How My Net Worth Quadrupled This Past Decade
It was the best of times, it was definitely not the worst of times.
The S&P 500 roared to another amazing high in 2019, returning an eye-bulging 28.88% for the year. But the bigger story is the decade-long bull market, the longest in history. From 2010-2019, the S&P 500 notched a total return of about 256%, or 13.5 percent annually, according to Howard Silverblatt, senior index analyst at the S&P Dow Jones Indices.
An average of 13.5% every year. Maybe Dave Ramsey is on to something after all 🙂
There were only 2 years with negative returns, a modest 0.73% loss in 2015, and a 6.24 loss in 2018. I certainly hope for your sake you had your money in the market this past decade.
But I realize many entered 2010 out of the market because they pulled their money during the crash of 2008 – 2009. That’s a hard lesson to learn.
Me? I kept it all in there, just as I did in the crash of 2000. For me this bull market couldn’t have come at a better time.
After years of really hard work I got a big promotion in 2006, and my salary went up significantly from 2006 – 2010. So as the bull market started I was settling nicely into my prime earning years. I was able to pump more money than ever into a market that just kept soaring.
And holy smokes did it pay off.
This Is Winning
Almost exactly two years ago I did a post showing the trajectory of my net worth since I started tracking it in my prized spreadsheet in 1997.
Here’s an updated line chart with the last two years of returns highlighted in the green box. The decade is between the red dashed lines.
As you can see I took a bit of a hit like everyone else in 2018, but things came roaring back this past year to keep the curve on the steady path up. Like everyone else, including the experts, if you would have showed me this in January 2010 and said “this is what’s going to happen”, I would have laughed at you. But damn if it didn’t happen.
I don’t disclose my net worth number, but I will give some other numbers. My net worth increased almost exactly 300% during the decade, 300.7% to be exact. For the math challenged out there, that means it quadrupled.
And as you read in the beginning of the post the market itself went up 256%, so that says something. Most of my increase in net worth was because of the market, not the extra money I was stashing away.
As Zach from Four Pillar Freedom shows, once you get to a decent net worth, say $100,000, the magic of compounding really starts to kick in. 
So approximately 256% of my returns for the decade came from my investments in the market, and around 44% came from additional money I stashed away. Ironically that ratio is almost the same as the 14% – 86% ratio on the right of the chart above.
But way back in 1997 when I started recording my data, almost all of my gains were coming from my savings, and a very small portion was from the market. I didn’t have much then, my net worth was small. If you start at a net worth of $2500, then quadrupling it to $10,000 isn’t such a big deal. Let’s just say my numbers are substantially larger now.
As this article shows, while this past decade was awesome, it was not unprecedented. The 1920s, 1950s, 1980s, and 1990s all recorded higher returns than 2010 – 2019.
And interestingly the returns of the decade were largely driven by earnings growth, the strongest decade of earnings growth on record.
How I’m Positioned
I’m still young. Even though a 20-something year old probably considers me to be old, I’m not. And I could rip his legs off on a bike so he should just shut his pie-hole 🙂
Being young, I’m still heavily weighted in stocks. Of course “heavily” is in the eye of the beholder. I know bloggers out there older than me who are still 100% in stocks. That’s a bit too much for my risk tolerance.
Regardless of what you read on the big financial websites, your asset allocation should not be a formula based on your age. Your life circumstances, risk tolerance, and future plans should be the guiding principals behind your allocation.
Right now I’m 84% in stocks, 11% in bonds, and 5% in cash. To be honest, this past year I tried to get my stock allocation down a percent or two, but the market just kept raging. Despite putting quite a bit of money away in cash I didn’t move the needle because my mutual funds kept getting bigger just as fast.
To be clear, I’m not complaining about that.
How long can this madness continue? There are lots of pundits out there predicting the downturn to come any day now, and each one is just as clueless as the next. But one of them will get lucky and get it right and proclaim to be a guru. Trust me, you’ll read about this person one day. Remember that he or she is not a guru, but lucky.
Most of all, when this inevitability comes, do not sell. You will regret it.
Your turn distinguished reader – how much did you net worth go up in the decade? Share your % if you know it!
Wow! That’s fantastic! Now I want to create a chart like yours to track my growth. I have numbers from my own excel spreadsheet that goes back at least a decade, so it’ll be interesting to see my own growth on a chart. Like you, I didn’t pull money from the market when the economy tanked in 2000 or after our last huge crash. To me, that was always sale time, so I continue buying and still do.
Thanks for a great example of the power of compounding over time!
compounding is magic, thanks!
Outstanding Dave. It certainly was a great time for me as well and the fact that all the major gains happened right after my divorce is a reason why that tough financial time is just a blip in the rearview mirror.
Kudos for you for staying strong with your stock allocation. This year I started de-risking my portfolio because of my 5yr retirement window. As of such I did not fully capitalize on the amazing gains of 2019 but still not complaining.
Yeah I might try harder this year to tone back the stock %. I have multiple ways to do that, but if the market keeps going up just saving more into my cash bucket won’t keep up.
Nice! Although I’m really wondering how long this bull run will last. I started with a small net worth so it did 3x in the past 5 years.. I was saving super aggressively in the past 3 years.
That’s awesome Li, huge congrats!!
Congrats on all of your efforts. I actually only have Net Worth data back to YE2012 but the trend is very similar in my data to yours. It has indeed been a great time to be resilient and focused on long-term investing particularly is US equities.
I would make one suggestion – I would not so quickly de-emphasize the importance of constant savings and better yet an accelerating of your personal savings. Your Savings Rate is one of the most important metrics you can focus on and it is by far the metric that you personally can impact most definitively. It not only provides a foundation for your Net Worth growth but it also conversely means that you are likely spending more mindfully (and less). It drives you to FIRE.
Kudos on your great work!
Oh I agree, my intention wasn’t to de-emphasize the importance of saving at all, but to show that once your NW gets kinda large the #’s will be such that it will be the smaller of the gains when the market is going up. It’s still obviously important to save because presumably that’s what got you to that substantial NW in the first place.
Thanks for the comment!
i only have data going back a few years for the overall picture but i can say our household net worth has doubled in the past 3 years since january 2017. we’re only 6 and 11 years from social security age so our assets are now more like 15% cash, 15% fixed income, and 70% stocks. i’m going to keep that allocation as long as it’s comfortable as we’ve already kind of “won the game.” i would take a lot more off the table except we’re invested for life’s small luxuries and conveniences, which are not huge for us.
i found a piece of paper from a “family meeting” in january of ’09 and i’m pretty sure our net worth was near zero with mortgage and student loan debt still to slay. it was a helluva decade indeed of compounding love.
Well you went up buy a much higher factor than me, but starting from debt that make it easy to have a high % 🙂 It must’ve been pretty cool finding that note from 2009. It’s pretty cool to be able to look back at awesome success like that.
This is awesome, Dave! My net worth grew exponentially too! In fact, it went from being negative to very very positive. So for the math challenged… does that still mean it was exponential? 🙂
And I total agree with you, asset allocation should not be based on age alone, although that is a factor. “Your life circumstances, risk tolerance, and future plans should be the guiding principals behind your allocation.” You hit the hammer on the nail with that one!
That would be either exponential or infinite 🙂 Either way, great job Doc and keep it up!
I am pretty sure you called me out as the 20 something who you can beat on a bike. Let’s see if you still have it this spring
It was not directed at you per se, but GAME ON dude. You know who I ride with on Saturdays – bring it!
I don’t have the exact number for sure because our data was a little flimsy in 2010. It was good, but we can’t trust it 100%. That said, we actually also seemed to go about 300% ourselves. Mutual funds before which were 15% international and then the rest was equal chunks of small, medium, large cap US stocks. More recently we’re 70% US total, 10% small cap, 20% international.
Yes, we’ll be those people who lose a ton of money on paper any day or month or year now. We’ve done it before and we’re fine with the risk. We’ll simply adjust the retirement date a touch if needed. Using 4% nominal returns over the next 10 years to make us keep saving a lot.
That’s awesome Pete, great job! As you say I’ve long become accustomed to gaining or losing tens of thousands of dollars on a monthly basis. I kind of just think of it as Monopoly money even though it’s obviously not. But that’s an easy way to not get too emotional about it, good or bad.
I too saw great gains in my net worth over the last decade- I’ve decided to stay 90% stocks and I’m in the 3rd quarter of my career. With a couple of pensions I’ll let the IRA’s continue to be in the market and I’ll weather a few more storms if needed. Love your post!
“couple of pensions”, wow, nice! I have one pension coming to me but would love a collection.
Thanks for the kudos Sparky!
LOL is it ok that Im impressed most that you have been tracking since 1997 ! Way to go man, I was way too busy back then getting myself deep into credit card debt hehehe
Man I’m so glad I avoided that phase, I spent that time drinking too much though so we all screwed up in our younger years in some way!
Great article Dave! You got me thinking to look back over the past decade. I only started meticulously tracking net worth about three years ago when I found the FIRE community, but I was able to pull some numbers out of my Mint account and I am completely blown away by what I’ve found.
Over the past decade my net worth has gone up an incredible 815.6% – which I can’t even believe. The best investment I made doubled my net worth the day I signed the contract – I got married! (Talk about how to lie with statistics 🙂 My wife and I were independently on similar accidental FIRE trajectories and we each had an almost identical net worth when we got married almost four years ago. Hence the more intellectually honest answer would be that my net worth went up about 407.8% over the past decade – not quite 815.6% but not a stick in they eye either!
Since we are now both on an indefinite period of sabbatical we have dialed back our equity exposure a bit and are about 70% equities 25% fixed income 5% cash and if we stay on sabbatical we’ll be dialing up our equity exposure following Big ERNs equity glidepath for early retirees.
Now bring on the roaring 20s! 🙂
“That which gets measured gets improved” I find it really really important to track one’s net worth or at least savings rate because that quote holds true. Plus, when you’re able to make a graph of 23 years of tracking like I can it just stokes you more and more to keep on the path, because you see the raw data and the amazing results.
Congrats to you and your wife – 2 more accidentals! I’ll likely follow Big Erns glidepath in the future too, and should probably consider dialing back my equities this year. We’ll see. I don’t overthink these things 🙂
Thanks for the kudos!
Hi Dave,
Congratulations on your amazing growth!
I’m a 100% into equities using ETFs, I started graphing my dividend income on a graph similar to the one you have on your post, and have it posted on my blog. It’s really crazy to take a step back and see the exponential growth.
Warmest.
DGX Capital
From Dave to Dave – congrats to you too! Keep tracking it man, what gets measured gets improved and you’ll be stoked to see it when you’re older, trust me.
That chart of your net worth since 1997 is epic! I wish I had my data going back that far. I mean, I was in high school in 1997, so my net worth was probably positive for a brief moment before student loans kicked in. But today I’m retired and watching my net worth frolic along with the market as well. It has definitely been a fantastic decade. Enjoy the ride!
Thanks man, the best day to start tracking is today. Just keep at it and success will come. You’re so young the inevitable downturns won’t matter, you’ll outlive them to see more bulls!
This is the sort of talk that gets me thinking it is time to get out of equities. If i start hearing this in the locker room at the gym the crash will be within a year. Just sayin.
Ha, no one knows what’s going to happen or when it’ll happen. We could well be in another period of “irrational exuberance”, or maybe not. But as I said to others I do feel I should pull back a bit on my equity stake. I realize in doing that I’m trying to time a bit, but I’m also getting older.
Congrats on the net worth growth!
Looking back on my own, I nearly doubled my own net worth in 2019. Part of that was from the market, but getting a new job and doubling my savings rate didn’t hurt!
Wow, awesome Caroline, congrats on the new job and big savings rate!
I am up about 371% since about mid 2014. Sorry, I would have to go digging through some old spreadsheets to get back to 2010! Maybe a good little project for this weekend.
The Medicare Part A Deductible is up about 28% over that same time period (just in case you were wondering : )
Max
Wow, awesome job Max!
Great job Dave. I got a lot more conservative last year, but it still worked out pretty well. As long as you keep investing, you should be fine, right?
Our net worth increased about 250% in the past decade. This is pretty amazing because I quit my engineering career in 2012. Life is good. 🙂
250% is still awesome considering you left your job 2 years into the decade and are more conservatively positioned. You pretty much matched the market, that’s amazing!
Well done! If there’s a message here it’s stick to the path, ignore the noise and keep investing! Gonna keep up that approach and can’t imagine I’ll be upset about it in 10, 20, 30+ years 🙂
Thanks dude, you started so darn young, just stay disciplined and you’ve already won. Guaranteed path to multi-millionaire status
I only have data back to 1998…..and your comment got me to go look.
This past decade (Jan’10 to Jan’20) my net worth ratio was 4.34. As you noted, most
of that has been the very kind market.
I’m now 50% US stock, 22 Int’l, 20% Bond/Cash, 8% REITs
Great job M, what an awesome decade it was!
My net worth was negative a decade ago, so it’s done significantly more than quadruple. Seriously good perspective.
So amazing Angela! Yes the folks who had a negative nw or very small hopefully have smashed my results. Entering into 2010 I already had a pretty sizable nw, so quadrupling it was still so unexpected, and I feel blessed.
Hey Dave, that’s really impressive growth over the decade! Made me curious about my own numbers. I began tracking in ’88 (yes…that’s makes me a geezer – maybe?) and am really glad I’ve got the data now. Similar to your chart, the trajectory is amazing. The last decade was up 255%. I attribute that to being more conservative with the asset allocation drifting from about 85/15 to 70/30 today. Your point is absolutely valid…once you hit a certain point, growth takes over and out shines your contributions. What a wonderful concept and reality!
Wow, since ’88, awesome! Looks like you mirrored the market this past decade, can’t complain there. CONGRATS!
I can’t complain…it’s been a hell of a decade. Although I am starting to get a little more conservative as the bull market drags on. We’re holding half a million in cash right now, and I wonder if I shouldn’t get even more conservative.
Good luck in 2020!
I’m wondering the same Tako. Part of me knows that timing is a fools game though, so I get torn. Had I pulled back last year look at what I would have missed!
Well in 2010 I was finishing up grad school with a net worth of around $10,000, today I’m right above 1.1m so I’m up about 11,000% for the decade. 😉
Wow, that’s more than impressive – you should be writing a FIRE blog 🙂
Congrats!
I’m in a similar situation, but I was graduating with a bachelors. My net worth is only up a little more than 2000% for the decade.
Wow, that’s awesome!
I had to go digging for numbers from 1/1/2010.
Turns out I am up 560% for the decade. Mind boggling.
Definitely not counting on that ever happening again.
Wow that’s huge – congrats!
100% agree with this:
“Regardless of what you read on the big financial websites, your asset allocation should not be a formula based on your age. Your life circumstances, risk tolerance, and future plans should be the guiding principals behind your allocation. “
Amen
Wow, I’m new to investing and accumulating my capital. At some point, I realized that I need to change something, if it turns out for others, why I can not do it. The experience of people like you is very inspiring! Good luck everyone! Thanks for sharing!
Thanks for the kudos and us FIRE folks are trying to inspire so glad it’s connecting!