"Lost Decade" 1999-2009

[JustKickItForward]

Lost Decade? Wished for more !!!

That "lost decade" allowed us to build a solid foundation for our EARLY FI . I always had the thought that the key to FI was the ability to invest at the lows to accumulate MORE shares so when we get older, any price increases are magnified. Looking back now, I wished that lost decade later LONGER.

 

[RobLJ]

I was curious so looked at Quicken. 2009-2019 actually wasn't that bad (wasn't great) for me and DW.

1999-2004 had an average return of 3.7%
2005-9 had an average return of 4.7%.

The portfolio climbed from 154k to 770k at the end of 2009--but at the end of 2010 it was 950K.

In '99 I started diversifying from large cap into mid value, biotech, and foreign, but dollar cost averaging probably explains most of the gainsas several posters note. We would have done considerably better but DW worked for Dynegy which bought Enron's pipeline when Enron got into trouble and was dragged into bankruptcy with Enron as a result. Her 401k match was in Dynegy stock (and, no, she didn't have any choice about where the match went; they changed the rules after that debacle). So that match was almost a total loss, which was about 65k a year before Enron; while that doesn't sound like much, it was a considerable part of the portfolio at the time. I realized there wasn't anything we could have done to avoid it, so we just had to shrug our shoulders and go on.