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Just did the math on my 401k from my previous employer...and if i've done the math right, i'm at an average of 18% over the past 8.5-9 years. Do i have that right? caught me by surprise. didn't think it was this high. I know almost everyone who's been in the market for the past few years has pretty much done well, but is 18% typical or above average based on what you're seeing for the same period (2009-current).
I maxed out the 401k each year since mid 2009, and the current balance is 351k.
Just did the math on my 401k from my previous employer...and if i've done the math right, i'm at an average of 18% over the past 8.5-9 years. Do i have that right? caught me by surprise. didn't think it was this high. I know almost everyone who's been in the market for the past few years has pretty much done well, but is 18% typical or above average based on what you're seeing for the same period (2009-current).
I maxed out the 401k each year since mid 2009, and the current balance is 351k.
When you say you maxed out each year since 2009, what were you doing before 2009? Was the balance 0?
I'm agreeing with the math, but I don't know what other assumptions you are making. What was your company match?
But, without any other information, as a pure sanity check - if you invested right in the DJIA - it has gone up 178% from Jan 2009 to Jan 2018. So that's about 19.7% per year. If your 401k followed that, I think that's reasonable.
When you say you maxed out each year since 2009, what were you doing before 2009? Was the balance 0?
I'm agreeing with the math, but I don't know what other assumptions you are making. What was your company match?
But, without any other information, as a pure sanity check - if you invested right in the DJIA - it has gone up 178% from Jan 2009 to Jan 2018. So that's about 19.7% per year. If your 401k followed that, I think that's reasonable.
ugh...lol knew i had forgotten something. Yes, the employer match was 4%. See, i knew i hadn't done as well as the 18% suggested. and yes, my balance was 0 in summer of 2009 in this particular 401k.
I was invested mostly in VOO.
Re-doing the math, My return was only ~12% over the past 9 years. Not the best. but i can live with it.
looking at the last 10 years i see the s&p 500 averaged 9.40% which is what voo is . for comparison my fidelity contra fund averaged 10.48%. so just going out 1 year longer brought the averages back in line to pretty much average .
at 8-9 years, the time frame is too short for a lot of the "compounding" to take effect, under a decade, most of the "growth" would be from contributions and not compounding. by the time you had enough in there to compound, it would be more than half way into the decade and a very good year before compounding > contribution
Spy total return including reinvested dividends for the past 9 years was 251.
Edit there’s also no way the OP is calculating the returns correctly. The timing of monthly investing or twice a month, plus employer matching whenever it occurs plus market performance makes this pretty complicated to calculate
Seems high and I don't think you can expect more than 5 to 7% for the next few years.
If you can access your account at the financial institution holding the 401k they may have return info calculated for just your account.
Seems high and I don't think you can expect more than 5 to 7% for the next few years.
If you can access your account at the financial institution holding the 401k they may have return info calculated for just your account.
Yeah if the monies were at the old plan provider still you may be able to get the data but if not it’s going to be inaccurate.
Depends on how you want to calc the CAGR.... Likely in your methodology you're counting your contributions + employer match as part of the gain calc.
To do a real calc you would baseline your calc to get a present value at year 0 as well as the employer match. Then take a CAGR of the difference. I would imagine the real return falls to something like 8%
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