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I built up an Excel spreadsheet, it is multi-sheet, one for brokerage and cash, a couple for retirement accounts, and I have line charts for growth and pie charts for allocations. I update it weekly, which is probably a bit much, but it keeps me aware.
For investments I keep track of basis and current value, and % growth, I do that manually without hyper-links, etc. One reason is the dividend reinvestment case- Schwab, etc. will use the adjusted basis to calculate your return, which is good to know for tax purposes, but it dilutes the number for growth of an initial investment. Likewise when you take profits, then put into something else. That is, there's 2 ways to look at performance, one is how a specific investment performing, another is what is the overall return from what you initially put in. That will tell you how well YOU are performing as an investor.
For investments I keep track of basis and current value, and % growth, I do that manually without hyper-links, etc. One reason is the dividend reinvestment case- Schwab, etc. will use the adjusted basis to calculate your return, which is good to know for tax purposes, but it dilutes the number for growth of an initial investment. Likewise when you take profits, then put into something else. That is, there's 2 ways to look at performance, one is how a specific investment performing, another is what is the overall return from what you initially put in. That will tell you how well YOU are performing as an investor.
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