Author Topic: Brief History of the Stash/Stache  (Read 5956 times)

CanuckExpat

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Brief History of the Stash/Stache
« on: August 10, 2014, 03:43:09 AM »
So it turns out my wife and I are both data geeks. I was digging through some old spread sheets, and found I could track our networths from a couple years before we got married through today. I'm not sure if anyone else would be interested, but I thought I'd share it here:


Things like this remind me that I should start a journal or blog, to keep accountable, and post more details so we can suggestions on how to get closer to our goal.

May have sub-consciously stolen the name

bassman

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Re: Brief History of the Stash/Stache
« Reply #1 on: August 10, 2014, 06:04:30 AM »
That's an impressive curve. You've inspired me to do the same. I have all the data in quicken but never really figured out what to do with it. I'm now using ynab and that's had a biiig positive impact on my life.

lolzmonster

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Re: Brief History of the Stash/Stache
« Reply #2 on: August 10, 2014, 08:27:33 AM »
Wow! that is quite an exponential jump :o

alex trebeck's mustache

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Re: Brief History of the Stash/Stache
« Reply #3 on: August 10, 2014, 08:42:02 AM »
This is great and thanks for sharing!

It looks like you've had a pretty incredible last year or so. Do you attribute the steeper curve to compounding return on investments or something else? I see you work in the Bay Area, do you have an equity stake in a startup? If yes, have you seen any returns on that (I see some big jumps in your chart)?

I work for a startup and sold some of my equity this past month, which caused by net worth to jump by 25% (200k -> 255k). It was 25% of my total equity (I sold it on a secondary market). I'm pretty pumped about that and will have the option to do that again each year for the next 3 years (assuming I stay at the company, we don't get acquired before, etc.)

You can see my chart here: https://www.networthiq.com/people/atl_programmer (I haven't updated it with the money from the options sale). Notice it's pretty linear. I certainly hope and expect to see it get steeper as your chart has.

Suit

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Re: Brief History of the Stash/Stache
« Reply #4 on: August 10, 2014, 10:16:18 AM »
This is an awesome graph! Do you mind saying how much you contribute to the stache every year? I'm at the beginning part of your graph and trying to see if I could also hope for a similar graph years from now based on how much I'm contributing. (I know the stock market will obviously be different though).

sekritdino

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Re: Brief History of the Stash/Stache
« Reply #5 on: August 10, 2014, 10:32:46 AM »
Nice work!

And to lolzmonster, that is most definitely a linear graph.

CanuckExpat

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Re: Brief History of the Stash/Stache
« Reply #6 on: August 10, 2014, 06:11:34 PM »
Hi everyone,

Thanks for the feedback, I figured there might be some interest in our financial geekery in this forum. There were some good questions that unfortunately I don't think I have all the data to answer, but I will try.

It looks like you've had a pretty incredible last year or so. Do you attribute the steeper curve to compounding return on investments or something else? I see you work in the Bay Area, do you have an equity stake in a startup? If yes, have you seen any returns on that (I see some big jumps in your chart)?

Good eye Trebeck. Some of that last year is certainly return on investments and stellar stock market performance that we saw until recently, but the main factor is that I finished grad school and got a job that pays ~4x my previous pittance (before taxes anyways.. ) :) The plateau right before that is from our transition to the Bay Area where we were spending money on a move, having a cross-country road trip, and both funemployed.
No equity in a start-up: it would, be a stretch to say we are working class of course, but we both trade our labour for wages :) Most of the big jumps you see are probably changes in salaries and employment/fun-employment status. The range you see there includes periods of two people living on a grad student stipend, to a good dual income situation in a low cost of living area, to a current very high dual income in a high-cost of living situation.

Wow! that is quite an exponential jump :o

Nice work!

And to lolzmonster, that is most definitely a linear graph.

I was actually wondering that, I figure if the growth was being dominated by our savings rate, it would be more linear (barring salary increases), whereas if it was being driven by compounding returns it would be more exponential. It turns out an exponential fits the data better than a linear (R2 = 0.99 for exponential vs R2 = 0.93 for linear). In reality it's probably a combination of both, from our savings rate and investment returns.

This is an awesome graph! Do you mind saying how much you contribute to the stache every year? I'm at the beginning part of your graph and trying to see if I could also hope for a similar graph years from now based on how much I'm contributing. (I know the stock market will obviously be different though).
Given all the different accounts, it's hard to retrospectively figure out what is investment gain and what is our savings, but using our Vanguard accounts as a proxy for the whole stash, we can probably estimate that it is roughly 70% savings and 30% investment return. We did have the luck of strong market gains over the last few years (actually, our stash was smaller so it may not have helped us that much at the time), but we also have a relatively conservative asset allocation for our age(60% equities, 40% fixed income), for a variety of reasons. So if we had been invested even heavier in the stock market, it would have probably been larger gains. Oh well..
To answer your questions, I don't have the data for the earlier years, but in the last couple of years on much higher salaries we have been contributing ~$90k or more to the stash. So we make up for the conservative portfolio with a high savings rate (~80%).


Suit

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Re: Brief History of the Stash/Stache
« Reply #7 on: August 10, 2014, 09:01:09 PM »
Wow, fantastic savings rate and yearly contributions. Thanks for sharing! I'm not even close to that but maybe after a few years.

arebelspy

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Re: Brief History of the Stash/Stache
« Reply #8 on: August 30, 2014, 11:20:40 PM »
I love it, thanks for sharing!

I am a former teacher who accumulated a bunch of real estate, retired at 29, spent some time traveling the world full time and am now settled with three kids.
If you want to know more about me, this Business Insider profile tells the story pretty well.
I (rarely) blog at AdventuringAlong.com. Check out the Now page to see what I'm up to currently.