired for 14 yrs, I have enuf retirement money to where I don't need to take stock market risk. 16% of my $ is in the stock market, kind of like Mad Money. It's partially to make money and partially just pure entertainment value. I check my balance every day....... more for entertainment.

 

[ArmchairMillionaire23]

I check my brokerage accounts pretty much daily. It’s an app on my iPad and it takes about a minute. However, at each quarter’s end, I enter everything into a spreadsheet, takes about 15 minutes, and I compare it to past balances to see how things are going.

I check my account balances daily except I don't have any apps.
I also have spreadsheets and compare quarterly statements.

 

[Enuff2Eat]

seems like people update alot more often when

1) market turn green
2) can't wait to retire

enuff