Retirement Savings

I have had a a chance to update our networthiq.com retirement savings numbers.

In January 2011, we had $381,076 in our 401k accounts and a total of $445,933 for retirement savings.  Now, in January 2012, we have $407,895 in our 401k accounts and a total of $484,333 for retirement savings.

If you follow this adventure, you will note that we actually "lost" money this past year in our 401k accounts as we contributed the max to our 401k accounts, $33,000 (plus my husband receives a match) but our 401k accounts only increased by $26,819.  The 2011 markets were generally flat, so our returns were worse than the market.

We did a bit better in our IRA accounts.  In January 2011, we had $60,858 in our IRAs and in January 2012 we have $76,438.  We contributed the max to our IRAs, $10,000, in 2011, so we had a "profit" of $5,580.  I think it is interesting that our IRA investments did better than our 401k investments.  Our 401k monies are invested in mutual funds, while our IRA monies are invested in riskier individual stocks.  However, we did buy some super bargain stocks in the spring of 2009 and those investments are doing quite well.

As an aside, I heard an interesting tid bit on NPR the other day.  The speaker suggested that when purchasing an investment, one should keep track of the cost of that investment, the amount purchased, and why the purchase was made so that when considering selling you have much more information.  I think this is a great idea and one I'm going to suggest to Mr. Sam.