It’s that time of year again. Time to put on the accountant’s hat, tally up the wins and losses for the year and see if my 2011 goals were met. In this post I’ll take a look at the performance of my portfolio in 2011 as well as some of the benchmarks that I follow. Here we go. If you’re interested in last year’s numbers, see here.

Before I jump in to the performance numbers, its important that I make clear what my yearly goal is for my investments. I only have one goal every year,plain and simple. Here it is – its so important that I’ll make it separate, bold, and italic… 😉

  • Investment goal: to increase my total net worth, every year, after all spending, fees, taxes.

That’s it. Simpler than you thought? Notice that there is nothing about beating the market, or beating some benchmark that someone says is really important. If I meet this goal, who cares about the market or some benchmark? This goal insures that I never run out of money and always grow my net worth. For me, that’s what retirement investing is all about. What about inflation you may ask? That is automatically embedded in this goal. Inflation will drive spending during a given year so as long as the goal is met, inflation is taken into account.

An important point about this goal is that it does not mean that if I don’t meet this goal that I cannot continue my retirement. After all, the 4% SWR rule, states that you can withdraw 4% from your portfolio every year, adjusted for inflation, and be OK. It has worked throughout history and I think will work in the future. But under the 4% rule you can and will have year to year decreases in your net worth which can be worrying. There are no guarantees. So, I have set for myself a harder goal of increasing net worth every year and actively manage my portfolio to achieve this goal. If I fail in one year its not that big a deal. I will learn from that experience and try and do better. OK, enough about goals. How did I do?

My total portfolio return for 2011 was 8.9% gross, without spending, and 4.5% net of spending. That means my total net worth grew by 4.5% over the year taking everything into account. Everything. That is not as good as 2010’s performance of 18% gross, 13.5% net. But considering the market and my ultra conservative positioning I am quite pleased with these results. And as I stated, the big goal was met and retirement can continue unfettered. My total performance was affected by my large cash position through out the year. I started the year with 40% in cash and finished the year with 67% on cash. On average for the year I was about 55% cash. Including bonds I finished the year at about 73% non equity. Also, this year the majority of my gains came from my trading portfolio, 76% of my gains for the year coming from trading. That was a huge change from last year where only a very small part of my profits came from trading.

Lastly, lets take a look at some of the benchmarks I track for portfolio performance. While I have the big simple investment goal, I do like to keep score and see how passive, simple to follow benchmarks performed in the year.

These benchmarks are the S&P500 represented by the SPY ETF, the IVY buy and hold portfolio (see here) which represents a diversified endowment type portfolio, a standard retirement 60% stock 40% bond portfolio, and a timing version of the IVY portfolio. As I’ve stated on the blog before, the IVY timing portfolio is my standard recommendation for 90%+ of investors, retirees and non-retirees included. It is also my secondary benchmark after my simple investment goal I stated above. Overall, my investment results trumped these benchmarks as well. As far as my major stock holdings go, I had projected some returns in my 2011 outlook post. Here is how those did versus my forecast. It was a mixed bag but pretty positive overall. I didn’t hold all positions throughout the year, for example I cut CIM losses early – I got out of ETP in Q3 or so, but it is pretty representative.

That’s about it. My big goal of growing net worth after all spending was met and my performance vs my favorite benchmarks was met. I’m quite pleased with these results but I won’t be getting overly confident any time soon. I’m bound to under perform sooner or later. However, with the investing for a living model of focusing in dividends and capital preservation I’m confident I’ll survive the toughest of times. And watch out when times are good! Now, on to 2012.


8 Comments

J Carroll · January 7, 2012 at 10:57 am

Paul, it is great that you are posting again. In the link to your “investing for a living model,” dated 3/29/2011, you noted that the model is a work in progress. Wonder if you have any updates to the model? Thanks.

    libertatemamo · January 7, 2012 at 11:29 am

    J, great question. Nothing has changed about the 3 legs of the model; dividends, cash (trading), and flexibility. But the allocation to dividend vs cash (trading) has definitely changed. The 70/40 or 80/20 allocation is an ideal but variable depending on the market environment. Currently I have almost 70% allocated to cash. That should go down to 60% or so once I make some decisions in my IRAs but it won’t go below 50% in this environment. I plan a post on the current environment soon.

    Paul

heyduke · January 8, 2012 at 3:36 am

my year was similar to yours except I have a less cash position for the year 40 percent… and most all my profit came from my trading account as well… here is to never under performing 🙂

    libertatemamo · January 8, 2012 at 10:01 am

    Absolutely.

Rick · January 10, 2012 at 6:41 am

Paul: Best wishes for you and Nina in 2012. I did OK. Minis shined. REITS ended with minor gains in the light of loss and returns. Still holding and reinvesting but will sell some CIM in any rally. Keeping NLY and HTS. JNK did well, bought in the dips and reinvested. Surpased the 24k dividend goal we set for the year. Added some gold and silver coins and freeze dried food for the end of the world ;-).

Do you still have my spreadsheet from 2010? Would you look at where it stands now and give me some new year pointers? Have you read this Afertshock book?

Also… gave my son Rick your address. He has some questions about secure products / insurance annuity stuff of which I don’t know anything. He is making more money than he knows what to do with and asking for opinions on how to save and grow his $.

Safe travels. Perhaps this year if you do your Texas loop we can meet.

Rick /Houston

    libertatemamo · January 12, 2012 at 10:40 am

    Hey Rick. Happy New Year to you as well. I don’t have your spreadsheet anymore. If you have some specific questions send me an email please.
    We may be heading through Tex this year. If we do it would be fun to meet up.

    Paul

My 5 Keys To Personal Freedom | Wheeling It · January 7, 2012 at 12:30 pm

[…] You might not have expected me to start this way, but this motto has been a true brick of my freedom-loving life. I’ve always striven to live within (and more usually well below) my means. My very first income was made cleaning houses and my first 2 years of post-college work I shared a house with 4 other people so I could save part of my income. As my income rose I targeted to save at least 40% of what I earned, all in the quest to remain financially free. Then I met a man who felt the same way, and I was hooked In our fulltime RVing we continue to follow this mantra. RVing has actually been the perfect outlet giving us the ability to adjust our lifestyle (via how we travel and where we camp) to our income at any given time. It’s been a truly freeing experience. P.S. In the spirit of this goal Paul has finally been convinced to come back to blogging (yes, yes his own idea entirely…of course…bien sûr) and just posted our 2011 portfolio results yesterday. […]

2012 in review « Investing For A Living · January 5, 2013 at 3:48 pm

[…] back at 2012 and see how I did versus my retirement goals. For those interested the 2011 review is here and the 2010 review is here. This marks the end of our 3rd year living the full time RV lifestyle […]

Comments are closed.