I don't count my investments as income until I put the money in my checking account. I invested ~$40,000 some years back (over time), sold $20,000 a few years ago for a one time purchase (to get some family heirlooms back in the family), and have $120,000 left. The current plan is to retire on that money for a year before I start touching my actual retirement funds - of course once I get closer to retirement I'll actually calculate how taxes impact this plan.
For the most part though I ignore it. The best returns consistently go to investors who have forgotten about their account.
I just feel like I'm playing a game of chicken with a 10 year bull market. I usually leave it alone but I'm not going to wait around if the next recession turns out to a bad one.
I plan to wait out the next recession - history shows most people lose more trying to avoid recessions than if they wait them out.
Of course if I was closer to retirement that wouldn't work out. However that is why financial managers suggest a regular plan of diversifying into less risky (but lower return) investments as you get older. Target date retirement plans do that for you.
If it is a liquid asset, you should count unrealized gains as income. If you invested $100k in VOO last year, and it is worth $120k today, then you have definitely made $20k in the last year. That's $20k that you can choose withdraw and spend, at any time. Just because you choose to reinvest the $20k (ie, by letting it ride) doesn't change the fact that you've made $20k. It's really the same as collecting $20k in dividends and then enrolling in the dividend-reinvestment program.
I am in this case..I don't really day trade, have dividends auto-reinvested and rarely sell.
The market does sort of concern me right now though. We're sitting at all time highs for the S&P but there's worrying signs everywhere. I don't know how it'll all play out next year, so I might gradually sell some to lock in gains before end of year.
only do this if you need the money < 5 years. Timing the market is not possible, and while I agree many troubling signs, it's impossible to time when to buy back in, and you lose dividends and potential gains during the time on the sidelines.
If you need the money short term, then it shouldn't be invested in equities.
In theory I agree...but it's been a 10 year bull market and I would really not want to see any of my non-retirement or retirement accounts halved if I can help it.
My amateur "macro" view is we're in for heavily volatile times in the next 5 years.
I tend not to follow textbook personal financial advice shrug
I cashed out in September 2018 and I am most certainly not crying about missed profits :) That money is happily deployed elsewhere for better uses and the next time I have excess savings it will go into stocks when they're at the bottom of the market
Yes, but there's also no need. When 2008 happened, not only was it in the news 24/7, anyone looking at the chart understood they were getting a 30% discount on an index of the US economy.
interesting, I don't auto-reinvested my dividends, I use those to slowly but surely diversify my portfolio with different companies and industries (which is still a reinvestment I guess)
It's kinds interesting and even exciting to "shop" for new investment opportunities when dividends are posted.
agree about the market and all time highs and it feels dangerous. The thing is that no one can really predict what will happen, the only decent advice is, again, to diversify? Diversify with assets outside of the regular market fluctuations, e.g with cash savings, real estate, precious metals
I also did some passive index fund investments but I only count cash dividends as actual "income".