Investment Gain Update – 2016 Edition

It always helps me to see real, actual dollar numbers when reading other people’s posts. Something about seeing hard numbers makes it more real. So here are ours. I started with 2012 because that is when we started using Schwab and it’s pretty easy to pull the data together.

These are gains, not the capital itself. I like to look at it this way since it shows what it earned without the distraction of the capital.

YearInvestment Gains
2012-$5,870
2013$62,390
2014$125,788
2015$122,577
2016$100,002

Stats
Total$404,867
Average$80,973

Wait, why do you have negative gains in 2012?  Well, I was moving into individual stocks and changing brokerages to Schwab.  You can see my timing strategy did not work.  That’s okay, it more than recovered in the next 4 years.

Looking at the stats helps me stay focused and validates we are on the right path. If that $80,973 was in a normal brokerage account (not 401k or Roth) and we had $0 of regular income, we could pull that money out tax-free each year…. legally.  Did you say $80,973 in income with $0 in taxes?  Yep, more on that in another post.

Something to think about.

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