Year-end portfolio review

[KTP]

True, but I could say the same thing about my wife's diamond engagement and wedding rings, other jewelry, electronics, collectibles, etc. I could get a few hundred for each of our 3 iPhones. A couple hundred more for the iPad. Probably 50 bucks for the lawnmower. A couple hundred for our bikes. Where do you draw the line?

Agreed. I track only our financial assets: cash, stocks, bonds, mutual funds. I don't worry about all of the other stuff. I'm not planning to sell any of it and assigning value is very difficult. I know exactly what all of our financial assets are worth on any given day.

I would either have a line item called household items, and lump everything together at yard sale value or if my net worth were high enough that that stuff was in the noise level, I would just ignore it.

We will be selling nearly everything in a couple of years, which is perhaps why I try to track our net worth using most of our assets. I could trick myself I guess into thinking we were quite a bit poorer than we are and then get a happy surprise when we sell our stuff for $80,000 to $100,000. Is there any value in self delusion? Perhaps it would make us save even more?

[disneysteve]

I guess the real question becomes WHY? Why do you track your net worth, however you define it?

In my case, I'm only interested in the financial assets because my goal is retirement. Knowing how much my wife's wedding band is worth is irrelevant because I'm pretty sure she won't let me sell it to help pay our expenses after I retire. The same goes for the cars and all the other stuff. If we're not ever planning to liquidate the stuff, the liquidation value just isn't important for me to know.

[KTP]

I guess the real question becomes WHY? Why do you track your net worth, however you define it?

In my case, I'm only interested in the financial assets because my goal is retirement. Knowing how much my wife's wedding band is worth is irrelevant because I'm pretty sure she won't let me sell it to help pay our expenses after I retire. The same goes for the cars and all the other stuff. If we're not ever planning to liquidate the stuff, the liquidation value just isn't important for me to know.

In less than 2 years we are selling everything and roaming the country in a RV. We will be selling two fairly new vehicles and a ton of household items from a very unusual existence. Since I expect to get around $80,000 to $100,000 for this and we will only have about $1,400,000 in our investment portfolio, this will be a pretty significant liquidation of assets.

$1,400,000 with a 3.5% SWR gives you a yearly income of $49,000 while $1,500,000 with the same SWR gives you a yearly income of $52,500.

[disneysteve]

In less than 2 years we are selling everything and roaming the country in a RV. We will be selling two fairly new vehicles and a ton of household items from a very unusual existence. Since I expect to get around $80,000 to $100,000 for this and we will only have about $1,400,000 in our investment portfolio, this will be a pretty significant liquidation of assets.

That totally makes sense, but it is certainly a very unusual set of circumstances. For most people, the value of their personal belongings really isn't of much significance.

[QuarterMillionMan]

I agree that people tend to over value their personal belongings. To me my personal belongings is just crap to others and vise versa. Things may seem valuable in the owners eyes but another person might hold an opposite point of view deeming it to be worthless or very insignificant.

[Goldy]

A little late to the party but I have some numbers now. 401k went up 33.3% and if you factor in contributions it increased nearly 65% up to about 175k. What a great year!