Monday, November 17, 2008

Savings



This chart shows in Australian Dollars my/our cumulative saving over the last twelve years. It doesn't include retirement saving and it completely ignores all investment income or losses. So it is purely the accumulated difference between non-investment earnings and spending. Unfortunately we don't currently have all this money as cumulative non-retirement investment earnings are negative. Retirement earnings, however, remain positive.

The big difference between the last bear market and the current one is I was spending far in excess of what I was earning then as well as losing on my investments/trading. This time we are actually saving a little.

The little spike in 2007 is where I added in Snork Maiden's savings and then we spent a lot when we moved to Australia.

3 comments:

Bigchrisb said...

I feel your pain on this one... I'm earlier in my investment horizon than you (26), and have been saving like mad for the last 12 months (about 75% of net income), but have seen my net worth back to exactly where it started those 12 months. But I can only look at this as a good buying opportunity for the long term - I figure keeping this up for the next few years will place me in good stead. My info is on networthiq under the user of bigchrisb

enoughwealth@yahoo.com said...

I'm also in the situation where the past 12 months market crash has probably left me with less net worth than if I'd just stuck my savings in the bank for the past 25 years. The risk-return plot of asset classes for 5, 10, 15 and 20 years must be looking pretty odd right now.

Anonymous said...

Most credit cards and loans, don't save,Instead, first pay these off as their interest cost is likely to massively dwarf the interest earned from saving.

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