Over the last few years I’ve dabbled in using spreadsheets to track some historical account data. I have separate sheets for my Roth IRA, 401k and HSA accounts and they have slowly evolved from tracking nothing but my annual contributions and year end balances to employer match, dividends, and after tax contribution to Roth conversion basis. Luckily I delete and throw away next to nothing so I could use old tax returns and pay stubs to fill in a lot of blank cells. And it’s only been in the last month or two that I graduated from boring rows and columns of numbers to using the auto chart and analysis features of modern spreadsheet programs.
Sometimes it’s easy to look at recent Personal Capital balances and forget the historical context of index fund retirement investing being a marathon instead of a sprint. There have been 12 years where I came up short in hitting the 401k annual contribution limit and 10 years where I did hit the limit. It took 7 years to have a 401k balance over 100k and another 7 years to reach 200k (there was a divorce and QDRO payout of 41.5k in there). But then the market recovered from the great recession and the power of compounding became more visible: +3 years 300k, +1 year 400k, +2 years 500k. It was about here that I realized the balance would grow at ballpark 100k per year with nearly 50k in annual contributions and 50k in annual growth. A 5 year plan was born.
Perhaps my blog skills will eventually blossom and this sad raw data screenshot will become an embedded or live spreadsheet someday. My brother’s astute eye asked how I had 2022 contributions already? The answer to that question is part forecasting and part an incentive to keep me from quitting. Our people like to count things. I would like to reach the career exit ramp somewhere between now and my official quarter century club service date in 2025. Or I add a few more spreadsheet rows 😉
One last observation. Today I added the cumulative contribution, match and total columns to get a better idea over time of how much of the balance was contribution versus returns. Just over half of today’s balance still comes from dollars contributed versus earned. It’ll be interesting to watch that rate shift as compounding ramps up and contributions ramp down.
