My Investment Contributions vs Gains

 I read this article from A Purple Life and decided to follow suit. 

This is turning out to be a harder calculation than I thought. I also am going to provide a caveat that the way this was tracked has changed several times since I started tracking so these are very much estimates. Also, I lost access to my 401k plan's earlier statements when they switched brokers so I can't go back and double check these numbers.

For the first few years when I only invested in my 401k, my tracker had a column for Investment balance at year end and Investment balance at start of year. These numbers are not always the same, so I'm not sure what the reason is for that other than daily jumps. And for some of my 401k from Call Center #1, my notes say some of "my contributions" included employer contributions, but not all of them. In the end, when I left I was vested in my employer's contributions, so the balance is more accurate but the total amount of contributions might be off by about 3% of my salary. 

But yeah, I think why I stopped tracking this was I couldn't find an easy way to track or calculate the cumulative contributions in each of the accounts while also tracking the full portfolio balance. 

And even though the column in the chart below says Portfolio Start, in the later years, it was what I captured as the estimated balance at the End of the year. Oh well. Again, just estimations. A Purple Life uses these numbers interchangeably.

But here's where we are so far. 

Year	Portfolio Start	Investment Add	Investment Gains
2015	$0	$1,756	-$32
2016	$1,724	$11,626	$866
2017	$14,216	$32,472	$4,645
2018	$51,333	$41,350	-$8,868
2019	$83,815	$36,818	$25,749
2020	$146,382	$83,662	$35,648
2021	$265,692	$109,354	$68,272
2022	$443,318	TBD	TBD
	Total	$317,038	$126,280

Suffice to say, Purple had far more significant gains from the market. She estimated just over 50% of her portfolio is from market gains. Mine is just shy of 30%. Yikes!  This is why I've been vacillating from the target date fund to index fund. She is in all stocks and it has served her well. 

Here's her data:

A Purple Life's Contribution vs Gains

Should I switch my robo advisor to 100% stocks instead of the 80/20 allocation I have now? Considering I have the series iBonds, this could be something to consider. And also 2 huge 6-figure target date funds, I think I might have enough bonds. 

Index funds are just so expensive! Maybe for 2023, I can move my 401k over to just the index fund vs the target date fund it's in. I think a lot of what curtailed growth for me is when my 401k provider switched and I lost all that sweet, sweet basis and started at kind of the top of the market and the market has gone down since then. 

She started making big gains pretty early on in her investment journey. It does give me some food for thought for future allocations. I can't sell any of my target date funds at the moment because it would be at a loss, but I can try to reposition new money into index funds I suppose. I have to sleep on it.

Why didn't I take more advantage of this down market?

It's a question whose answer I want to document for posterity. I was trying to mentally survive. And that meant spending money to get out of my Death House. And for all intents and purposes, I lived an 10 extra months and counting. So... money well spent.