How did your investments do last year?
The market was very good to us last year. The question is how did you do? Here are four questions to ask yourself:
- How much did your account balance increase (or, ugh, decrease) last year? __________
- What was the average yield on your portfolio last year? (Divide your total interest and dividends by your opening and closing balances divided by two) __________
- What was the dollar amount of your interest and dividends last year? __________
- Were your total interest and dividends sufficient to provide the cash flow you needed, or, if reinvested, will they bring you closer to your goals? ___ Yes, ___ No
If you have multiple accounts, add them all together to perform the above calculations.
Note that your portfolio increase cannot be compared to the market indexes since most portfolios are comprised of multiple asset classes, i.e. stocks, bonds, bank CDs, and to determine your performance against the averages you need to compare each of your asset classes to the respective index.
The above won’t give you scientific answers, but it will provide close enough guides about how you are doing, whether your cash flow is sufficient and if you are heading in the right direction to achieve your goals. If you aren’t, then perhaps a meeting with a financial planner is in order.
Keep in mind, your plan should not be to amass great wealth but to attain your goals and financial security.
How Can We Help?
